Boards and Bylaws: Run Meetings That Follow the Rules
Signature Course No. 474 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Boards and Bylaws: Run Meetings That Follow the Rules course, in the Leadership & Management category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
Good intentions do not make a decision valid. A decision is valid when the body that made it had the authority to make it, met under the rules that govern it, considered the question in the order the rules prescribe, and recorded what it did in a form that will stand up later — to a member who was absent, to an auditor, to a court, to the public. This course teaches the formal machinery that builds decisions of that kind, meeting by meeting: what a motion is, which motion outranks which, when debate must stop, how many votes a question needs, what the minutes must show, and what your bylaws actually say.
It starts with why procedure exists. Every challenge to a board's act is procedural — the meeting was not properly called, the body lacked a quorum, the question was never properly before the body, the vote taken was not the vote the question required, or the record does not show what the body claims it did. You will learn to find the highest authority that answers each question, in order, and to ask of every claimed rule: which rules, written where?
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — The Meeting Itself — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Meeting That Holds Up; then, Module 2 — The Institution Around the Meeting — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Bylaws Review.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a meeting audit and repair plan for a regional clinic board's flawed Thursday meeting: the convening audited on all four notice variables, the annex-sale motion stack rebuilt in precedence order, the debate and the tie vote audited, and a one-page repair plan a chair can act on; and a complete bylaws-and-procedure review for a public community services district: its stack built from enabling act to meeting customs, three wanted changes classified and drafted as an amendment package, its record and officers ruled on, and remedies priced for a fee schedule adopted without a quorum.
The honesty standard is part of the course. This course gives you judgment, not legal advice. It names the standard parliamentary authority honestly, states the framework that governs public bodies, and flags every place where the law of a particular state, the charter of a particular body, or the bylaws in front of you control the answer. Where the course says check, it means check: the specific text that governs your body outranks anything taught here.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Boards and Bylaws: Run Meetings That Follow the Rules is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning delivers.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with a decision your body already made. Think of the most consequential one from the past year — if it were challenged tomorrow, which part of its paper trail — call, notice, quorum, motion, vote, minutes — would be hardest to produce? When your body last disagreed sharply, what ended it: a rule, a vote, or a person with more informal power than the others? And which of your body's decisions affect people who are never in the room, and what do those people get that lets them see the decision was made properly? Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Meeting That Holds Up for Module 1 and The Bylaws Review for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Authority before action, at every step. Every procedural question in this course is answered the same way: find the highest authority that speaks to it — law, charter, bylaws, special rules, the adopted parliamentary authority, standing rules, custom — and apply what it says. The meeting is a machine assembled from parts, and each part can fail on its own.
Module 1 builds the meeting itself. Why Procedure Exists; The Stack of Authorities; Call and Notice; Quorum; Order of Business and the Agenda; The Main Motion; Precedence of Motions; Debate and Decorum; and Voting.
Module 2 builds the institution around the meeting. Minutes; Officers; Committees; Drafting Bylaws; Amending the Bylaws; Interpreting the Bylaws; Suspending the Rules; Public Bodies; and Challenges and Cures.
And it holds its boundary throughout. This is a course about procedure, not personality: charming a room, managing a difficult colleague, and facilitating a discussion are taught in their own neighboring course on this shelf. This course owns the formal machinery — and the judgment to check the governing text, in the right order, before anyone acts on it.
What you will learn
- Read any body's governing documents in the correct order of authority and identify which document answers a given question.
- Call and notice a meeting properly, build its agenda, and tell a valid meeting from a gathering whose actions can be challenged.
- State, test, and protect a quorum — and know the short list of things a body may do when it does not have one.
- Make, second, state, amend, and dispose of motions correctly, and rank any two motions against each other by precedence.
- Run and take part in debate within the rules of recognition, germaneness, and decorum, and close debate only by the route the rules allow.
- Choose a voting method, state the threshold a question actually needs, and handle ties, abstentions, and the chair's vote correctly.
- Keep minutes that serve as the legal record: what belongs in them, what does not, and how they are approved and corrected.
- Describe the duties of the presiding officer, secretary, treasurer, and committees, and handle committee reports correctly.
- Draft bylaws provisions that say what the body means, amend bylaws by the required route, interpret them when they are ambiguous, and name the rules that can never be suspended.
- Apply the framework duties of a public body — open meetings, notice, public comment, and lawful executive sessions — while spotting the points where state law must be checked.
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Boards and Bylaws: Run Meetings That Follow the Rules, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Meeting That Holds Up and The Bylaws Review
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the people who sit on boards
Newly elected or appointed board members — who want to stop guessing; and chairs and presidents who preside and must rule correctly in real time.
Secretaries — who keep the record the body will be judged by; and executive directors and clerks who prepare meetings and advise the chair.
Members of public bodies — who carry statutory duties on top of parliamentary ones. No prior knowledge is assumed beyond having sat through at least one meeting and wondered whether what just happened was actually allowed.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with Why Procedure Exists
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Boards and Bylaws: Run Meetings That Follow the Rules is Signature Course No. 474. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.