AI in L&D - Lessons Learned and Resources Gained

I am approaching this "Ask the Expert" a little differently this time around.

Instead of sharing the answer to a question, I am going to share some of my "lessons learned" as a recent AI adopter in the realm of Learning & Development. 

I will start by sharing that I began this journey by asking both IT and our company DPO whether the tools I was using were within the bylaws of our company AI policy. I read our policy carefully, and for record-keeping purposes, I documented every prompt that I asked.

For those who are concerned that AI would share information that was not meant to be reproduced and could be misappropriated, record-keeping is essential!

Once I started to use AI, I would ask broad questions: "can you summarize this article?" "How does this law affect global business?" While the answers were not inaccurate, they were not meeting my need. 

Lesson #1: Specificity is KEY!

Don't be afraid to share as much information as possible with the AI tool. Instead of asking for a summary alone, ask the AI to share a summary based on your role within a company. Ask for the summary to be shared in a conversational tone, in less than 100 words. You can even ask the AI to develop the summary to cater to different authoring tools to better utilize the output more readily within course content. 

As I developed my course, on the surface the content looked well organized and properly formatted. But when I finalized my draft and took the course myself as a learner, I found the content less engaging and sometimes even confusing.

Lesson #2: SPOT CHECK!

I cannot stress enough the importance of reviewing each prompt that AI gives you within the context of a broader course. The language may suddenly shift and sound nothing like the rest of your information. Wording might be less professional and at times the passive, instead of active voice, is used. As you build with AI, make sure the content as a whole sounds clear and concise. AI may sometimes be overly complex in explanations and sentence structure. 

These are my two biggest takeaways to save time and effort when attempting to use AI for the first time. But if you stick with it, I can promise that using AI tools as a part of your team, not your whole L&D team, will end up saving you time and resources. 

For those of you who are hesitant to dip your toes into the AI pool, my hope is that this encourages you to give these few small steps a try!

Good luck!

Blaise Stanicic

Associate Director, Compliance Training, TRACE