AI is rapidly reshaping instructional design—how we plan, build, personalize, evaluate, and sustain learning experiences, online and in person. This course supports developing a practical, future-ready approach to working with AI as a collaborative design partner rather than a replacement. Participants explore how emerging and agentic AI systems can support analysis, design, development, and continuous improvement while centering human judgment, accessibility, and learner experience.
Through hands-on experimentation, applied institutional inquiry, and iterative practice, learners build confidence using AI-enabled tools to streamline workflows, design adaptive and personalized learning experiences, and enhance feedback and evaluation processes. The course emphasizes flexibility: recognizing that institutions vary in readiness, tools, and constraints, and that AI capabilities will continue to evolve. By the end of the course, participants leave with a personalized toolkit, immediately applicable artifacts, and a sustainable plan for staying current—positioning themselves as thoughtful, effective, and indispensable in an AI-enabled landscape.
**Especially valuable for professionals supporting online, hybrid, and digital learning. If you are brand new to collaborating with AI, consider the EDUCAUSE AI for Higher Education Staff offering as a helpful precursor.
NOTE: participants will have access to the course for 1 year.
Learning Goals
- Evaluate and navigate the evolving AI landscape in instructional design, identifying institutional opportunities, constraints, and emerging capabilities.
- Build foundational skills to thoughtfully engage with emerging AI tools—including early agentic systems—across the instructional design process to support planning, design, personalization, development, and refinement of learning experiences.
- Design learner-centered, accessible, and adaptive learning solutions by integrating UDL principles and AI-enabled personalization.
- Develop and refine instructional materials and learning support systems using agentic AI to prototype, automate, personalize, and enhance learning at scale while maintaining instructional intent and quality.
- Demonstrate an agile, future-ready professional practice by applying iterative improvement cycles, monitoring AI advancements, and building a sustainable plan for continuous learning and responsible innovation in ID work.
- Exchange ideas with peers about opportunities, constraints, and experiences using AI across diverse higher education environments.
Duration
The 2-week online course includes 5 modules and takes a minimum of 5 to 6 hours to complete.
Who Should Attend?
Instructional designers/technologists and anyone supporting online or in-person teaching and learning.
Delivery
This online learning experience includes live discussions and supports application and networking.
Engagement
Successful completers receive the AI for Instructional Design digital microcredential.
Modules
This module helps learners orient themselves within the rapidly evolving AI and instructional design landscape. Participants examine institutional constraints, emerging AI capabilities, and early agentic systems while reflecting on their own readiness and assumptions about AI. The focus is on sense-making: understanding what’s possible, what’s permitted, and where instructional design adds the most value as the field continues to change.
Building on this foundation, learners shift into the design mindset, reclaiming the instructional designer’s role as architect while positioning AI as a creative design partner. This module emphasizes learner-centered planning, accessibility, and UDL-informed design while using AI to ideate, model pathways, personalize, and generate design alternatives. Participants practice structuring prompts, workflows, and guardrails that allow AI to support thoughtful, adaptive learning design at scale.
With designs in place, learners move into active creation and experimentation. This module focuses on developing instructional materials using AI-enabled and agentic systems. Learners prototype interactive elements such as chatbots, simulations, feedback mechanisms, and assessments while maintaining instructional intent and quality. By the end of the module, learners will have hands-on experience building innovative learning experiences that demonstrate the creative potential of AI-enabled development.
This module explores analyzing learner data, synthesizing feedback, and monitoring AI outputs for quality, inclusion, and alignment. Participants practice iterative improvement cycles in which human judgment and AI capabilities work together to strengthen learning design decisions. By the end of the module, learners are prepared to refine and sustain AI-enabled solutions beyond initial implementation.
The course concludes by looking forward, supporting learners as they build a sustainable, future-ready, AI-enabled instructional design practice. Learners develop strategies for evolving their workflows, collaborating effectively with agentic AI, and staying current in a rapidly changing field. The module emphasizes building a professional competency, advocating for responsible AI use, and sustaining an instructional design practice that can adapt as AI and institutional needs evolve.
Earn the Microcredential
You can earn the AI for Instructional Design microcredential by completing five tasks (one per module). Each of these tasks is related to the module content and will help you make connections between what you are learning and how you can collaborate with AI in your work.
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