Revolutionizing Learning: The Role of AI in Learning and Development

If you want to create a strong, competitive workforce for your company, you need to consider incorporating AI into your learning and development initiatives. Providing meaningful and engaging learning and development opportunities is key to ensuring your employees are at the top of their game. 

With the introduction of AI in the learning and development space, there’s never been an easier time for employees to practice and expand their skills and deepen their knowledge base.

Understanding the Role of AI in Learning and Development

Artificial intelligence has made its mark on nearly every industry, including the learning and development space. AI uses natural language processing to sort through large data sets and identify patterns. When a new data set is introduced, the algorithm uses what it’s learned from past sets to continue identifying patterns and trends.

This kind of AI technology is a good thing in the learning and development space. Learning and development teams can use AI to help employees uncover new skills, broaden their knowledge base, and strengthen their competencies.

Enhancing Learning with AI

AI can be an integral tool for any learning and development leader. Learning and development professionals can incorporate AI into their training initiatives in various ways to enhance learners’ experiences. 

Here’s how.

Create Personalized Learning Pathways

Learning styles vary from person to person. 65% of people are visual learners, meaning they learn best with various visual aids. The other 35% of people learn best by listening or doing, as in movement. Because of the differences in learning style preferences, learning and development leaders should be mindful of creating personalized learning pathways for their employees. 

Personalized learning may be one of AI’s most helpful use cases in learning and development. Take EdApp, for example. EdApp is a training course building program that can be programmed to analyze learner profiles, preferences, interests, and learning styles. Once learning data is analyzed, it can help suggest new learning goals and pathways customized to individual learners.

Gamification

Creating a game-based learning environment is a great way to meet the learning preference needs of your employees. Plus, 83% of workers who engage in gamified training feel more motivated to complete their training programs.

If your employees are eager to complete gamified training, your learning and development team can take gamification to the next level with AI. AI can help create custom learning pathways, and in a game-based learning environment, AI algorithms can adjust the difficulty of content and challenges based on the learner’s preferred learning style and performance. 

Augment Virtual Reality 

When it comes to learning new skills, Virtual Reality, or VR, is the perfect solution to help learners gain skills and demonstrate what they’ve learned. VR technology creates an interactive learning environment where workers can practice their skills and knowledge before joining their teammates in the field or on the sales floor. 

With AI-powered tools like CenarioVR, learners can practice their skills with dynamic characters backed by chatbots.  Instead of interacting with characters preprogrammed with canned, generic responses, AI allows your employees to interact with bots designed to respond as humans. This lets your learners become familiar with all situations they encounter on the job.

Engage Learners with a Learning Coach 

When it comes to training and development, sometimes employees need some encouragement to meet their training goals. This is where AI can be beneficial. AI chatbots can be used as learning coaches to offer nudges in the right direction

AI-enabled tools, like Zavvy, use chatbots programmed as learning coaches that can help increase participant engagement, suggest new learning courses, and provide helpful hints about the next appropriate step in a course. 

Help Instructional Designers Save Time

AI isn’t just for enhancing the experience of your employees, though. AI can also help learning and development creators and leaders save time in their jobs.

Using AI chatbots, L&D creators can quickly generate test and quiz questions with varying difficulty based on various topics. Using ChatGPT or other generative AI applications, like QuizGecko AI,instructional designers can copy and paste an article or course text and enter a prompt to ask AI to generate test questions based on the article. Instead of spending time sourcing a commercially available image to engage learners, instructional designers can use AI image generators to create relevant photos for their courses. Just be sure to double-check the image to ensure the photo is appropriate and makes sense.

Potential Challenges of AI in the Learning and Development Space

As AI technology advances and becomes more mainstream, there are still legitimate concerns regarding the use of AI in learning and development. 

One primary concern of AI technology is the biases it could perpetuate. As great as AI is, it’s only as good as the data it is trained on. If biases are present in the data set, those biases will be portrayed in any AI-generated content. If you’re not careful, you could potentially alienate part of your workforce.

Another concern is the accuracy of ChatGPT responses. ChatGPT is a popular generative AI tool that is not always accurate. Much of ChatGPT’s training data comes from unreliable sources (think intentional misinformation from bad actors).  

AI consultant Margie Meacham, author of AI in Talent Development: Capitalize on the AI Revolution to Transform the Way You Work, Learn, and Live says, “"ChatGPT and many other generative AI applications were trained on massive datasets, pulled from the Internet. While this training approach gives us their stunning capacity to simulate human conversation, it also presents a built-in risk. These applications have no means of discerning true statements from false ones, and will mix truth and falsehoods in their replies. They may even make things up in order to satisfy your request. This issue can be partially mitigated by fact-checking and human moderation, but it will never go away. Your best approach is to realize that there may be some applications where a different AI model would be a better choice."

Before using any AI-generated content in your training programs, you must fact-check it and ensure its accuracy. 

Incorporate AI in Learning and Development– Team up with SkillSource Learning Partners.

Although there are legitimate concerns about the use of AI in learning and development initiatives, AI can be a game changer when used correctly. AI can help save Instructional Designers time creating new quizzes and test materials and be an effective learning coach to engage employees throughout their training programs. The key to AI, though, is to humanize the content.

If you’re ready to launch your new training program, consider teaming up with SkillSource Learning Partners. Our dedicated training and development consultants understand how to ethically implement AI into your learning and development initiatives. And they provide the human touch you need to make AI-generated learning and development materials that much more effective. 

At SkillSource Learning Partners, we’re committed to taking the time to understand your training requirements and outcome needs. Our team of talented learning and development consultants are ready to ensure your project meets and exceeds all competencies and expectations.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.