Level-Up
Learning With AI

Chapter 1

A New Learning Era

As change continues to speed up, continuous upskilling and reskilling are essential to organizational success. AI tools act as level-ups to many processes to craft effective learning with faster deployment. L&D pros can (and should) look to leverage AI in three key areas:

Accelerate

Leverage AI to expedite tedious
but necessary tasks.

Personalize

Go deeper with AI-enabled learning tailored to users and their needs.

Innovate

Quicker early movement means more time for the art and science of crafting terrific learning experiences.

AI is moving fast, with new tools and use cases seeming to appear overnight. It’s the perfect time to explore and test to influence how AI may become embedded in your company’s
learning trajectory.

Accelerate

While some of AI’s promises may come
in the near future, anyone can benefit from acceleration today.

Generative AI tools can simplify or shorten course development time because they process information more quickly than humans can manually. It’s like moving from pen-and-paper long division to a graphing calculator. The skill remains with the designer, but technology removes the rote work burden. AI performs as a thought partner, a sounding board, and a concierge—all of which move the instructional designer from source to course in record time. Additionally, many organizations use AI assistance embedded in tools they already employ, enabling users to capitalize on benefits and evolve how they maximize programs they’re familiar with.

Synthesizing information from multiple sources becomes faster. Brainstorming an outline, a use case, or a knowledge check gets faster. Course creation and scale get faster. Content localization for global learners gets faster. Building instructional video content gets faster. You get the idea. When time-consuming administrative hurdles and "blank-page" problems take less time, learning designers have more time for tasks requiring creativity and specialized expertise.

…nearly every knowledge
worker can likely benefit from teaming up with generative AI.
In fact, while generative AI may eventually be used to automate some tasks, much of its value could derive from how software vendors embed the technology into everyday tools (for example, email or word-processing software) used by knowledge workers. Such upgraded tools could substantially
increase productivity.

—McKinsey

Use Case: Ammon's Story

Ammon works at Glivvy, a financial services firm. He must develop three courses—all due the same week. Ammon uses AI to accelerate his process to deliver all three courses
on time.

Course 1—low risk	Ammon's AI-Powered Solution
Create a new course on Time Management Basics Employees will find the course helpful, but there is little to no loss risk.	Our designer learns his LLM chat is a terrific brainstorming partner for this low-risk topic. Prompts quickly generate an outline and a checklist. It’s a great start for his research. When writing, he draws a blank on realistic examples. He pulls up chat and requests a few. One inspires him, and he rewrites it to fit Glivvy’s needs. When he’s nearly finished, he uses AI to draft knowledge checks that cover core topics. Presto! The course is done.
Course 2— medium risk	Ammon's AI-Powered Solution
Deliver Glivvy’s Unique Sales Process in time to aid sales goals The team’s success is tied to timely delivery and understanding, but significant loss is less likely.	Ugh. This one is bespoke to Glivvy and will take time. Plus, the SVP sent slides, the sales manager offered voice notes, and ops sent a PDF. Ammon starts by using AI to collate the information into one document. He pulls a few sales basics from his AI chat, then evaluates the SME document for Glivvy’s unique differences. That’s the start of his course. He’s saved time with courses 1 and 2 and can now research, write, design, and deliver this bespoke course on time.
Course 3—high risk	Ammon's AI-Powered Solution
Update the Federally Mandated Compliance Regulations course If this training isn’t accurate and timely, it could cost the company money or reputational damage.	Ammon interviews SMEs to understand the annual updates. A needs analysis reveals an off-the-shelf course will cover the basic content. He uses AI to find outdated information and to develop branching scenarios. The draft is a good start. Now he has time to finesse the course and apply strong learning design techniques to ensure it’s effective. He runs it by legal, and it’s ready to go.

Personalize

From crafting humble job aids to responsive learning in the flow of work, instructional designers have worked for decades to make learning ever more impactful in driving behavior change. Competing demands and limited resources can lead to frustrating limitations to what instructional designers have the bandwidth to create. Applied wisely, AI offers freedom to take learning deeper and create personalized and responsive learning. With AI, learning can move from one-size-fits-all to bespoke experiences:

Targeted, just-in-time assistance for learners embedded in your tool and in the flow of work
Learning paths custom-built based on previous knowledge and current goals
Assessment adjustments in real time tailored to learners' strengths and weaknesses
Smart in-system data leveraged to follow strategy success and failure, organizational impact, and return on investment (ROI)

It’s common for a comprehensive learning library to become overwhelming for both instructional designers and learners. Creating engaging courses doesn’t leave much time for tagging, sorting, and customizing them to user needs. A recent Learning Guild publication put the current state like this: Imagine visiting a library and asking the librarian to find an article, book, and video to help you learn a subject. You’d read each page in order; perhaps some would be relevant to your needs. In the future, imagine this librarian has the entire library memorized and can pull the exact paragraph you need from each resource within seconds. That’s the power of AI. Added data analysis power also means measuring success and pivoting strategies to maximize learning outcomes quickly.

Success Story

Economists published a study in 2023 examining how AI might help workers learn in the flow of work.

Researchers chose customer service representatives at a Fortune 500 company and provided them with two tools. The first was their usual customer chat window. The second was an LLM-based AI assistant expertly trained on company information, and to model top-rated service. The reps used the LLM to help answer customer questions in real time. The company hoped this method would bring poor or novice performers up to speed to improve the chat experience for both the customers and the reps assisting them.

AI-Assisted Chat: Experiment Results

Reps averaged 14 percent higher productivity

Reduced new hire turnover

Increased customer satisfaction

Customers less likely to escalate
to management

The AI intervention was most successful with novice agents—compressing the time to "experienced" skill level from six to two months. In turn, agents and customers were happier and calls were more productive.

Read more about the study and its
potential impact.

Reflection question: Imagine a use case for an AI assistant at your organization.

What could it help you teach? Where could upskilling be improved for
all learners?

Innovate

The most exciting opportunity AI offers might be freedom. Accelerated groundwork frees up mental space and time to do innovative, creative work—the stuff that makes a learning nerd’s heart sing.

For example, Harvard Business Review cited research concluding AI’s use to quickly parse information led to conditions improving "question velocity, question variety, and question novelty." And, they continued, "This pushes leaders out of their comfort zones and into the position of being intellectually wrong, emotionally uncomfortable, and behaviorally quiet and more reflective, all of which, it turns out, promotes innovative thinking and action."

In a learning use case, that innovation will happen in "high quality experience design." With administrative foundations processed or

supported by AI, learning teams have the freedom to curate learning "…that drives continual innovation to complement the necessary focus on optimal execution." That flexibility to build top-notch training experiences leads to better results. Better results impact returns, and increased ROI makes learning teams more valuable to the organization.

The Future of L&D

AI solves the blank-page problem and much more. It frees learning leaders to accomplish more. Think of it as the Robin to your Batman.
It’s there to help, but we need L&D professionals to ensure:

• Accuracy • Efficacy • Bias-free

AI doesn’t know if it’s accurate; it just knows it’s given you a reasonable answer. And AI can create content fast, but is it effective? Does it help people grow? Is it equitable and accessible to all learners?
That's the part only an instructional designer knows and can measure. AI gives you time; it lets you go deeper. But it's your magic that helps people grow."

—Kerry Munz, Chief Technology Officer, Articulate