Learning Design Solutions UK

Working with AI isn’t about finding the perfect prompt... it’s about making pedagogy visible. At Learning Design Solutions UK we’ve found that dialogue with AI sharpens design, strengthens outcomes, and helps articulate the thinking that often stays in the designer’s head. Each prompt is part of an iterative process — draft, critique, refine, that connects planning, storyboarding, and collaboration with SMEs into one seamless design flow. 👈 Swipe through for how we use prompting as a design discipline, not a shortcut. 👇 Read the full post to see it in action: https://lnkd.in/eEPZxRjq #AIinEducation #AIPedagogy #EdTech

𝗦𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗼-𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 — 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝘀 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗖𝗼-𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿 Scenario-based learning (SBL) is one of the most powerful ways to help learners think, decide, and act like they would in the real world. The problem? It’s often seen as too complex, costly, and time-consuming to scale. At Learning Design Solutions, we’ve been exploring how AI can change that. By combining strong pedagogy with AI-enabled prototyping, we can: ✅ Rapidly create realistic, branching scenarios ✅ Keep everything aligned to learning outcomes ✅ Reuse scenario templates across multiple courses The result? Immersive, high-impact learning that’s operationally viable — not just a “nice to have” for flagship modules. If you want to see how this approach works in practice, check out our example in the Principles of Responsible Leadership course, or book a free consultation. https://lnkd.in/emcQcMni 💬 What’s the biggest challenge you face in bringing scenarios into your learning design? #LearningDesign #ScenarioBasedLearning #AIinEducation

Most conversations about AI in education are still focused on content generation, but that’s not where the real value lies. The bigger opportunity is in using AI to strengthen learning design. In a recent workshop, I explored how structured prompting can shift the quality of AI outputs quite significantly. When prompts are built around learning outcomes, activities, and clear success criteria, the responses become more aligned, more purposeful, and far more useful in practice. What’s really happening here is a shift in thinking. Prompting stops being a technical task and becomes part of the design process itself. It forces clarity about what students need to do, how that connects to assessment, and what success actually looks like. AI isn’t designing the learning, but it is helping make our design thinking more explicit and easier to test and refine. I’ve shared the full reflection, along with examples, in the blog here: 🔗 https://vist.ly/54p5d I’d be really interested to hear how others are approaching this. Are you using structured prompts in your work yet?

When we talk about online course quality, most of the focus goes to design. Learning outcomes. Activities. Assessment. Structure. All essential. But they are only part of the story. Because the moment of truth for any course is the build. The build stage is where design becomes real. It’s where decisions about layout, navigation, media, and interaction shape what students actually experience. Two courses can follow the same design principles and still feel completely different. The difference is often how they are built. A well-built course feels coherent and intentional. Navigation is clear. Page structures are consistent. The visual design supports the learning. It reflects the identity of the institution. A poorly built course, even with strong design behind it, can feel fragmented and disjointed. One of the most effective ways to improve quality at this stage is through consistent design patterns. When students encounter familiar structures across a course, they spend less time figuring out how things work and more time engaging with the learning. The build stage is not just technical execution. It is where quality becomes visible. I’ve explored this in more detail, including how media, interaction, and collaboration shape the final experience, in the full blog here: 🔗 https://vist.ly/5468g If you’re working on online courses right now, it’s worth asking: how well does your build reflect the quality of your design?

AI doesn’t replace the learning designer....it amplifies them. At Learning Design Solutions UK, we use AI to accelerate the most demanding phase of online course creation: storyboarding. By combining AI-assisted planning with human-led pedagogy, we’re helping institutions design faster, collaborate better, and maintain high-quality learning at scale. Read the full blog: https://vist.ly/53vfp 💬 How are you using AI in your course design process? #LearningDesign #HigherEd #AIinEducation

Designing better learning with AI isn’t about generating more content. It’s about making better decisions. At the recent Future Facing Learning and AI in Higher Education conference at Teesside University , one idea really stood out: 👉 The quality of AI output depends on the quality of the prompt 👉 And the quality of the prompt depends on the quality of the pedagogy behind it When we treat prompting as a technical skill, we get generic outputs. When we treat prompting as pedagogical design, something shifts. Instead of asking: “Write an activity on critical thinking” We start defining: • What students need to learn • What they need to do • How that connects to assessment • What success actually looks like The result? More aligned, more meaningful learning activities. One of the most useful takeaways from the workshop was a simple structure for better prompts: Context → Learning outcome → Activity → Content → Output → Success criteria It sounds simple, but it fundamentally changes the quality of what AI produces. Just as important: AI outputs are not finished products. They need iteration, critique, and refinement. That’s where real value is created. If we get this right, AI doesn’t replace learning design. It strengthens it. I’ve pulled together the full reflection (with examples) here: 🔗 https://vist.ly/53c8i Curious how others are approaching this. Are you using structured prompting in your design work yet?

Storyboarding is where an online course truly starts to come to life. After planning the structure of a module, the storyboard translates that plan into the actual learner experience. It captures everything. What students will read, watch, do, and reflect on before anything is built in the platform. At Learning Design Solutions, we see storyboarding as more than documentation. It is a collaborative design process. Subject experts, learning designers, and AI all contribute to shaping a coherent, engaging learning journey. It is also where a critical shift happens. Moving from “what content should we include?” to “what is sufficient for students to learn effectively?” That shift is what turns content into learning. If you are developing or redesigning online courses, getting the storyboard right makes everything that follows stronger. Read more in Part 6 of the series: Storyboarding for High-Quality Online Courses 👇 https://lnkd.in/e3fADWgQ #OnlineLearning #LearningDesign

If your online course feels disjointed, it’s probably not a content problem. It’s a planning problem. One of the biggest mistakes in course design is jumping straight into content creation. Slides get built. Videos get recorded. Activities get added. But without a clear plan, everything risks feeling disconnected. High-quality online courses are designed as learning journeys, not collections of materials. That’s where structured planning comes in. Before anything is developed, there needs to be a shared understanding of: • What students need to do to succeed • How learning unfolds week by week • How activities build toward assessment • What content is actually needed (and what isn’t) At this stage, we’re not designing content. We’re designing the experience. A well-structured module plan acts as a blueprint. It connects outcomes, activities, and assessment into something coherent. Without it, courses drift. With it, everything has direction. Planning isn’t the slow part of course design. It’s the part that makes everything else work Do you plan your courses before building them, or build as you go?

We often focus heavily on course design. Outcomes, activities, assessment, and structure. All important. But not enough. Because students don’t experience your design documents. They experience what you build. The build stage is where: • consistency becomes visible • design becomes interaction • your institutional identity comes through It’s also where many courses quietly lose quality through inconsistency, unclear navigation, or fragmented design. Get this stage right, and the entire course feels intentional. Get it wrong, and even strong pedagogy can feel disjointed. I’ve unpacked this stage in the latest blog in the series: The Build Stage: Where the Quality of Your Course Becomes Visible (Part 7) Read it here: https://lnkd.in/edAGEykb

Storyboarding is where online courses stop being ideas and start becoming real learning experiences. It’s easy to assume the hard work is done once a module plan is agreed. But in practice, that’s only the architecture. The real design happens in the storyboard. This is the stage where every detail is shaped: • what students will read • what they will watch • what they will do • how they will apply knowledge Done well, a storyboard becomes the single source of truth for the entire course. It allows teams to: ✔ design independently of any platform ✔ collaborate effectively across roles ✔ review and refine before build begins And perhaps most importantly, it shifts the focus away from “how much content” to “what’s enough for learning to happen.” If you’re developing online courses, this stage is where quality is won or lost. Read the full blog here: https://lnkd.in/e3fADWgQ