HR leaders are on board — Gartner reports that evaluating and implementing generative AI tools is one of their top five priorities for 2024. Not only is the use of AI in learning and development a powerful tool for enhancing employee engagement, but it’s also highly accessible and user-friendly once you learn how it works and what’s possible.
Many learning designers are already using generative AI tools in their daily workflow, and the use cases are infinite. You can simplify a difficult passage, turn a step-by-step process into a memorable acronym, generate assessment quizzes, and the list goes on.
So how do you begin to incorporate generative AI in your learning and development workflow?
In this beginner's guide, you’ll learn:
- When to use AI in learning and development
- 5 benefits of AI in learning and development
- 3 potential limitations and challenges of AI
- Key strategies for integrating AI into your workflow
When to use AI in learning and development
When AI is fully embraced, you begin to see your organization’s learning objectives with fresh eyes. This technology can give you game-changing recommendations for text, imagery, video, or even inform your decision-making. It works by processing, analyzing, and creating patterns of large data sets called Natural Language Processing (NLP) models. You can learn more about how it works, but as a beginner, the most important thing to know is that AI is only as powerful as your strategy to incorporate AI-powered tools into your workflow.
Wondering what tools are right for your team? Here are the most popular AI tools for learning experts like you:
AI chatbots
AI chatbots can address many pain points throughout your learning and development process. During a busy time, you can summarize course content for promotional messaging, and if you’re creating a course outside of your scope of knowledge, AI chatbots can generate course outlines to get you started.
On a recent episode of the Return on Intelligence podcast, artificial intelligence scientist Dr. Nikki Mirghafori shares a new perspective on why AI is more of a tool than a replacement for human intelligence:
Subscribe to the Return on Intelligence podcast for more L&D insights
You’ve likely had some fun trying the most popular AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Meta AI, or Google Gemini, so you know that querying the platform takes practice. As a learning expert with experience communicating ideas to learners, you’re well on your way to mastering prompts that generate a specific, helpful response.
Pro-tip: Allow your detail-oriented skills to shine when creating a prompt. Be sure to include the context, the task for the chatbot, specific information such as tone or benefits, and the objective of the prompt. Try entering this example into an AI chatbot using your own learner and company information:
‘I’m writing an introductory video script for entry-level new graduates who start working at our consulting firm. Generate a script for a two-minute long video that is friendly and informative, and highlights the benefits of working at our organization. Include details promoting our mentorship program, the annual company retreat, and an overview of the upskilling programs on offer. The goal is to help new employees understand how to participate in our company culture.’
Content authoring tools
Do you experience writer’s block? With content authoring tools you can drastically reduce the time it takes to create, re-purpose, and edit course content. These tools help you at every touchpoint of the content development process:
- Convert a PowerPoint presentation into an eLearning course
- Instantly brainstorm ideas, research your topic, and create an outline
- Generate course content from scratch
- Add AI-generated voiceovers to narrate your courses
Content authoring tools streamline your ability to leverage AI, because you can generate content in the same place analyze existing content and create or recommend new learning materials, making the content development process more efficient and personalized. To incorporate AI into your daily workflow, consider browser extensions and desktop applications such as LMS platform course builders have built-in generative AI tools to merge your use of AI and publishing tools into one platform.
Recommendations engines
Once you create your amazing content, it’s time to promote it! That’s when a front-end user experience can ensure your content is seen by the employees who want it most. If you hope to boost employee satisfaction on your learning platform, recommendation engines make it easy to curate course suggestions for employees. Netflix was one of the first to introduce the functionality for suggesting content as we know it today, and you can now give employees the same relief from content overload with platform recommendations based on their role, history, and interests. In fact, over 75% of Netflix viewing is attributed to a recommendations engine — a statistic that is hard to ignore when there has never been more pressure to keep employees engaged.
Whether your learner is a project assistant hoping to earn a promotion to project manager or your HR team is requesting a modification to a cybersecurity module, AI-powered recommendation engines can instantly audit your content, assess learners' needs across departments, and feed personalized learning paths to your learners.
Automated assessment creators
Sifting through your course content to develop ideas for learner retention can reduce the time you need to proactively respond to your learners' changing needs and expectations. The benefits of using automated assessment creators depend on your team’s goals for success:
- Do you have an urgent skill gap in your organization? AI-generated assessments allow you to act quickly by instantly analyzing your course content and key learning objectives to generate quizzes, tests, and assessment activities to drive real business impact.
- Want to improve your internal mobility? Only 1 in 5 employees feel ready to move to a new internal position. Automated assessment creators help you to improve your employees' confidence by empowering them to track their progress and comprehension.
- Need to report on each assessment’s success? Automated assessment tools collect data based on learner’s profiles, allowing you to produce reports on time spent taking assessments, patterns in their responses, identifying the most impactful modules for retention, and much more.
Discover more ways to use AI in learning and development: Learn smarter with AI-powered learning
5 Benefits of AI in learning and development
Generative learning content will impact the learning industry by making it easier to create more creative, accessible, and agile learning experiences. Integrating AI-generated learning content in your corporate training programs can offer several benefits:
- Personalization: Content generation enables tailored learning experiences, thereby catering to diverse learner profiles, learning styles, and knowledge gaps.
- Efficiency and cost reduction: Automate and streamline the content creation process, reducing the time, effort, and resources required for manual development.
- Adaptive learning pathways: Analyze the performance data of users in real-time and modify the learning content or suggest next steps accordingly, ensuring a continually relevant and engaging learning experience.
- Scalability: AI-generated content allows you to rapidly scale your training programs to address new topics or reach additional employee groups without overwhelming resources.
- Continuous improvement: Algorithms learn from the data they process, leading to continuous improvement and refinement of generated content over time.
Learn more about AI-powered learning experiences: How to implement adaptive learning in 3 easy steps
3 potential limitations and challenges of AI
Despite the numerous benefits, there are some potential limitations and challenges to consider when incorporating AI in learning and development:
1. Quality control for AI tools
For a first draft? AI chatbots work a treat! But we know fleshing out that first iteration and editing it into quality training content is another story. This is where your hard-earned expertise comes in. Quality assurance processes are essential for reviewing and refining content before publishing. You’ll still need to fact-check, create a delivery schedule, implement pedagogical principles, and make your organization’s brand voice shine.
Quality assurance efforts in AI can look like:
- Working with an external partner: AI chatbots make it more tempting for your manager to request that you generate content on a topic outside of your expertise. An external SME can ensure that any content outside of your purview is ethical, compliant, and accurate.
- Revisiting your peer review process: Build an AI audit into your review process to fact-check generated information, ensure the content is contextually accurate and relevant for your learners.
- Establish detailed learning outcomes: Modifying your prompts is much easier when you know the most important information required to award completion to a learner.
2. Bias and inaccuracies
AI algorithms are built on human data, so your generated content could propagate biases, stereotypes, or inaccuracies. At times, Generative AI can also base its content generation on problematic data sources, because the data processing models do not have a built-in fact-checker.
You can minimize bias and inaccuracies by:
- Finding attributions to any facts that do not have a credible source.
- Learning about the biases from the AI tool’s website and independent reviewers.
- Consider any stereotypes or overgeneralizations regarding race, gender, ethnicity, or other communities.
3. Ethical and privacy concerns
To ensure regulatory compliance and minimize potential issues, your team will need to consider ethical and privacy considerations such as data security and user tracking. Suppose you want to pull analytics from your LMS and create a report in a generative AI tool based on user data. In that case, it’s crucial that your process complies with regional law and international standards of ethics.
From an external perspective, you must collaborate with your organization’s data experts to ensure that your users will be confident that they have full control over how their data is used. Internally, you can use a content authoring tool to build an AI training course or purchase pre-built content that can be distributed among teams.
Want to learn more about data security standards? Discover the different types of compliance standards
Strategies for integrating AI in learning and development programs
With the right learning management system, your AI content strategy can seamlessly fit into your existing content development process. We recommend picking one or two SMART goals to inspire your team to participate in your integration plan:
- Analyze and identify learner needs: Assess your target audience and their unique learning requirements to understand which AI tools and features might benefit them the most.
- Develop a phased implementation plan: Design and execute a realistic implementation plan that allows for gradual integration of AI technologies and features within your existing training programs to minimize the risk of disruption.
- Monitor and evaluate success: Track the effectiveness of AI-generated learning content, measuring factors such as user engagement, content quality, and learner performance. Gather feedback and iteratively refine your AI tools and processes for continuous improvement.
Start the conversation
AI is making it easy to personalize content for learners, be more efficient among teams, and adapt to ever-changing compliance standards. Thorough planning, monitoring, quality control, and the right AI tools and technologies can be the difference between impactful learning experiences and basic learning requirements. By choosing a powerful, AI-integrated learning management system like Absorb LMS, your organization can leverage the potential of AI-generated content and stay ahead in the competitive corporate learning space.
Ready to solve learning problems with AI? Download the Generative AI: Reassess learning challenges with AI eBook
