Learning Design in the age of Generative AI

Donald Clark has published a very interesting blog post about how 'Learning Designers will have to adapt or die' and suggests 10 ways for them to upskill to AI.

Just how AI will affect the job market has been a hot topic for discussion recently. The Economist's message is that the West suffers from too little automation, not too much, and we shouldn't worry. 

Anecdotally, I have heard of two very different sides to how generative AI is affecting work right now. A partner's colleague who works in educational publishing has reported that this publisher has stopped working with the three freelance graphic designers they regulalrly contracted work to, and instead have hired a 'prompt engineer' for their illustration needs. On the other hand,  Mexican friend who works for a PR agency told me her boss has embraced the changes and is giving the team (copywriters and illustrators, etc) weekly training sessions on how to get the best out of AI tools, and is encouraging they use them. She also told me that she was recently asked to write an obituary of a famous entertainer who passed away unexpectedly, and using ChatGPT what would have normally have taken her four hours or so to research and write, took only twenty minutes.

What surprises me is just how unaware some people involved in the IT sector are, of the inevitable disruption to their work that generative AI poses. Some people are very switched on, like a friend of mine who works as a coder, who tells me how 50% of his job now involves him using ChatGPT to generate code. He then validates it, which is where his skill set comes in. This friend expects the money offered for coding projects will drop substantially as organisations realise it's not a time-consuming as it used to be and the skill involved is less being able to write the code, but in checking and tweaking it. However, at a birthday party recently, I got talking to someone who works in IT for an important Merchant Bank in Zurich, and she only had a vague awareness of generative AI, and hadn't even heard the term 'prompt engineer.' 

When it comes to learning design, Donald Clark reports that AI and Generative AI has "started to play a major part of the online learning landscape" with it being used for "learner engagement, syllabus planning, core skills identification, learner support, content creation, assessment, and so on."

I recommend you read Donald's blog post to see the details of how he thinks learning designers need to upskill. Some of the suggestions are obvious (e.g. moving from 'linear' to 'complex', from 'media production' to 'media generation') and will save a lot of time and money. Some are buzz words (e.g. pedAIgogy rather than pedagogy), and quite a few I don't agree with (e.g. 'Presentation skills' being replaced by 'Technical AII skills'; 'Complex AI learning journeys' replacing 'Gamification'; 'Voice' replacing 'writing, typing') I think presentation skills won't disappaer and gamification will still be used, just in a different way, People will also need to write and type. Look at what people said about AI voice assistants replacing text input (they didn't) or how some people (me, for example) hate leaving or receiving voice messages on WhatsApp - in my experience, people spend far longer and waste my time waffling their thoughts than when they send a brief and concise text message. I also can't listen to audio messages (when I'm in meetings, etc) all the time, but I can always read a text. 

Despite that, I do agree that learning design, and other jobs are about to be completely disrupted, if it isn't already happening now.