My dog Daisy preparing to learn about mands from my original copy of Norm’s book
I first heard of Norm Peterson in 1996. Well, I knew about the character of Norm Peterson on Cheers before then and may have heard about other Norm Petersons, but I didn’t hear about the Norm Peterson until 1996. I was in my first year of graduate school at West Virginia University and participating in Phil Chase’s research lab focused on verbal behavior. We were going to be reading B.F. Skinner’s book, Verbal Behavior, and Phil recommended that we first complete a sort of workbook or primer titled An Introduction to Verbal Behavior by someone named Norm Peterson. It had been out of print for a while, so Phil made a copy available in the department office for us to photocopy if we wanted. I made a copy and diligently worked through the chapters. I still have that copy.
It turns out that Norm was one of the first graduates of Western Michigan University’s doctoral program in Behavior Analysis, working under Jack Michael. His dissertation focused on the basic elements of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior, and culminated in the 1978 publication of his book, An Introduction to Verbal Behavior. It was an experiment in programmed instruction, which—in the days before the widespread availability of computers—was implemented via “teaching machines” and later programmed books like Norm’s. I was already interested in instructional design and found Norm’s book both fascinating and extremely helpful. As Phil Chase wrote recently on Facebook, “Norm wrote (designed) one of the most effective concept programs (multiple exemplar training) I have ever read.”
About a decade later, in 2006 or 2007, I met Norm in person for the first time. I was working as a faculty member at Western Michigan University myself and was planning to launch an elearning company to host my tutorial on RFT. At some point, I learned that Norm still lived in the area (in Jackson, only about an hour’s drive from Kalamazoo). Remembering how helpful I found his book and knowing it would be really cool in an interactive, digital format, I reached out to him. He was enthusiastic and invited me to visit him in his offices at the Foundation for Behavioral Resources. During that visit, Norm told me that several people over the years had wanted to convert his book to a computer-based format, but ultimately nothing ever came of it. He agreed to let me have a go at it, and we had a verbal agreement (get it?) to let me license it and sell it on my website if I finished it. Over the next couple of years, I believe I saw Norm a couple more times at department colloquia and would give him updates on my progress.
In 2009, after I had left Western Michigan University and was living in San Francisco, I had completed enough of the digital version of Norm’s book (developed with Adobe Flash and custom PHP code to record data to a MySQL database) for us to sign a formal contract to publish it. The contract was signed on May 6, 2009 and his tutorial was officially launched on FoxyLearning on May 28, 2010. Norm was the very first author (other than me) signed to FoxyLearning. Since then, his tutorial has been used by thousands of students in hundreds of courses around the world and completed by thousands of BCBAs for CEUs. It continues to be one of the most popular and important products on FoxyLearning and CEUniverse.
After publishing his tutorial, I saw Norm several more times at the annual conference of the Association for Behavior Analysis International. He would often agree to take a shift standing by our FoxyLearning poster at the conference and even agreed to wear a goofy, ill-fitting FoxyLearning t-shirt while doing so once. I didn’t know Norm well, but whenever I interacted with him, he was always kind, generous, funny, curious, and eager to help. In fact, for the first decade or so after we published his tutorial, he would often take time to personally respond to many of the questions learners would post on the pages of the tutorial. He wasn’t paid to do this; he simply cared about helping others learn.
Alyce Dickinson, Norm Peterson, and Val Peterson at Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo in April 2016. Photo by Wayne Fuqua.
I believe the last time I saw Norm in person was in April 2016 when I returned to Western Michigan University to deliver a colloquium. Some of the faculty took me out to lunch at Bell’s Brewery, and I was delighted to see that they had invited Norm and his wife, Val, to join us.
On more than one occasion over the years, Norm mentioned to me that he wanted to develop a tutorial on more advanced topics in verbal behavior. I told him I would be thrilled to publish such a tutorial on FoxyLearning. He may have even done some work on it, but I’m not sure. Sadly, we’ll never see that advanced tutorial.
Norm passed away on December 12, 2024. He will be missed. I am honored that FoxyLearning will play a role in helping his legacy live on. You can continue to access his tutorial for free, use it as an assignment for your course, or complete it for BCBA CEUs.
If you knew Norm—or if you just benefited from his excellent book or tutorial—please take a moment to read his obituary and share a note, memory, or tribute for his family and loved ones to read here or here. And if you happen to be at Cheers or some other place where everybody knows your name, pour one out for the real Norm Peterson.
While I am thrilled that the tutorial is still in use, its longevity is rather remarkable to me for several reasons:
I developed the tutorial primarily as a vehicle for conducting my dissertation research
I had no idea RFT would still be a thing 20 years later (spoiler alert: it is!)
It is rather difficult to keep interactive, multimedia content like this online
Notable Numbers
Before I delve into the history of the tutorial and my analysis of why it has persisted so long, I thought it would be fun to consider some foxy numbers related to the tutorial.
It Has Been Used to Supplement Over 900 Courses in Over 100 Colleges and Universities In More Than 15 Countries Around the World
From the very beginning, the tutorial was designed to be used as a supplement for a larger course (such as a university course or a training program at a clinic). The first courses to use the tutorial supported my dissertation research, and I later built an entire company (FoxyLearning) to support our ability to continue offering this service with a low-cost version of the tutorial. It continues to be used regularly as a supplement to undergraduate courses, graduate courses, and other training programs.
Over 4,000 Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) Have Completed It for Continuing Education
Shortly after launching FoxyLearning in 2010, my buddy DJ Moran said, “Hey! You should offer this for CEUs for BCBAs.” And I said, “Sounds cool! What does that mean?” After schooling me on the wonders of board certification and continuing education requirements, DJ went on to serve as FoxyLearning’s first CEU Coordinator for the next 8 years. Thanks for the great idea, DJ!
Over 25,000 Undergraduate and Graduate Students Have Completed It As a Course Assignment
This number is the one that is perhaps the most astonishing to me. When I developed this tutorial early in the millennium, I’m not sure there were even 25,000 people in the world who had even heard of RFT!
It Has Generated Over $500,000 In Revenue Since 2010
The tutorial was only offered for free from 2004 to 2010. It is still offered for free, but I began selling access to “premium” versions (that includes things like completion tracking and a certificate of completion) in 2010 because I needed revenue to support the ongoing development, support, and maintenance of the tutorial. That is the secret origin of FoxyLearning!
The revenue from the tutorial is pretty evenly divided between students purchasing a low-cost version as a course supplement (about 56%) and BCBAs and other professionals purchasing a more expensive version of it for CEUs (about 44%). While I’m amazed that I turned my goofy dissertation project into something that has made half a million dollars, please note that it has not made me rich (seriously, I’m still paying off my student loans)! When that 500k is spread across 15 years, it only comes out to about $33,333 in revenue (not profit) per year. Without that revenue stream to support it, I can confidently say that the tutorial would no longer exist.
Countless Visitors Have Completed It for Free!
They are literally countless because we don’t fully track visitors completing the free, open-access version of the tutorial. To preserve our resources, their completion of the tutorial is not recorded or stored in our database. We could probably piece together an estimate by analyzing all of our website traffic logs and analytics for the past 20 years, but that seems like an awful lot of work. I can tell you, though, that in 2024 over 6,000 people visited the home page of the free version of the tutorial!
History
The tutorial was initially developed for my dissertation research at Arizona State University. I was enrolled in a Learning and Instructional Technology doctoral program and wanted to investigate methods of teaching abstract concepts. My background was in behavior analysis, having graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) with my bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in behavior analysis. I also spent a year in the behavior analysis doctoral program at West Virginia University and worked at Morningside Academy for a year. While in graduate school at UNR, I worked for Steve Hayes at Context Press and participated in his research lab, which is where I became more familiar with RFT and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
After contributing to a chapter in the first book-length treatment of RFT, I decided RFT would be a good topic for my dissertation project (partly because it involves lots of abstract concepts!). I was also interested in helping disseminate the theory, as many folks (myself included) found RFT confusing when first reading about it. I suspected some of that was due to the fact that it was dealing with abstract, process-related concepts that are difficult to capture with text alone. I thought an interactive, multimedia tutorial that implemented best practices for concept instruction might help. And so my long journey began!
The first version of the tutorial was developed over the course of about a year and a half from January 2003 to August 2004, after which it was launched on RelationalFrameTheory.com, a website I built to host the tutorial and other content related to RFT. It was developed in Adobe Flash, with custom PHP code used to record learner data to a MySQL database. Flash doesn’t run on many devices any more, so here is a slideshow consisting of a few screenshots from the first version of the tutorial:
After completing my doctorate, I continued to make the tutorial available for free as a public service. To my surprise, it grew increasingly popular over time, with hundreds to thousands of people continuing to complete it every year. As time went on, the costs and effort required to maintain it grew. Web technology evolves quickly, meaning even a static web app requires regular updates to its code and server software to stay secure and functional. Providing technical support for users added to the burden, and I realized that monetizing the tutorial was the only way to sustain it. This realization led to the creation of FoxyLearning.
FoxyLearning in 2010
When FoxyLearning was launched in 2010, an updated version of the RFT tutorial (now with audio narration! Fancy!) was its sole offering. Now treated as a commercial product, the tutorial was no longer free to access. It was still published in Flash and integrated into a Drupal website using some custom code. FoxyLearning soon became an approved continuing education provider by the BACB and the tutorial was first offered for BCBA CEUs in March 2010. In June 2012, a new version of the tutorial was released in an HTML5 format because Steve Jobs and Apple sounded the death knell for Flash as a platform for modern devices.
In 2014, while employed at The Ohio State University, I attended an inspiring talk by OSU alumnus Cable Green, the Director of Open Education for Creative Commons. He suggested that educational companies and organizations could adopt a “freemium” model for educational content, whereby the content is provided for free (and, ideally, published under a Creative Commons license), while revenue is generated by services related to the content. It blew my mind. It aligned perfectly with my values and desire to disseminate behavioral science as widely and effectively as possible. Within weeks of hearing Cable’s talk, I completely changed FoxyLearning’s business model. In April 2014, the RFT tutorial (along with all of our other content) was once again free for anyone to access, with only services such as completion tracking or certificates of completion requiring a fee. This was a big risk for our company (would anyone still pay for content they can access for free?), but 10 years later, I can say with confidence that the gamble paid off. The tutorial has been updated many times in the years since, based on both changes in technology and feedback from users.
Why Has It Lasted So Long?
When my tutorial was first launched in 2004, it was rather unique because there weren’t really a lot of resources for learning about RFT. There was the original purple book, some research articles, and the odd lecture or presentation by an RFT researcher. These days, however, there are many resources available for learning about RFT. There are online courses, multiple books, in-person workshops, webinars, blog posts, podcasts, countless conference presentations, etc. But, even in the face of this stiff competition, my tutorial is still going strong. Why? I think there are six key reasons.
1) Instructional Design Matters
Perhaps the most important reason behind the tutorial’s longevity is the fact that I spent a lot of time (over a year, in fact) and effort on the initial instructional design. I adopted a systems approach to the instruction, generally following the classic ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) model. Many hours were spent on the instructional objectives, scope and sequence, content analysis, concept analyses, drafting practice activities, conducting formative and summative evaluations, beta testing, and making iterative improvements. I implemented evidence-based instructional strategies and best practices for multimedia instruction whenever possible. A lot of time was spent generating graphics and animations that supported the instruction.
Many newer resources focused on RFT and behavior analysis in general might look quite slick, but they are often little more than talking heads telling you information (maybe with a quiz at the end, if you’re lucky). They are lectures. While lectures and TED talks and podcasts and short films and the like can certainly be inspirational and helpful for raising awareness, they are often more informational than instructional. Behavioral psychologists have known for a long time that lecturing is not the same as educating.
If telling were teaching, we’d all be so smart we could hardly stand it.
– Robert F. Mager (1968)
The RFT tutorial has always been focused on providing not only information, but also specific and meaningful practice, feedback, and interactions designed to support the learning objectives. It implements mastery learning and active student responding in a sort of blend of programmed instruction (as developed by B.F. Skinner, Susan Meyer Markle, and others) and the personalized system of instruction or PSI (as developed by Fred Keller and others). It is deliberately instructional and not just informational or entertaining.
When you’re running an elearning company, good instructional design is good for business. When learners actually learn what you intend for them to learn, they tend to be happy customers. If they are students, they let their instructors know that they liked the tutorial and the instructor is likely to assign it again. If they are BCBAs, they are likely to purchase other CEUs from us or tell their friends and colleagues about the tutorial.
The ratings for the tutorial indicate our customers are generally pretty happy with it. Bear in mind that the students are usually being required by their school or instructor to purchase the tutorial and the tutorial typically takes them 5+ hours to complete. The BCBAs are being required to exert considerably more effort than is required of most other CEU events. And yet the vast majority of the reviewers still give the tutorial a rating of 4 or 5 stars. Pretty cool.
Reviews from Students
Reviews from BCBAs
2) Open Access Matters
In 2014, we decided to once again provide free access to the tutorial and to publish it under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. That means other people can share or adapt the tutorial for non-commercial purposes. While it might seem crazy for a company to give free access to its flagship product, this decision was important for several reasons:
It was a direct reflection of our values focused on disseminating behavioral science and promoting open educational resources, open science, and the open web.
It made the tutorial and our other content accessible to the entire internet-connected world for free.
It allowed paying customers to “try it before you buy it.”
It allowed Google and other search engines to begin indexing our tutorial content, allowing it to show up in search results for relevant terms (e.g., Google “rft generalized operant” and you’ll probably see one or more pages from the tutorial in the results).
It allows the tutorial to potentially outlive either me or FoxyLearning. Even if FoxyLearning were to end without a succession plan in place, someone else could still legally publish and/or adapt the tutorial. Contrast this with the amazing Headsprout reading programs, for example, which were released under a traditional copyright license and eventually sold to another company. The current publisher recently decided to discontinue them and, sadly, there does not appear to be much that can be done to revive them now.
3) Affordability Matters
The paid version of the tutorial is currently offered at two price points: $14 for students completing it for a course and $70 for BCBAs who want to earn 7 CEUs. In addition, we have adopted country-based pricing to make the tutorial more affordable throughout the world.
These prices are very competitive for a tutorial of this length. Some providers of online courses and other elearning content seem focused on maximizing profit, while we are focused on maximizing access (while earning enough to sustain our business). Keeping the tutorial affordable has undoubtedly played an important role in its continued adoption and longevity.
4) Customer Service Matters
Ever since the launch of FoxyLearning, I have focused on providing exemplary customer support. There is an omnipresent help button on our website, providing quick access to extensive help documentation (including FAQs and troubleshooting tips) and a contact form. We typically respond to messages sent to our helpdesk within a matter of minutes or hours, not days. Sometimes we even have live chat or an annoying AI chatbot available!
All of this sets us apart from many of our competitors, who have often have scant or no support documentation, make it difficult to figure out how to contact them for support, and/or do not respond to messages very quickly. People completing an online tutorial or course often feel disconnected from the person or business providing it and can experience maddening frustration if they face a technical problem with no clear path to resolving it. We work hard to avoid that.
5) RFT Still Matters
RFT remains an important topic for many people, due to at least three major factors:
The explosive growth of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
The explosive growth of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), particularly in supporting autistic individuals (or individuals with autism)
The ongoing research on derived stimulus relations, relational framing, and novel applications of RFT
If RFT was not still a thing, the tutorial would obviously not be of much use to people. I’m pleased that so many people continue to seek it out and find it valuable.
6) Revenue Matters
Simply creating great elearning content is not enough to ensure it will endure. Some sort of infrastructure must exist to support it, and that infrastructure requires funding. Without the revenue generated by FoxyLearning, the RFT tutorial likely would have been discontinued many years ago.
The Future
I built FoxyLearning specifically to support the RFT tutorial and plan on supporting it for as long as people find it useful. We also use our platform to support other tutorials and content now. Have you built some great elearning content related to behavioral science? Tell us about it. Maybe we can publish your content on FoxyLearning to help it thrive, earn you some money, gain a wide reach, and help others for 20+ years, too!
FoxyLearning is pleased to announce the launch of CEUniverse!
To make earning BCBA CEUs easier than ever, we have moved our CEU modules to their very own universe! On January 1, 2024, we officially moved all of our CEU content and CEU customer accounts to a new website called CEUniverse. You might have some questions about this. Below we have conveniently provided some answers!
Why was CEUniverse created?
We wanted to create a more focused and streamlined experience for our CEU customers. Before CEUniverse, the FoxyLearning website had to serve four distinct audiences: BCBAs seeking CEUs, instructors seeking to supplement their courses, students completing our modules as a course supplement, and the general public accessing our free content. This sometimes made our user interface, documentation, and code rather complex.
By moving our CEU content to a dedicated site, BCBAs will find shopping for and using our CEUs much easier. It also gives us more flexibility in terms of the types of CEU products we can offer (hello, bundles!). Finally, it will allow us to improve the usability of the FoxyLearning website by focusing it more directly on students and instructors.
What happened to my user account and CEU modules?
We have migrated the user account of every CEU customer from FoxyLearning to CEUniverse. This includes:
Login credentials (email address and password)
Account information (name and BACB certification number)
Purchased modules and progress on those modules
Certificates of completion
Previous orders
This means that you can log in to CEUniverse using the exact same email address and password you used for FoxyLearning. It also means that you will find everything that used to be on the myAccount and myLearning dashboards on FoxyLearning on the myAccount and myLearning dashboards on CEUniverse.
Will my user accounts on FoxyLearning and CEUniverse be synced?
No. Although we copied your account (including login credentials) to CEUniverse from FoxyLearning, your user accounts on the two sites will not be synced or connected in any way. That means if you change your password on FoxyLearning, it will have no effect on your password for CEUniverse (and vice versa).
Unless you are an instructor using FoxyLearning to supplement your teaching or training (or a student completing a coursepack or standard module), you may not have any need to log in to FoxyLearning at all anymore.
Are the CEU modules on CEUniverse different than the ones that used to be on FoxyLearning?
No. Our CEU modules have been copied over to CEUniverse exactly as they were on FoxyLearning. Any new CEU modules will only be added to CEUniverse. All CEU modules on FoxyLearning have been removed (though the standard and free versions of them remain).
What about FoxyPoints?
FoxyPoints have been rebranded as “Star Points” on CEUniverse (it just seemed a little more thematically appropriate). All of your FoxyPoints have been moved to your account on CEUniverse. You should be able to see them on the myAccount dashboard and redeem them when making purchases on CEUniverse. Since FoxyPoints were only ever applicable to CEU products, they have been removed completely from FoxyLearning.
What about newsletters?
If you were a CEU customer subscribed to the FoxyLearning newsletter, we have automatically subscribed you to the CEUniverse newsletter. The CEUniverse newsletter will obviously focus exclusively on content relevant to CEUs and BCBAs, while the FoxyLearning newsletter will more broadly cover our business and focus on instructors, students, and our free content.
You can subscribe or change your subscription preferences for either newsletter using these links:
If you have any additional questions about the launch of CEUniverse, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to seeing you in our new universe!
Every elearning company uses slightly different names for the types of content they produce. To avoid confusion, we thought it would be helpful to provide a brief glossary of some of the terms we use on FoxyLearning!
Module: We refer to our main products as learning modules, or just modules. Others might refer to them as online courses. We do not call them courses, however, because they are often used to supplement traditional college (or training) courses, which could lead to confusion. We also think “course” implies a length and coverage of a topic that does not always adequately represent our modules, which are often more like individual lectures or classes than full-blown courses. All of our modules are on-demand and self-paced and come in three primary formats:
Multimedia Tutorials: These are self-paced tutorials that consist of multimedia content (including audio narration, text, graphics, and sometimes video or animations). Tutorials are broken into lessons. They are mastery-based, requiring correct responding to advance, and developed using principles from behavioral approaches to education, such as programmed instruction, the personalized system of instruction, and behavior skills training.Â
Interactive Videos: These are videos that have questions and other interactive content embedded directly within the video. As you watch the video, questions will automatically pop up. They are also mastery-based and require correct responding to advance through the video.
Lesson: A lesson is a component of a module. A module might be comprised of zero lessons, one lesson, or multiple lessons.
Coursepack: A coursepack is a collection of one or more modules assembled by an instructor for use as a course supplement. Anyone who purchases a coursepack will gain immediate access to the module(s) included and will be placed in a private group for the course. The instructor of the course will be able to monitor the progress and performance of anyone who purchases the coursepack.
Open Educational Resources (OER): OER are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. We release much of our content under an open license, and it can be found in the OER section of our site.
