EP 151: Reimagining The Learning Experience with AI

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Learning and development is probably going to change pretty soon, just like about every other industry out there. L and D is something that generative AI is probably going to change a lot. And that's what we're going to be talking about today on Everyday AI. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. My name is Jordan Wilson. I'm your host and if you don't know, now you know. Everyday AI is a daily live stream, podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday people like you and me not just learn what's going on in the world of AI, but how we can actually leverage it. And, and we bring on experts from other fields so we can talk about how AI is impacting our day to day, how it's impacting our careers, and how we can use all of these new advancements and techniques and grow our companies and grow our careers. So I'm extremely excited about today's show and a little remix for y'.

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It's technically prerecorded. Don't worry because myself and our guests are still going to be in the comments responding live. So let me know as we go along. How do you think the. The learning experiences is going to change with AI? Because it's going to change a lot. And if you are looking for your daily news, don't worry, we still have that. Make sure to go to your everyday AI dot com. Sign up for the daily newsletter. We're going to have all of today's news in there. We never take an actual day off. It's still there. So I'm excited for this conversation. Let's get ready to talk about reimagining the learning experience with AI. And please help me. Welcome to the Everyday AI Show. We have Cambria Dumasnel. She is the founder of AI Innovation Lounge. Cambria, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

All right, let's do this. Well, hey, tell everyone real quick just what you do at the AI Innovation Lounge.

Sure. So I have the AI Innovation Lounge that I set up early 2023 once ChatGPT was released. And I really wanted a place to experiment with AI in learning and development. Since then it started just me on my own, seeing theoretically how it could be used. And then I started to work with different companies and integrating it first into workflows because that's the easy, quick win getting it to help create your course objectives, your course outlines, and using it to really optimize your process. And from there it just kind of expanded out once we really realize the capabilities of what it can do to the learning experience and part of the learning flow rather than our workflows. So that's really where the space I'm at now is, reimagining that experience and being able to bring in different AI avatars and different learning simulations. There's a lot of opportunities there.

Yeah. And even for those of our listeners who maybe aren't as familiar, can you just kind of explain, you know, what learning and development even is and how it really plays out in different organizations?

Sure. So with learning and development, I'm focused on the workspace rather than an educational context. So for us it depends on the organization. But usually there's an led team, there can be a generalist who maybe is an instructional designer also does the elearning development or those can be specific roles. But really what it's about is just giving our learners the information and materials they need so that they can do their jobs well and they can perform. And a lot of times what we hear with that and learning and development with instructional designers is we kind of feel like order takers sometimes because the leaders will come to us and they'll say, I have this problem, maybe my customer service team isn't performing correctly and we need a two day training on this. So that's where we come in. We try to get a little bit of context for that, understand what's going on, see if training really is the answer. And then from there we can build out different E learnings to support that if that's the need. It could be a workshop that we have, it could be a micro learning that we have, maybe just a quick video or an email bringing awareness to general principles. So it's really broad, the solutions that we have available. But what's really important for us is being able to dig into the root causes that are going on and really defining what the needs are and what the desired performance even is so that we can work to close those gaps.

Yeah. And you know, pre generative AI, right. How or maybe what are some of the most effective kind of L and D techniques so then we can kind of set it against what it's going to be post AI. So let's quickly talk about that. What's more, you know, what was most effective before generative AI came onto the scene? Is it, is it just E learning? Is it internal? You know, subject, you know, SMEs like, like what is that? You know, that go to for L and D?

Yeah. I don't know. So I could say what's really most effective because it's very context specific. But what's really most common, I would say, especially with post Covid, is elearning and webinars online virtual experiences. And for that we really work with our subject matter experts. So if I'm working with someone in leadership, I'm not necessarily an expert on being a leader or a supervisor, but I can work with the people who and get that information from them and then deliver that to our learners in a way that they're going to be able to take that, they're going to be able to learn what they need to, they're going to be able to apply it and get that back to those they're interacting with. So if it is an elearning, we have a lot of different tools we can use within that, like learning scenarios where you go in and you can practice different scenarios, it'll pose and you can click on the one that you think is the most appropriate response. But with generative AI now that opens up a lot more possibilities because. Because it's not just predefined situations that we're working with. The AI can actually adapt to what it is that our learners responding what it is that they're saying and different things going on there to bring a little bit more meaning to that and more opportunities for application.

Absolutely. And you know, you bring up a good point that, you know, post Covid lnd maybe just it sounds like it just became a little less personal and maybe less engaging as the virtual aspect and the E learning maybe took a little more prominence around, you know, gathering everyone together. With that in mind, how can generative AI maybe bring some of that interactivity back? Right. Because it is still, you know, mostly, I'm guessing, in front of the computer. But how can AI help, you know, bring maybe a little more life or a little more engagement into that experience?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunities for engagement. It doesn't have to necessarily be us as a facilitator, but I can take a little bit of that role from us. So instead of having just an elearning where they're clicking through, we can really take microlearning is a really big one where sometimes they'll watch a video or sometimes they'll just go and complete a quiz to see how they're doing on something. But we can make that really interactive and engaging and meaningful for their experience. So the simulations are one that I work a lot with with some of the organizations. There was one we had is for a new change manager training and they needed to be able to practice different conversations with stakeholders. So you have like the regional managers all the way down to line staff, each of them, when you're having real life conversations with them, they have different needs, they have different desires, and even within their role they have different perspectives and different barriers to change that you need to address. So being able to authentically practice some of those conversations with an AI, not text based, but having the actual conversation and hearing the types of questions they might have, hearing what might make them tick a little bit and how they might react if you say something a certain way, that's where we really get to have some of that more authentic engagement. And it's not just watching a video, it's not just clicking through an E learning that we've developed for you. It's you being able to really have ownership and decide what you need to practice, when you need to practice it in the way that's going to work best for you.

You know, I'm curious how has, and maybe not even in your personal experience, but if you can talk, you know, a little broader, just the L and D space in general, how have they taken to generative AI? Is it something, you know, L and D? All departments are rushing toward it. Are they cautious? What's been the reception so far? Because it's only been, you know, kind of quote unquote mainstream for, you know, little less than a year. So what's the reception been so far? Are you still running in circles trying to figure out how to actually grow your business with AI? Maybe your company has been tinkering with large language models for a year or more, but can't really get traction to find ROI on Gen AI. Hey, this is Jordan Wilson, host of this very podcast. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft and Nvidia have partnered with us because they trust our expertise in educating the masses around generative AI to get ahead. And some of the most innovative companies in the country hire us to help with their AI strategy and to train hundreds of their employees on how to use Gen AI. So whether you're looking for ChatGPT training for thousands or just need help building your front end AI strategy, you can partner with us too. Just like some of the biggest companies in the world do. Go to your everyday AI.com partner to get in contact with our team or you can just click on the partner section of our website. We'll help you stop Running in those AI circles and help get your team ahead and build a straight path to ROI on Gen.

I think the reception, it's a little bit different. So if you're on my LinkedIn and you see everything I post, it would seem like everybody's using AI and everybody in learning and development is in that space, but they really aren't yet. I've had conversations with a lot of organizations who are just thinking about it and they want to know what could it possibly do for us, what about the risk that it brings? Because those interactive scenarios I talk about, those do bring new risk because you have less control over what the AI is saying and how it's responding. So those are some things to think about. But the ones that are starting to experiment, a lot of them are just within the workflow optimization because that's a piece of it that we can control the most if we're using the AI system to help us with our processes. And then once we get that comfort level, that's where some of the other organizations that I have worked with, they're ready to have the learning experience reimagined and they're ready to try new things and experiment with kind of more lower stakes situations is where we're at right now. We're not creating a safety and health training for a crane operator quite yet because we're just not there. And it needs to be more than just conversation and text based for that. But there are a lot of opportunities where we can do it and we can do things that we haven't done before. So it brings more scale to it. We're taking smaller trainings that may have been in person. We could only do it with a select group of individuals, or not even in person if it was virtual through zoom, you can now give them that authentic practice, wide scale and bring that to them. So that's kind of what I'm seeing is we're not all there yet, but I think there are still a few organizations that are getting there and they're going to be on the forefront of this in learning and development and the professionals in that space too, that's really to their advantage and their career because it's going to bring more possibilities.

You know, Cambria, as you kind of talk about the current scenario and kind of the adaption rate to generative AI, there's so many ideas going off in my head and so many, you know, oh, why not? So, you know, maybe why, why not? Like, why do you think people aren't rushing more toward this? Is it more Maybe L and D, you know, groups within organizations aren't as aware of how flexible generative AI is and its capabilities. But, but maybe why do you think, or maybe what are some of those, those hold ups, do you think?

I think the biggest barrier starts with the organization themselves and because if they don't have a generative AI policy in place or they haven't really given their blessing to do these kind of things, it's really everyone for themselves and a lot of teams and individuals, they're afraid to try it out if their organization hasn't said they could, or even if they said they could and not given guidelines on how to do that, you don't want to do it wrong. So I think that's one of the major holdups. But beyond that, it's really understanding what capabilities AI brings and how you can fuse that with your work in a way that still allows you to be the expert. We don't want AI replacing us, and that's something I think we really need to understand is it's not a replacement for learning and development. But if we don't take charge of it, it could be because it could be somebody else in your organization deciding, I'm the subject matter expert, I'm going to make a training on this because I now have access to all these tools. And they might do it in a way that doesn't necessarily align with the adult learning theories and all the background that we bring into that. So if we wait too long to adapt, that's where I think we have some of that risk of it might not be replacement right away, but it's definitely going to diminish our value as learning and development professionals if we can't provide what's expected of us in some of the organizations.

So as you kind of balance that, right, you know, having to go through the proper procedures of, you know, maybe getting a generative AI policy, but then also, you know, with somewhat of an urgency of wanting, you know, the background of L and D teams to be represented in the trainings going forward. Maybe what's, what's one or two specific areas that you think are maybe the best use cases or you know, maybe even talking about certain, certain tools or certain techniques of leveraging generative AI in specific use case scenarios. Maybe what are one or two of those things that you're kind of excited about and you see extreme potential that saying, hey y', all, this, this could work, let's do this.

I think the biggest area I see is with microlearning specifically, just because it is so static when we look at it. We have our videos and we might have an elearning, but if we can bring authentic scenarios and different simulations, especially around conversations, I think the conversation topic is going to be a really big use case for us. So if that's leaders talking to their employees and having one on one conversations for growth and development, where it could be, like I mentioned with change managers having those conversations, it could be sales teams pitching a client. There's a lot of different opportunities out there and these scenarios are so easy to build. Once we have the knowledge of what it is and what it means to perform well and we have the Persona, we know the audience that they're going to be having that conversation with, that makes it pretty quick to build out those different simulations. And there's a lot of tools available. So the one I did with change managers was with InWorld AI, but we also have GPTs. We also have, if we wanted to do text based, there's a lot more opportunities. But the voice ones I think really in world AI and GPTs are where it's at right now for having conversations and dialogue back and forth. But that's also going to expand too as other tools take off and we have more options available with that.

Yeah, and, and that's, that's even where my head was going. Well, two different places, even just within Chat GPT. It's obviously something that we talk about a lot on this show. But you know, Cambria, you mentioned GPTs, so you know, if people aren't familiar with that, it's. It's a recently released feature from OpenAI but it allows people, without really having to know how to code but to create a very custom version of Chat GPT, essentially a very custom chatbot for a very specific purpose. Very quickly, we're talking about in minutes, something highly personalized, highly specialized. How do you see those GPTs being used in L and D in the near future? Or do you think there will also be friction toward using those as well?

I think I see them being used only within L and D teams that have already adopted AI within their workflows. If they're not at that stage yet, you're probably not ready to be looking at GPTs for your learners, but it could be something that might help you with your workflow. For those that are experimenting with it in their own workflows and they're trying out different things with their learners, that brings a lot more opportunities for a lot of different things. There's performance support, being able to upload your Manuals. Instead of us manually creating a job aid, they can just chat with the GPT and ask it questions about the process. As far as I know, I haven't seen image retreat retrieval, but that doesn't mean it's not going to be there soon. Or you have Dante AI that does have that. You could take a look at all the different tools out there and see what works for it. And then for the conversation piece, you can't do that as I know of with the web browsing for ChatGPT, but you can on the app. So the app itself brings new capabilities and new use cases and as you start to experiment with some of those, you'll find ones that work specific to your organization based on what your learners need and the different situations that they're going to be encountering.

Yeah, and that was kind of even my next question. Getting to that, Even within the ChatGPT app, the voice features and being able to literally have a conversation with a large language model like that, if you're able to on the front end as an L and D department or as a highly skilled, you know, individual such as yourself, you know, can do that. What kind of value is there there where you can go through and practice with your, your actual voice and hearing back from an actual voice, you know, within Chat GPT, what are the applications for that? Is that helpful? Is it potentially harmful if you don't have enough voice control over what the, I guess what the output from Chat GPT and that voice feature might be?

I think practice conversations are probably the biggest L and D use case for that voice feature and the risk with that really are minimized because conversations themselves with individuals are unpredictable. So even if ChatGPT is not responding how the LED professional designed the prompt or created the GPT for that, it's okay because your learner could very well encounter that and they might need to be prepared. Now you don't want it to go completely off the rails, but it's pretty low risk for that happening. So that's where I had mentioned before we could use that with practicing one on one conversations with different individuals or having the change manager conversations. So there's a lot of different things with that for sales just across the board. And I think that that's going to open up a lot of opportunities for us in learning and development. But we can also think from our learner's perspective. We talk about self directed learning a lot and having resources out there for them. So we don't need to necessarily be the ones creating the GPTs we need to empower our learners, build AI fluency within the organization and then that'll enable them to find their own use cases and maybe they have an upcoming conversation with somebody that doesn't happen often but they want to practice for and they can really just go in and build their own custom GPT just for that one time. And they can use that because it's so quick, it doesn't require us to do it for them and it's going to be a lot more tailored to what they need.

You know, Kimber, we talked about some of the kind of lower hanging fruit, you know, with generative AI. Some, some very practical and actionable, you know, options or tools for better learning and development. But maybe as you look a little further ahead, you know, past some of those things that are technically available right now, what are some areas that you're looking at a little further down the line that you're really excited about when it comes to generative AI and how it may in the longer term impact the L and D space?

I think the main thing I'm looking at long term is how we tie all these things together. So we don't want to just have things in silos where we're building a GPT Here maybe we have an E learning integration through the API, which is something I'm really excited about, where we can have adaptive scenarios within that elearning for us. Usually we build that in storyline and there's a lot of individuals in that space working through the API on that and the Turbo four. It's going to lower the cost a lot for that and it's going to make it a lot more feasible. So really it's how we bring all these things together to make the overall learning experience meaningful. And it's not just something we do here or there, it's an integrated strategy that accounts for all the different opportunities and puts them together in a way that makes sense for the learner and is not going to overwhelm them because the last thing we want is to have an abundance of content out there and them not knowing what's going to work for what we don't need, content overload or more out there because that's something we already struggle with.

Yeah, no, that's, that's a great point. And you know, even speaking of that, let's, let's talk to that side of it because I even see this personally. If you don't put enough care and attention into just content, right, like specifically with GPT, the outputs are going to be Pretty bad. Right? So, you know, how can you get around that? Because I'm sure as, you know, L and D kind of departments, you know, start to experiment with this, maybe they're not very well trained in, you know, GPT and generative AI as you are. So what are maybe some, you know, best practices or pieces of advice that you have for people that maybe do want to jump in and use some of this generative AI, but maybe they don't know enough and it's almost like it's almost too easy or so easy that someone inexperienced can go in there and make some mistakes. So what are some, you know, pieces of advice that you have for those types of people?

For as the learning and development, I would say just to start with one tool and that's going to be chap GPT. I think it has the multimodal capabilities. If you're really looking to get into AI, that's pretty much the end all, be all. And there's other things we can use here or there. But we also need to make sure when we're doing our prompts, we don't need to be prompt engineers or learn all these super specific techniques. They can help us. But what's more important than that is that we make sure we bring our expertise and our learning and development models into those prompts. So if we're looking at designing training, we want to look at maybe Gagne's nine events of instruction and how that might fit into their being able to direct the AI, trying to treat it as our learner. And when we do that, we could tell it how to do our processes, how we would interact with the learner, if it's a chatbot that we're creating or what it means to be a good tutor or facilitator and being able to bring that knowledge and expertise into that is what's really going to make the difference. And it starts with testing. That's the big thing when you create your prompt. You put that out there, make sure you're testing it, your subject matter experts are testing it and you can pilot it with learners too to get that feedback and then continue to make improvements on that.

There's been so much valuable information in this conversation as we talk about reimagining the learning experience with generative AI Cambria as we wrap up here, you know, because we've been everywhere, we've talked about the risks and challenges, you know, some short term wins, where the space is kind of going. In the long term, we talked about prompting. What's your one kind of takeaway that you want people to hear that are maybe in the L and D space or maybe for, you know, a business owner that, that needs, maybe they haven't really made L and D a focus of their company because they haven't been able to, but now it's more affordable and accessible. Maybe what's that one big takeaway that you want people who are interested in this to take from this conversation?

I would say just like main takeaway is not to be afraid of AI taking your job and recognizing like, for those small businesses who don't have an L and D team, the new opportunities it can bring for you. Because that's really the main use case for AI as a whole for learning and development is being able to do new things, doing them in a different way and doing them better. So that's kind of where that mindset needs to come in. And then just starting with that one tool, one use case, taking it one at a time. Don't try to do everything all at once. But if you have a single use case, a single chatbot that you want to try out, don't be afraid to do that and you can learn and adapt on the way. That's where AI is really valuable, is being able to adapt. So your responses and what you tell it and learning and improving with you.

Hey, if you're in L and D or if you're not, Cambria just dropped. So much knowledge, so much. Great advice for you to get started and improve your L and D with AI. Cambria, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Hey, and as a reminder, there's always more. There's always more. We never stop here. Make sure you go to your everydayai.com. sign up for that free daily newsletter. We're going to be breaking down today's conversation with Cambria in much, much more detail, as well as get your latest dose of AI news and everything else. So thank you for joining us and we hope to see you back for more Everyday AI. Thanks, y'.

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