AI in eLearning
Use artificial intelligence to support the design, development, and delivery of learning experiences — while keeping human judgment, learner needs, and learning goals at the center.
AI in eLearning
Let AI accelerate the work — not replace the thinking.
AI can help instructional designers research, brainstorm, draft, create media, build learning assets, and speed up repetitive production tasks.
The strongest results come when AI handles pieces of the workflow while people continue to make the instructional, creative, ethical, and quality decisions.
Workflow
Use AI as a Thinking Partner
One of AI's most useful roles happens before anything is built: helping designers explore possibilities, challenge assumptions, and get unstuck.
“Create a course about giving feedback.”
Accelerate Content and Course Structure
AI can create useful first drafts quickly. The instructional designer still determines what belongs, what doesn't, and how the content should support performance.
SME notes, documents, policies, transcripts, research, learner data, or project requirements.
Summaries, outlines, scenarios, question ideas, examples, scripts, objectives, and draft copy.
Verify accuracy, remove unnecessary content, improve flow, align practice, and create the final learner experience.
Expand What's Possible With Visuals and Media
Generative tools can dramatically shorten the distance between an idea and a usable learning asset.
Explore visual directions before investing heavily in production.
Develop images and media tailored to a specific situation instead of relying entirely on stock.
Revise narration, scenes, graphics, or localized versions without recreating everything from scratch.
Shift Time From Production to Higher-Value Work
AI is especially useful for repetitive production work that consumes time without necessarily requiring instructional judgment.
Spend more time understanding the actual performance problem.
Focus on practice, decision-making, feedback, and usability.
Test ideas and improve the solution instead of spending all available time producing the first version.
AI Toolkit: Plan + Create
Early in a project, AI can help you make sense of source material, explore ideas, organize content, and move from a blank page toward a workable learning design.
| Tool | Best fit | How an ID might use it |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Think + explore | Brainstorm approaches, analyze learning problems, draft outlines and scenarios, challenge assumptions, rewrite content, and explore alternatives. |
| Claude | Analyze + draft | Work through source material, synthesize information, explore structure, develop drafts, and refine longer-form content. |
| Gemini Notebook | Source research | Work with project sources, ask grounded questions, compare information, identify themes, and trace responses back to source material. |
| Articulate AI Assistant | Course authoring | Turn prompts or source content into course drafts, generate and revise text, develop knowledge checks, create imagery, and accelerate authoring. |
| Canva Magic Studio | Visual concepts | Explore layouts, generate or modify graphics, develop visual directions, and create supporting learning assets quickly. |
AI Toolkit: Produce + Polish
As the design becomes more concrete, specialized AI tools can help turn scripts, concepts, and course content into visuals, video, narration, animation, and polished media.
| Tool | Best fit | How an ID might use it |
|---|---|---|
| Adobe Firefly | Images + creative media | Generate and refine images, explore visual concepts, edit creative assets, and create supporting image or video content. |
| Synthesia | Training video | Turn scripts into presenter-led videos, create multilingual versions, and update training without reshooting footage. |
| Vyond Go | Animated video | Turn prompts, scripts, documents, or source material into editable video drafts for explainers, scenarios, and training content. |
| ElevenLabs | Voice + narration | Generate narration, alternate voices, and multilingual audio for courses, videos, demonstrations, and scenarios. |
| Descript | Audio + video editing | Edit recordings through text, refine narration, clean audio, work with transcripts, and speed up post-production. |
Verify Before AI Output Reaches the Learner
AI can sound confident even when its output is incomplete, inaccurate, biased, or inappropriate for your organization.
Content
Verify facts, policies, procedures, examples, citations, and technical information.
Follow organizational rules for confidential, personal, proprietary, or regulated content.
Review language, scenarios, characters, assumptions, and generated imagery.
AI-generated assets and content still need accessibility review and testing.
Keep Human Judgment at the Center
AI can generate more possibilities than ever. Instructional designers still determine which possibilities make sense.
AI can help...
+ AI
People decide...
Planning an AI-supported learning project?
Use AI with a clear learning purpose.
If you have content, ideas, or a course that could benefit from AI support, start by clarifying the learning goal, the audience, and the part of the project where AI can help most.
Share a Learning Project