The TopClass Blog

Good news! Tomorrow, you’re finally getting the help you need to bring new education programs to market more quickly. In your dreams, right?

But this is no joke. You already know your new assistant: AI.

More than half of instructional designers use AI and 44% use it for learning content creation. Because AI tools automate repetitive, laborious tasks and help jump-start content design and development, 80% of instructional designers expect their use of AI to increase in the future.

Using AI to Develop Education Programs

AI helps you do things beyond the ability of one person. In this post, we’ll highlight how it can help you accelerate the first three stages of the ADDIE instructional design model: Analyze, Design, and Develop.

However, despite how helpful AI is, never let it have the final word. Always review and refine its output to ensure it’s safe, accurate, relevant, and personable. You don’t want to take the human touch out of your programs and let AI turn them into soulless, blah experiences.

👩‍🏫 Using AI to analyze learner needs and skills gaps

Before you start working on a new learning product, get AI to write a project management plan with a timeline and milestones. 

Needs analysis

Upload data from needs assessments, surveys, and other feedback and ask AI to identify:

• Patterns and themes—overall and by segment

• Educational needs of members, attendees, and learners—overall and by segment

• Training needs of employers

AI can review learner performance and self-assessment data to identify and summarize knowledge and skills gaps, and make recommendations. 

Skills gap mapping

Ask AI to compare job postings in your industry with your current educational offerings to identify misalignments or opportunities.

Trends identification

AI can analyze industry publications, regulatory changes, and conference proceedings to identify emerging skill and topic gaps.

Competitive analysis 

Ask AI to review learning programs offered by competitors and identify market gaps your association could fill.

🎨 Using AI to design course structure 

Public tools like ChatGPT might produce low-quality or inaccurate content, which is why you must be scrupulous in checking their work. Instructional designers are more likely to use proprietary instructional design tools to design and develop online courses and other educational programs.

Outlines and learning objectives

Ask AI to generate an initial outline, with topics and activities that align with learning objectives for a specific target audience, based on:

• Subject matter expert (SME) interviews

• Research data such as needs assessments, employer surveys, and member surveys

• Previous course materials

• Format (instructor-led, on-demand, or microlearning)

Need help with learning objectives? AI can do it. It can also create storyboards along with visuals to complement the narrative.

Assessment strategy

Ask AI to suggest the best assessment methods for the course’s learning objectives and content types.

Instructional strategy

AI can suggest instructional strategies for outline topics based on learning objectives and the complexity of the content.

⚙️ Using AI to develop course content 

By taking advantage of AI-assisted instructional design tools, you can reduce development time by 50% or more.

Content creation

Take a variety of source material from SMEs and ask AI to generate initial drafts for:

•    Course content, such as slides, visuals, videos, and study guides
•    Case studies and scenario-based learning activities that illustrate how new learning concepts apply in the workplace
•    Post-course workplace resources, like checklists and templates
•    Course descriptions and marketing copy

Ask AI to identify gaps and fill them in with new course content.

Interactive elements

Create interactive quizzes (along with answers and feedback), discussion prompts, and reflection questions.

Visuals and videos

Use AI image generators to create visuals that support course materials, such as images, graphs, charts, and infographics.

Draft scripts for instructional and explainer videos. Use AI tools to create these videos along with voice-over narration.

Content adaptation

Adapt existing content for different formats. For example, turn an article into microlearning modules, text into video, or a few Word docs into a presentation. Use AI to translate content into different languages.

Glossary 

Generate glossaries and other resources that define and/or illustrate industry and technical jargon along with phonetic pronunciations.

Accessibility

Use AI to create audio transcripts. Ask it to suggest ways to make your learning content more accessible.

⚠️ Beware the limitations of AI

AI helps you speed up content delivery, but it comes with risks.

Limited understanding

AI tools aren’t emotionally intelligent. Unlike your SMEs, they don’t have decades of experience working in a variety of jobs in a variety of workplaces in your industry. They’re more like recent graduates who’ve read textbooks but have no experience. 

Robot behavior

On its own, ChatGPT is a boring and formulaic producer of words. Don’t let it take charge of your content. Remember, it’s a “machine.” Learners respond to humans—you and your team, instructors, and SMEs. Always refine AI’s output with your words, perspectives, and ideas, so it resonates with learners.

Errors

Because of how AI tools are trained on large language sets, they parrot and predict. They put together words that are most likely to belong together. But these words don’t always deliver an accurate statement. Simply put, they screw up. They sometimes provide incorrect answers supported by non-existing references. Fact-check their work.

Bias

AI models were trained on public data. If bias existed in that data, then it could show up in AI-generated content.

Here’s your most important takeaway: always review and refine AI output to ensure it reflects reality and feels like a person created it, not a machine. As long as you understand and account for AI’s limitations, you will save a great deal of time by using AI to help you design and develop new online courses and other education programs.

Looking for a learning management system (LMS) that’s designed for humans? Our Ultimate Guide to LMS Selection & Implementation will set you on the right path.