The short version
Leverage AI as Your Instructional Design Partner from a June, 2026 conference event. Watch my 15-minute video version. Also, revisit all the session resources. The big lesson? GenAI changed but instruction hasn't.
Did you miss my June, 2026 session, AI as Your Instructional Design Partner? Here’s the description followed by my reflections now and a 15-minute video version of the session:
Most AI-assisted professional learning design stops at asking a chatbot to generate a workshop outline. This session goes further. Participants will explore how to use AI as a genuine instructional design partner, building sessions grounded in the ALDO framework, differentiating for role (teacher, coach, instructional leader), and evaluating AI-generated drafts against Hattie’s Visible Learning research and SOLO Taxonomy.
The session resources are still available (see links below), as is the AI Design Companion website I put together for it.
My Reflections on the Session
You know, what makes this session evergreen is the focus on the instructional design part of the presentation. While Gen AI is rapidly evolving, it often feels like the instructional strategies we depend on, that are evidence-based, remain the same. That’s because we can’t really re-wire our brains to learn as fast, or interface with external resources like we’d like to imagine in Sci-Fi stories. Who hasn’t read the story of the boy who couldn’t interface with vast, digital knowledge repositories, and then had to learn things the old-fashioned way, through books? The reality may be that, in the future, we just give up learning for digital caretakers (e.g. evolved Gen AI) that do the heavy-lifting, distilling what we need to know into usable chunks. Time-saving, less frustrating, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where most of us are headed.
Until then, though, high-effect size instructional strategies may be what every teacher needs in their back pocket to facilitate student learning.
Changes
What’s changed since I last gave this presentation? The Gen AI tools themselves. I suspect that somewhere in my presentation, I have Custom GPTs and BoodleBox bots working away. Unfortunately, Custom GPTs are gone and I wiped the slate clean on all my BoodleBox bots. After all, my monthly allotment for Gen AI can only go so far and you can’t keep paying for Gen AI tools forever on a monthly basis. So, I’ll be sure to mention those changes when I run into them in the 15-minute version.
Watch the 15-Minute Version
Here’s the 15-minute version of my presentation. I am recording it using DrawSplat.org’s VideoSplat, which can handle burning in the subtitles/captions and the recording. It’s totally free, browser-based, and I can’t imagine any reasons why schools aren’t using it in the classroom, whether you’re using Chromebooks or Mac Neos or Windows. And, of course, it works great on GNU/Linux machines, too.
Feedback from June, 2026 Presentation
Here are my top 3 favorite comments:
- Your learning design frameworks (ALDO and SOLO) were top-notch. Thank you for explicitly incorporating Hattie, and for giving tips as to how to best integrate AI into the learning design process!
- Presentation was very informative. I truly enjoyed learning about ALDO and SOLO Taxonomy; as well as, learning how to prompt AI to give me a lesson plan or activity using these designs.
- This presenter was very very knowledgeable about lesson design and learning hierarchy. I found that refreshing because as an older educator sometimes we forget the methods to the practices we truly want to utilize and this reminded me of best practices.
Weren’t those folks nice?
Session Resources
Slides and Doc
