Gen AI in learning and development: A step-by-step guide in 3 key phases

According to Microsoft : “2024 is the year AI at work gets real.” From remote work and diverging strategies to training global audiences and the juggernaut that is AI, learning leaders have had to not only embrace change but also rethink how to perform their role.

That’s where Gen AI can help in learning and development. Gen AI is advancing rapidly, and using the right tools, such as an AI course creator, can help you streamline everything from course design and development to translations, distribution, and management.

Here’s everything you need to know to leverage Gen AI in your L&D programs to produce and distribute learning in multiple languages, broken into a few key phases.

In 2023, the Brandon Hall Group said that L&D organizations “understand they must help embrace digital transformation, keep abreast of new technologies and modalities, and upgrade their learning strategies.”

Additional research from the Brandon Hall Group shows that priorities for L&D leaders vary. When asked which of the following will be a top priority for the next twelve months, L&D leaders responded:

• 74% — Create a stronger link between learning and performance

• 57% — Improve the ROI of training

• 46% — Develop a learning strategy

• 43% — Lead a digital transformation of the learning organization

• 28% — Select new learning technology.

That’s where Gen AI comes in. With a new world of tools emerging, L&D leaders can now use Gen AI to fast-track course creation and personalized learning at scale.

Developing a learning strategy that uses Gen AI, selecting new technology, and leading a digital transformation across your learning organization takes deliberate planning. As you prepare to apply artificial intelligence, follow these steps to create a roadmap.

At Smartcat, we often get questions like, “How can Generative AI be used to create eLearning content?” … “Which AI tools are best for eLearning development?” Working in L&D, you’ve likely asked or considered some variation of the above.

The obvious place to start applying GenAI in your learning content creation process is alongside the conception, design, and development phases.

There’s no doubt using generative AI in learning content can ensure the cost-effectiveness that L&D leaders are after. That said, how you implement Gen AI into your existing processes determines how effective it will be.

It’s fairly common for companies, especially larger organizations, to have multiple systems and processes for creating, translating, and managing learning content.

Aside from being an obstacle to effective team collaboration, multiple tools, and inconsistent systems will create scalability issues further down the road. Plus, your team will have lots of manual work, and staying on top of everything will be a pain. As the person leading the L&D transformation at your company, you’re in a position to advocate for and invest in the right tools. In an ideal world, you’ll have one tool that will help you do it all, from A-Z, in any language.

Gen AI tools like Smartcat AI can help you generate enterprise-grade learning courses efficiently and effectively in any language. Our course creator uses advanced algorithms to generate course content based on your input, ensuring that the final product is accurate, engaging, and relevant in the 280+ supported languages. Many Fortune 1000 companies use it as a centralized platform for creating and managing all types of learning content.

And don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what our customer Clarins has to say about it:

Note: Smartcat’s SCORM compliance ensures that the created content can be easily shared, reused, and tracked across different platforms. Smartcat’s SCORM authoring tools support these standards, enabling seamless integration with multiple Learning Management Systems (LMS).

Smartcat AI course creator is designed to simplify the process of creating and translating elearning content. Using an AI-powered solution, allows instructional designers and educators to quickly develop high-quality learning content that are accessible to a global audience.

Here’s how it works:

For a more detailed walkthrough of the course creator, take a look at this video:

If you think about scalability in the context of a global L&D program, it’s clear that you want a replicable process that you can apply to all new markets and languages.

In an ideal world, your learning content will live in a truly central place where it is created, translated, stored, and distributed in multiple languages. That’s where a modern, lightweight translation/localization platform can serve you and your team.

Good translation/localization platforms help you build flexible and automated translation workflows and provide you with everything you need to take control of the eLearning content translation process.

L&D professionals use e-learning platforms or LMS to create and host their courses. At Smartcat, most of our enterprise customers use learning platforms like Articulate 360. 

Generally, companies that want to translate their learning content have three options:

1. Use local employees/bilingual native speakers

2. Translation services

3. Translation/AI/ generative AI tools

While all these options are valid, AI has made translation much easier and cost-effective, especially with tools that fit into your existing processes and workflows. Using an all-in-one platform to manage all your translations or integrating it with your LMS/course authoring tools allows you to streamline your workflow.

Using Smartcat, you have two options:

1. Use the AI capabilities to create and translate learning content into any language within seconds. Then, export your course content in the supported formats ( XLIFF, PDF, PPT, Mp4, VTT, and more), translate using AI, review with subject matter expert reviewers, and import it back into your learning platform in 280+ languages.

Here’s how it works:

2. Create your course content using Smartcat’s AI course creator, translate it into your desired target languages, and review, edit, and export it to your learning platform in multiple languages simultaneously.

Not all content is created equal. And in the context of AI-generated learning content, content type matters more than you might realize. While Smartcat’s AI can create full courses, microlearnings, videos, quizzes, AI dubbing, and more, we generally advise our customers to perform reviews and quality checks.

To get a better understanding of the extent of human review, you’ll need, to create three different buckets for these content types:

1. Low importance → Minimal human review

2. High importance → Heavy human editing/review

3. All other content → Minimal human review/editing

This combination of AI and human input ensures that the final product is of the highest quality, maintaining the original tone and context while ensuring accuracy. By leveraging both AI and human expertise, Smartcat delivers high-quality eLearning content that meets the needs of modern enterprises.

Additionally, Smartcat’s AI learns from every edit made by your team so the learning experience your content provides is consistently on message and culturally relevant.

Note: AI sourcing of linguists through Smartcat’s proprietary marketplace of 500,000 editors to help with review.

Once you’ve created and translated your course, you’re all set to export it into your learning platform or LMS.

The good news is that Smartcat supports multiple LMS platforms, ensuring that your learning materials are compatible and can easily be distributed and accessed by learners. This integration capability allows organizations to easily import and export content between Smartcat and their LMS, streamlining the process of content delivery and tracking.

By integrating with your existing LMS, Smartcat allows you to manage all your learning content in “one place,” improving efficiency and simplifying the management of your training programs.

Plus, if you’re working in a fast-paced company with an accelerating rate of change, you’ll be familiar with the pain of learning materials becoming outdated or redundant rapidly. While this process traditionally requires heavy human lifting, Smartcat allows you to easily keep information up-to-date by allowing you to seamlessly update and transfer training content to your LMS across all your languages.

The use of AI in employee training and skill development has increased by almost 50% in the last four years, and we expect the adoption of AI to continue to increase exponentially over the coming years.

We've covered current use cases, including automated course creation, language translations at scale, and AI dubbing. While these technologies have improved drastically in a snap, they aren’t yet perfect or immune to producing errors and inaccurate information.

That said, Gen AI’s ability to perform end-to-end learning means modern AI systems are only getting better and more accurate with time. And while they’re already an integral part of learning and development organizations, they’ll continue becoming more deeply embedded in the coming years. Ultimately, the future of automated course creation and translation hinges on the collaborative efforts of humans and AI-powered tool s. What are some of the emerging use cases, you ask?

Some near-term use cases of AI in content production include AI-generated videos and virtual presenters. AI-generated content will also enable you to drive personalization and course-customization at scale.