How Close is AI to Taking Over the Role of the Instructional Designer?
A crowdsourced experiment
One question we explore a lot in my bootcamp is: how close is AI to taking over the role of the instructional designer (ID)?
This week, I decided to try to start to answer this question more concretely by running a short crowdsourced experiment.
The Experiment
First, I create a course brief:
💼 Course Brief
Design a course which equips entrepreneurs and marketing professionals with the practical skills and strategies so that they can effectively market and grow innovative products and services in dynamic environments.
Next, I picked three common ID tasks of varied complexity:
Write learning objectives
Select an instructional strategy
Create a course outline
Finally, I asked three colleagues to complete each task using the same course brief, but different methods:
Colleague 1 > The Experienced Instructional Designer + No AI
An experienced human ID who completed the tasks with no help from AI.
Hypothesis: manual ID with no input from AI produces the best quality design outputs.
Colleague 2 > The Non-Expert Instructional Designer + AI
A human who’s not an ID who completed the tasks with help from AI, specifically ChatGPT 4o + Consensus GPT.
Hypothesis: AI empowers anyone to be a great ID.
Colleague 3 > The Experienced Instructional Designer + AI
An experienced human ID who completed the tasks with help from AI (ChatGPT 4o + Consensus GPT).
Hypothesis: AI makes experienced IDs both faster & more effective at ID tasks.
The Results
The big question is: who completed the tasks most effectively?
To answer this, I need your help!
👉 If you want to take part, you can blind score the outputs & test your AI-detections skills. It'll take approx. 10 mins to complete. By taking part, you'll help to understand what AI can and can't do without the help of an expert human ID. 
I’ll share the results in next week’s blog post - stay tuned!
Happy experimenting!
Phil 👋
PS: If you want to get hands on and experiment with AI supported by me, you can apply for a place on my AI-Powered Learning Design Bootcamp.