Education Built to Teach.
Scaffolded workbooks that build one skill at a time, designed the way learning science says they should be.
Why one class was never going to be enough.
It isn’t a shortage of information, and it isn’t a shortage of good educators. It’s that most diabetes education has to happen in the time a single appointment or class allows — which leaves no room for practice, for applying it to your own body, or for anything to reinforce it afterward. Studies of diabetes self-management education find the benefit starts fading within one to three months of the class ending. That’s a limit of the format, not of the people teaching.
Learning science has known for decades what actually builds skill: concepts that scaffold in sequence, active practice, personalization, and ongoing reinforcement. All of it takes time nobody has been given. That’s the part we build.
Our workbooks are built differently.
Scaffolded.
Concepts build in sequence, so you’re never asked to use something you haven’t learned yet.
Active.
You work through your own numbers, not a textbook example.
Self-paced.
In print and online, because the right time to learn this is whenever you’re actually ready.
The Diabetes & Exercise Workbook.
How movement actually affects your blood sugar, and how to plan for it without fear. Free for people with T1D and their caregivers, in print and online, when it launches.
Available today
Our courses are free for people with T1D, in print and online, and translated as funding allows. That’s possible because donors fund the work of building them. Support BCF.
We train the people who teach.
Most organizations teaching diabetes have more demand than hours and no instructional designer on staff. Beta Cell Foundation works with health networks, clinics, camps, and nonprofits to add that capacity to what they already do: scaffolded sequencing, active practice, and materials built to develop capability over time.
Every organization we work with reaches people we never could directly. If yours teaches people about diabetes and you’d like instructional design behind it, get in touch.