A structured introduction to planning clearer, error-minimizing shaping sessions
Shaping should not mean standing still and waiting for your learner to guess.
Perhaps you begin with a clear behavior in mind, but the session quickly becomes a stream of previously reinforced responses. Perhaps you are unsure when to change criteria, whether to use a prompt, or what to do when an error appears. You know that shaping can build remarkable behavior, but the practical decisions between one approximation and the next still feel uncertain.
This webinar gives you a compact, structured introduction to a different approach: shaping as a teaching procedure that we design, rather than a guessing game the learner must solve.
Recorded webinar · 2 hours 30 minutes · one year of access · $45
What does “errorless” mean here?
Shaping is the differential reinforcement of successive approximations toward a terminal behavior. Those approximations should make progress possible; they should not leave the learner searching through every behavior in their repertoire and hoping that one of them earns reinforcement.
Errorless shaping does not mean that a learner can never make a mistake. That would be an impossible promise. I use “errorless” as an error-minimizing design goal: arrange antecedents thoughtfully, choose achievable approximations, plan how the session can progress, and change the teaching plan when the learner’s behavior tells us that something is missing.
Errors can still occur. When they do, they are information—not proof that the learner needs to try harder and not a reason to repeat the same unsuccessful arrangement indefinitely.
What we will work through
- What shaping is—and how it differs from simply waiting for offered behavior.
- How to define the terminal behavior and plan useful successive approximations.
- How antecedent arrangement can make the next useful response easier to perform.
- How to structure a session instead of deciding everything after the learner has already responded.
- How to choose and change criteria without relying on a rigid number of repetitions.
- When prompts can support the teaching plan and how to fade them deliberately.
- How backchaining can help you assemble behavioral components into a sequence.
- When to add a cue and how existing cues may already be influencing the learner’s response.
- How unplanned extinction and resurgence can appear during shaping.
- What to examine and change when an error occurs.
- Practical shaping examples with and without objects.
The goal is not to give you one recipe that must work for every learner. It is to help you understand the decisions behind a shaping plan, so you can ask better questions during your own sessions.
This webinar is for you if…
You are new to shaping and want a foundation that is more structured than “click something and wait for more.”
You already shape behavior but sometimes lose clarity between approximations, hesitate when criteria need to change, or see unrelated responses begin to enter the session.
You are a professional trainer who wants a concise, behavior-analytic overview that can strengthen your planning and observation.
Most examples concern dog training, but the principles apply to learners of other species as well.
This webinar is not…
It is not a guarantee of training without a single mistake. It is not a personal consultation or an individual review of your training videos. It will not give you one universal staircase of approximations for every behavior.
It is a focused 2.5-hour webinar: a conceptual map, applied examples, and practical starting points you can return to during your own training.
How is this different from Shape Me Up?
Errorless Shaping in a Nutshell and Shape Me Up are separate products.
This webinar is a single 2.5-hour recording for trainers who want a compact introduction to the central concepts and practical decisions involved in error-minimizing shaping.
Shape Me Up is the complete six-week guided self-study course. It develops the work sequentially through observation, operationalizing behavior, modular construction, complete learning loops, criteria, error analysis, duration, stimulus control, fluency, and generalization.
You do not need to plan to take Shape Me Up for this webinar to be useful. If you later choose the six-week course, it is a separate $139 purchase. The webinar fee is not credited toward the course.
About your instructor
I am Agnieszka Janarek, a behavior consultant, animal trainer, educator, and the founder of Tromplo. For more than a decade, my work has lived between learning science and the decisions we make in real training sessions.
I do not want to leave you with more rigid rules. I want to show you what I look at, why I make a particular teaching decision, and how the learner’s behavior can help us improve the plan.
Webinar details
Format: Recorded webinar
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Access: One year of access to the recording
Presenter: Agnieszka Janarek
Price: $45
Shaping can be precise without asking the learner to navigate repeated failure. Learn how to plan the process with more clarity from the first approximation onward.