20 ways to use AI in L&D

There was a lot of hype at Learning Technologies about AI. But on the whole the uses of it were still very limited with AI assistants and AI content creation the main things being discussed.

Another takeaway from Learning Technologies was that, just by saying it is AI powered, does not mean that it will be helpful to you and provide real business value. 

As L&D professionals we should not get tempted into jumping on the bandwagon and just using AI for AI’s sake. We need to identify the problems specific to our business that AI can solve and look for tools that can do this.  

We also need to be aware of the risks involved in some technologies and look at ways to mitigate these before making any bold moves into using AI. Generative AI still hallucinates (it makes stuff up) and is prone to bias to name just a few of the risks. 

However, we cannot ignore AI. It is not going away and we need to be investing time now educating ourselves on it and learning about how it can be used. Even if your business is not ready to adopt it yet, you need to be ready for when it does. 

So to get you started on your AI journey here are 20 ways that AI can be used in Learning and Development. Some of them are available now, some of them are a little way off. But these and many other uses will be available before too long.

Strategy & Planning

1 . Creating L&D Strategy

I am going to start with a big one which although may not be available yet, may not be that far off. Task-based generative AI tools are starting to appear which can plan out and then execute a whole project. You could ask it to write an L&D strategy for your company. It will then define the steps needed to do this. It will then work through each step asking for data it needs along the way. This data may include job roles and specs, performance data, and business objectives to enable it to do a needs analysis to identify skills gaps and the training methods and resources needed to address the needs.

2.  Content planning

Working out a content plan can be a very time-consuming process. Use AI instead to Identify gaps in your content by analysing your content catalogue and then cross-referencing this against your employees skills. It could then create a catalogue of content that you need to create and even give you a priority order for its creation. 

Content Creation

3. Course creation

The one that everyone is talking about. Advances in Generative AI tools like ChatGPT have opened up a whole raft of new use cases. One of the biggest is creating content. Text and images for a course can be created in minutes and it will not be long before videos are added to this list. All you need are some prompting skills to direct the AI model to perform specific tasks. (plus lots of checking at the end)

4. Quiz creation

Create some content manually or through AI and then ask AI to create a quiz for the content. You can define how many multiple choice questions you want, how many answer options are available and how hard the questions need to be.

5. Auto Tagging content

Use AI to automatically tag content when bulk uploading content into your LMS. For each piece of content it can identify the skills it relates to and even the skill level of the content be it basic or advanced.  

Skills & Goals

6. Skills suggestions

You sign on to a LMS for the first time and it asks you to enter your skills and the things you are interested in learning. Instead, let the AI do it for you. Based on your job title and experience it suggests the skills you should have and even your target skill level. 

7. Skills assessment

AI has auto-assigned skills to a person. Now we need to set their skill level. Use AI to do this either through creating a quiz or assessment or through uploading their CV. You now have a starting point for skill progression.

8.  Goal creation

Tell the AI what you want to learn, answer a few questions on where you are now and it will create a set of goals for you along with suggested tasks and completion dates. It will even go as far as reminding you to complete your goals and recommending additional content along the way.

Learning

9. Smart content search

Content search that understands you. Traditional content search which looks for what you are searching for in the title and description often misses the mark. AI can tailor your search results based on previous searches, what others found useful when they made this search, what it predicts you will be searching for based on your learning journey. The list can go on.

10.  Learning Assistant

Demand led, in the flow of work learning, drives massive results. Ask the AI bot a question when you need it and it will scour your learning material and give advice and help on  the task you are doing right now. So you need to give your manager some news on a project being delayed, ask the AI for some help on how best to deliver this. 

11. Adaptive learning

AI can be used to identify a persons weakness and adapt their learning journey to improve the user's knowledge and skills. As a person completes learning material the AI adapts their plan based on how well they are doing to maximise their results. So no two people may have the same learning experience. Ultra personalised just for you. 

12. AI Coaching and Mentoring

Advanced conversational generative AI chat bots are starting to appear that ask you questions and coach you towards your goals. You can ask it to use a defined coaching model like GROW or just let the AI go for it. It will then guide you through the coaching process in a conversational way, asking questions as it goes.

13. Automated assessment and grading

Get AI to create an assessment based on a piece of content. Describe the assessment you want and even ask it to create a case study to work from. Then prompt it to make it easier or harder based on your audience. On completion of the assessments get AI to grade the output and identify learning opportunities for the participants.

Reporting & Analytics

14. Conversational business intelligence

Want to know how long people are spending on learning a week or the most searched-for content that we don’t have content for? Then ask the AI in conversational language and it will analyse the data for you and give you the answer in conversational language. No need to spend hours on complicated spreadsheets anymore.

15. Content performance Prediction 

Maximising the value that we get from content is essential. AI can be used to predict how many people will engage with the content, how much they will learn and how long they will retain the knowledge for. AI can suggest ways to improve the content to maximise your results. 

Engagement & Personalisation

16.  Content Personalisation

Advanced prediction models can analyse data like the content you have viewed, what similar people to you have viewed, your goals, when you looked at content, how long you spent looking at content and then recommend personalised content with the right duration it thinks you have available. 

17. Description and Image Personalisation

In much the same way that Netflix personalises images for programmes, it can be used in L&D to personalise content images and even course descriptions to maximise  engagement. Show a different content thumbnail image based on the learners profile and needs.

18. Learner Engagement

Use AI to learn and predict the best time to engage with a user so they take action and maximise their learning engagement. Personalised notifications and calls to action in and outside of an LMS to drive activity. For example it could predict when someone is on a train with some spare time to learn and send them a notification linked to content relevant to them.

Learning reinforcement

19. Learning reinforcement prediction

Get AI to predict when a learner will need some learning reinforcement following the completion of a course or piece of content. It can ask them questions at periodic times following the learning and then work out when they need learning reinforcement.

20.  Learning reinforcement reminders

Let AI create learning reinforcement content for a course that can be sent out to users. It can identify the key points from a course, make a course summary or put together some quiz questions that can then be sent to users at the right time.