👋 Hello, fellow Learning Scientists!
Welcome to the July 2025 edition of the Learning Research Digest.
This month, research is leaning into the lived reality of AI-powered instructional design. Across research journals, the enduring questions persist: how do we centre humanity in a world of automation? What does ethical, transparent, and impactful learning design look like in practice—not just in theory?
The latest research brings both practical answers and fresh provocations.
🔥 Hot Off the Research Press This Month:
AI in Professional Learning: Recent studies show AI is transforming workplace learning by enabling deeply personalised and just-in-time training, supporting knowledge transfer, and reducing bias through data-driven assignments. Yet, the limits of current AI—especially in reading and supporting motivation and emotion—pose strategic questions about where humans remain essential in design and facilitation.
Embedding Human Values, Not Just Technology: Instructional designers are moving from theory to practice by explicitly weaving care, empathy, inclusivity, and accessibility into all phases of course design. Research highlights how value-sensitive instructional choices now show up in concrete actions: diversified assessments, representative visuals, and intentional accessibility features.
University-Level AI Integration: Promise and Pitfalls: Model-based, full-course AI integration can greatly amplify feedback and accelerate technical learning in higher education. However, it brings tradeoffs—such as student passivity, over-reliance on AI, and risks to creative or independent problem solving—surfacing the need for consistent human oversight and targeted supports for learner agency.
Facilitation Matters in Hands-on Skill Workshops: Evidence from short-duration e-textile workshops underscores that intentionally structured guidance—not just open-ended making—drives both knowledge and skills acquisition among novices. Facilitators’ real-time support and scaffolding enable learners to overcome material challenges and increase their success, but creativity can plateau if workshops over-emphasise replication of exemplars.
Grand Challenges and the Role of Instructional Design: Leaders in the field urge a strategic pivot toward tackling grand, societal problems (like literacy or digital equity) using coordinated, cross-sectoral approaches instead of simply focusing on the next shiny technology. The call: use instructional design’s power for systemic, measurable, global impact.
Let’s go 🚀