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6 Pro Tips to Boost your Impact<br/>as an Instructional Designer

6 Pro Tips For Creating Stronger Scenario-Based Learning 

3 non-negotiable principles for scenario-based learning

With so many new AI tools showing up in training and education over the past three years, it’s clear that if you’re already an expert in your field, you’ll know how to make the most of AI.​

At conferences and in talks, we often hear that “AI is the future,” and it’s no surprise that everyone wants to use it. AI-generated content is even being ranked on IMDb, and some believe it could win an Oscar. What once took years and big budgets can now be done in hours, often with similar results.

Of course, AI can create, no doubt in that, but can it re-create the same nuanced perfection that evokes emotions? Think from a learning perspective. Can AI-generated courses truly replace the trainer in the room, who offers a glance of encouragement to the new employee?

​AI can't do everything instantly, and not all models are equally capable. As instructional designers or trainers, we only access a part of the AI ecosystem.

​To understand what we mean by that, let’s take a look at the different AI models.

Think of AI models as types of helpers, each trained to be really good at specific things.

This is probably the most familiar type. LLMs, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, are trained on vast collections of text from books, websites, and articles. Their strength is in language: when you ask a question, they provide detailed, well-structured responses that draw on patterns from their training data.

​LLMs learned language by consuming massive amounts of text, so they’re good at writing, explaining, summarizing, and having conversations that follow specific patterns… this always comes after that.

SLMs are like specialists. While LLMs know a lot about many topics, SLMs are trained on specific subject matter—such as only medical textbooks or only culinary content. Examples include Microsoft Phi-3.5-mini or Google Gemma 3 (4B). Their focus enables faster performance and lower resource consumption.

They don’t know as much overall, but they’re faster, cost less to run, and can even work on a laptop or phone. They’re useful when you need something specific and want to avoid the cost of larger models.

World Models are designed to understand cause and effect, enabling them to simulate real-world scenarios. They are adept at predicting outcomes and exploring 'what-if' situations. While still emerging, they are promising for applications like virtual training simulations and interactive learning.

Most early AI only understood text. Multimodal models can see images, hear audio, and read text simultaneously. Show it a diagram and ask a question about it? No problem. This is increasingly important in eLearning, where content isn't just words on a screen.

Generative AI describes any model that creates new content, whether text, images, video, or audio. All the model types discussed—LLMs, SLMs, world models, and multimodal models—can be generative. For example, image generators like Midjourney produce visual content, while LLMs like Claude or ChatGPT generate text-based content.

How is AI empowering instructional designers

Which model is most common among instructional designers

You probably already know the answer: it’s LLMs.

​Most instructional designers—almost 80% according to 

use generative models, especially LLMs. They mainly use them for outlining, storyboarding, writing objectives, and creating narration.

 also found that AI can reduce workload across the sector, letting teachers and instructors focus more on delivery instead of course creation.

​*All LLMs are Generative AI, but not all Generative AI are LLMs.

What are the advantages of using AI as an instructional designer?

For most experienced instructional designers, AI speeds up drafting, repurposing, and summarizing. The designer still decides on learning goals, checks the quality of the narrative, and makes sure the learner’s experience is positive.

​Let’s take a look at those advantages:

The primary objective of any instructional designer is to make learning engaging. AI helps create learner-centric content that fits their learning paths and preferences. It can analyze past performances, learners’ paces, and reports to determine which lessons suit students best, whether they learn faster with images or need firsthand experience to retain knowledge.

Tasks like drafting opening text, summarizing SME notes, rewriting content for different audiences, and generating multiple versions of scenarios or questions are time-consuming but structured. AI can produce first drafts in seconds, freeing designers to focus on subtler decisions about pacing, tone, and flow. This means less time on “word-crunching” and more on learning strategy and user experience.

Someone who knows their audience, goals, and constraints can guide the model, refine its outputs, and spot where things drift from the intended outcome. You can prompt the model to turn rough SME notes, meeting recordings, or bullet-point outlines into clear objectives, module flows, and learner-facing text. This fluency means less time wrestling with language and more time iterating on logic, sequencing, and interaction design.

You can generate multiple versions of a scenario, question set, or onboarding flow in minutes rather than hours. This lets you test different angles—tone, complexity, examples—without starting from scratch each time. Faster iteration means you can get feedback from stakeholders earlier and adapt instead of committing to a single version too late.

How is AI limited in instructional design?

AI cannot do or know everything. It’s not supposed to. Especially LLMs that follow patterns and give answers based only on available data cannot be expected to understand context-sensitive design.

​AI has several limitations that keep it from replacing human expertise.

AI models can repeat phrases about “Bloom’s taxonomy” or “active learning,” but they do not truly understand how a learning objective maps to transfer, assessment, or scaffolded practice. They mimic patterns, not reason about what learners will do with the knowledge. This means AI-generated structures often need a human to check if they will help learners perform, not just pass a quiz.

AI does not know your organization’s culture, stakeholders’ observations, or subtle reasons why a topic is sensitive or strategic. It cannot read hesitation in a meeting, sense frustration in a workshop, or adjust tone based on real-time relationships. Because of this, AI-first content can feel generic, emotionally flat, or misaligned with learners’ real-world constraints.

When IDs outsource too much drafting and ideation, materials can become uniform and verbose; some researchers call this “AI-slop”: text that is fluent but superficial, avoiding nuance, controversy, or real-world messiness. That dulls the impact of learning experiences and can erode designers’ creative agency over time.

AI inherits biases and gaps in its training data, which can appear in language, examples, and assumed prior knowledge. It also raises data privacy and equity concerns when learner data feeds models without transparency, consent, or safeguards. Instructional designers still bear responsibility for fairness, accessibility, and compliance, even when AI operates behind the interface.

AI cannot answer nuanced questions like “Should we even train here?” or “Is this really the right priority?” It cannot evaluate whether a performance problem is a training problem, nor negotiate with stakeholders, SMEs, or budgets. Those decisions remain human because accountability cannot be outsourced to a model.

The best immersive solutions keep the IDs in the center

AI is a powerful tool in instructional design, but it can’t think like a learning expert, feel like a person, or take responsibility like a designer.

At We Are Learning, we design immersive solutions with the instructional designer at the center, not the AI. For example, we use AI to:

Transform any document into a Story-ready script

Use prompts to convert an image to a video

These capabilities make the design process more fluid and scalable, but they do not replace decisions only an expert ID can make: what to include, what to cut, how to sequence, and how to make the experience feel human and relevant.

Disclaimer: AI was used to assist in the preparation of this article. AI tools were utilized to help smooth sentence structure and gather research material. However, the article itself was written by a human author, with all analysis and conclusions being the result of human expertise.

AI is changing instructional design, but how are we really using it? Are we just impressed or maybe even bored by it? Before you let AI run your next course, it helps to know what it does well, where it falls short, and why the best instructional designers know it cannot take their place.

The non-negotiable principles for scenario-based learning

AI in instructional design: Where AI succeeds and what are its limits

Blending extensive online research with in-store experience is the new consumer norm. A recent

 states that up to 40% of how consumers perceive a brand's value stems from factors unrelated to cost.

, cost-conscious habits, and even higher-income households are actively reassessing what "value" means to them.

What really matters to customers is how they feel when they leave your store.

Customers look for quality, good service, easy checkout, loyalty programs, and most of all, helpful and skilled staff. Tech-savvy shoppers are 20 to 40 percent more likely to buy when staff gives expert, flexible help that builds on what they already know. But if staff are not trained, they might not connect with customers.

Those customers might then choose self-service or go to a competitor.

Retail demands staff who can handle any customer, at any level of knowledge, with confidence. That readiness only comes from practice.

Human interaction is where sales are won or lost

Staff can read a customer. And how they open that conversation determines everything.

"Do you need help?" often shuts down the conversation. Most customers will just say they are looking, and the chance is lost. But asking, "How can I help you today?" invites them in. This small change can shape the whole interaction.

 can go up by as much as 47%. In contrast, self-service usually means customers only buy what they planned.

There is no upsell, no add-on, and no chance for a helpful suggestion to turn a single item into a bigger sale. It is not that the customer did not want more, but no one was there to talk with them.

For shoppers who prefer personal buyers, who make up 16 to 20 percent of shoppers and really value personal connections, the stakes are even higher.

These customers come back because of the person who helped them before. If that human connection is missing or disappointing, the visit just feels like a transaction.

Building strong customer relationships in retail starts with how you train your staff

Your customers want a personal experience. They expect staff to meet them where they are, whether they are new buyers who need help or well-informed shoppers who want their knowledge respected.

During customer interactions, your employees will face many moments where they need to make quick, confident decisions.

They need to know when to ask a follow-up question, when to suggest an alternative, and when to recommend a complementary product without coming across as pushy.

These are high-stakes moments, and in competitive retail, each one matters. 

, which is typically around $80,000, directly shows how well your staff turns those moments into revenue.

Standard training gives staff information, but it does not prepare them for moments when a well-informed customer challenges a recommendation or when a hesitant browser needs help making a confident purchase.

That is where immersive learning makes a difference.

It lets staff practice real situations in a safe environment where mistakes do not cost anything, so by the time they are on the floor, they are ready.

Why the customer meeting should be the focus of your training

Great marketing and strong campaigns can bring customers in, but what happens next depends entirely on your staff.

The goal of a great customer meeting is not just to make a sale. It is to leave the customer feeling informed, confident in their choice, and treated fairly. When you deliver that experience every time, it leads to more sales, repeat visits, and word of mouth.

It also helps justify your prices, even if a competitor offers something similar for less.

To help staff deliver that experience every time, you need more than instructions. You need to train them in practice situations until the right habits come naturally.

How to greet a customer who is already browsing,

How to ask open questions to find out what they really need,

How to handle objections from someone who has read every review, and

How to upsell in a way that feels like real advice, not just a sales pitch.

In fashion, it means always helping customers in the fitting room. In electronics, it means knowing when to step back and let customers decide for themselves.

You do not learn these skills from a slide deck. You learn them by practicing.

 will leave a brand if the staff does not show enough knowledge and skill. 

 after just one or two bad experiences, often because of the interaction, not the product.

 can become brand advocates after just one good experience. The difference between these outcomes is mostly due to training.

What immersive training for the customer meeting looks like

With an immersive learning solution like We Are Learning, you can train your staff for real customer meetings.

Realistic scenarios put staff into the situations they will actually face: the informed shopper who wants more than specs, the undecided customer who needs a confident recommendation, or the complaint that needs careful handling to keep the relationship.

Importantly, you can build training around what is happening in your business right now.

Launching a new collection? Running a seasonal campaign?

You can create interactive scenarios for those specific products, including upsell options, common objections, and key messages, all built right into the training. Staff practice the campaign before it launches, so by the time the customer walks in, the conversation has already happened once.

Nearly 80% of consumers say knowledgeable help and friendly service are the most important parts of a good customer experience. Both come from your people.

That means your training program is, in a very real way, your customer experience strategy.

Retail leaders in 2026 won’t be defined by the size of their training budgets. They’ll be defined by whether their staff can walk onto the floor and have the right conversation with any customer, on any day, for any product.

Many customers walk into your store already knowing a lot about your products and having specific questions to ask. Others come in looking for advice from your staff to help them pick the right product. Your staff needs to be ready to help both kinds of customers.


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How immersive learning prepares your staff for better customer experience

Imagine you’re learning how to swim. Now your trainer puts a few books and instruction manuals about different swimming techniques in front of you. You’ll be quizzed at the end of the lesson, and you’ll probably get most answers right away. 

However, the moment you step into the pool, you struggle to actually swim. You might float and, in some cases, manage to paddle with your feet. But you aren’t exactly swimming! 

Instead, if your trainer actually took you to the pool, let you drown a couple of times, and showed you the breathing techniques and strokes, you’ll be swimming in no time. You’ll never forget it, even if you don’t swim for a couple of months or longer. Your muscles will remember how to take you across the pool the moment you enter it.

This is the difference between passive knowledge and embodied learning. Experiential learning leads to much higher retention.

Instructional designers aim for interactivity, but for businesses, ROI comes down to retention: Do learners remember and apply what they've learned?

Why most workplace training falls short on knowledge retention

We tend to assume that when training is well delivered, it has done its job! However, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus proved otherwise. Almost a century ago, he demonstrated, using the

 that without meaningful engagement or real involvement, our memory tends to decline more quickly.


Our brain isn't wired to hold onto information it doesn't find relevant, emotional, or personal. ​

But if you put a learner inside a situation (like the swimming example before) where you give them something to solve, a decision to make, or a consequence to feel, they’re more 

Immersive learning works on the same principle. 

​When learners feel present in a scenario, the brain encodes it more like a real experience than a training exercise. ​

, the publicly owned Norwegian alliance of work-inclusion companies, did to train healthcare staff. They set up a digital learning platform focused on interactive scenarios. It provided training in on-the-ground skills, helping learners become more confident and empathetic in real-world situations. ​

In this way, learners gained experience before interacting with patients in real life, without facing immediate consequences.

That's the difference immersive learning makes. Its often-overlooked ROI lies in its measurable boost to retention.

How do you actually measure the ROI of immersive learning


It is important for organizations to track quantifiable training outcomes, such as operational gains, sales, and cost savings, as well as customer-facing metrics, like customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and net promoter score (NPS).


Most organizations will also evaluate learners' perceptions of the training through real-time feedback and confidence ratings.


However, when safety incidents keep occurring, or new hires take longer than expected to perform independently, it becomes a concern whether learners can recall and apply their training when the moment actually counts.

This is especially critical for high-stakes teams.


In sales, retention directly influences whether a rep can handle an objection confidently six months after training. Similarly, in construction, it can be the difference between a near-miss and a serious incident.

The cost of forgetting in these environments is too real.


Immersive learning addresses this issue by focusing on improving retention.

Retention Rate is the key metric to immersive learning ROI

 is designed precisely to make knowledge stick — to move information from something learners were told, to something they experienced. It prioritizes an experience that emotionally connects the learner to the content rather than relying on numerous templated interactions, such as slide decks or flashcards.

If retention is the core promise, then retention rate is the most effective way to measure immersive learning. This will reflect in business results long after training ends.

Now, you could attribute that to better scripts, more confident staff, or stronger product knowledge. 

But why did this particular method make a difference? 

While other training initiatives had existed before, this time, learners experienced the information. And the brain held onto it long enough to change behavior on the shop floor.

That's exactly what retention rate captures. It's asking "did the training change how employees perform three, six, twelve months later?"

Take a retail scenario. An associate faces an angry customer demanding a refund they aren't entitled to. That's not a situation you can fully prepare someone for. 

Knowing what to say is different from knowing how to say it under pressure, in the moment, with a real person in front of you. Immersive training builds that instinct by letting learners practice the situation before it's real. 

So, we can see that the ROI on immersive learning lives in everyday moments after the training.

We've spent decades evaluating training using metrics that weren't designed to capture lasting impact. 

Completion rates tell you who showed up. Quiz scores tell you who was paying attention that day. Feedback forms tell you who enjoyed the experience. 

But retention rates reveal if your immersive training achieved its purpose: real, lasting business transformation through employees who can instinctively apply new skills. 

Because the swimmer who only ever reads the manual isn't going to figure it out the moment they hit the water. But the one who's already been in the pool? They don't even have to think about it.

Experiencing real-world scenarios firsthand helps your employees retain knowledge longer and apply it confidently on the job. That's the true ROI of immersive learning. Retained knowledge delivering immediate results for your business goals.

Immersive Learning ROI: Why retention is the metric that actually matters

The tools might change, but the goal remains the same: helping people grow, learn, and perform better.

conversation with Stine Snekkenes exploring the evolving role of L&D

, one idea kept coming up again and again: Sometimes there’s a gap between how learning professionals describe their work and how the rest of the business understands it.

We speak in terms like “learning outcomes,” “engagement,” and “instructional design.”

We know those things are essential. But our stakeholders? They’re usually tuned into performance, productivity, and results.

That doesn’t mean they don’t value learning; it means they value what learning enables. And if we want to be seen as strategic partners (not order takers), we have to start speaking their language.

Pedagogy isn’t the problem, but it’s not the whole solution

. Good instructional design, grounded in how people actually learn, is foundational to the work we do. But, too often, we treat pedagogy like the goal when really, it’s the engine that gets us to the goal.

The shift happening in L&D right now isn’t about abandoning learning theory. It’s about connecting it more directly to performance.

If your course is beautifully designed, but no one uses what they learned? That’s not a win. If your simulation is wildly engaging but doesn’t move the needle on behavior or business outcomes? That’s a missed opportunity.

When I speak to organizations about their learning strategies, I often share something that often makes people uncomfortable:

“Most organizations don’t really care about learning. They care about what learning helps people do.”


It sounds harsh, but it’s actually freeing. It clarifies what success looks like.

Different stakeholders define “working” in different ways:

A compliance officer wants to know: “Did everyone complete it?”

A manager wants to know: “Did it help my team perform better?”

A business leader wants to know: “Did it drive results?”

None of them are asking if the instructional strategy was sound or if the learning objectives were aligned to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Our job isn’t just to design effective learning experiences. It’s also to translate those experiences into a language the business understands and values.

Reframing a learning solution as a performance improvement initiative

Describing learner engagement as a readiness metric

Talking less about “skills” and more about capabilities

Reporting not just completions, but behavior change or time to proficiency

Here’s a quick shift in vocabulary that can help:

One of the biggest mindset shifts we can make is to see ourselves not as service providers, but as strategic enablers.

That shift happens in small, intentional ways:

Asking better questions in intake meetings

Understanding the KPIs that matter to stakeholders

Designing learning experiences around behavior and performance, not just content delivery

This is at the core of what being a learning leader looks like. Being a learning leader doesn’t require a fancy title; it requires a mindset that sees learning not as the end product, but as the means to drive something bigger.

Our roots in learning theory and instructional design are what make us effective. But the impact we make is only fully realized when we connect those roots to the outcomes our organizations care about.

This idea sparked a lot of energy during 

, and for good reason; it’s one of the most important shifts L&D professionals can make.

So let’s not abandon pedagogy. Let’s connect it more deliberately to performance.

Let’s not water down our expertise. Let’s translate it into something others see the value in.

Learning isn’t the goal. Performance is.
Learning is how we get there.

 constantly explores the convergence of learning and tech, demonstrating a profound commitment to transforming workplaces and enriching lives through innovative learning strategies. With 20+ years of experience in L&D leadership and consulting, he brings his passion to life in his daily work as a dynamic strategist, speaker, and writer, inspiring others to view their work through a fresh, tech-enhanced lens. He is the former Chairman and CEO of the Learning Guild.

Performance. Productivity. Results. That’s the language business leaders care about. But is everyone in L&D fluent… or do we sometimes get stuck in “learning-speak”?

In this guest piece, David Kelly, with over 2 decades in L&D leadership, makes the case for going bilingual — helping learning professionals connect great instructional design with business performance. David breaks it all down for you here.

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