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Learning Design with AI Integration
A learning science-grounded approach to intentional AI integration
AI-Inclusive Learning Design
While traditional learning design frameworks don't account for AI as a co-designer or learning partner, the GROW framework takes into account the complex role AI can play when designing human learning. Built on current research in the learning sciences, GROW encourages designers and instructors to harness AI to amplify human capability, while offloading routine tasks that create extraneous cognitive load to AI.
GROW is a process that aims to protect and develop the irreplaceable human capabilities through a series of analytical steps that provide the supportive architecture and metacognitive engagement techniques students need to focus on developing higher order skills.
The GROW Framework
G
Guard the Non-Negotiable
Identify the irreplaceable human competencies the learning experience must develop—cognitive, relational, ethical, or embodied. These competencies define what students must demonstrate unaided.
R
Read the Task Ecology
Analyze competencies, learning outcomes, and subordinate tasks to determine what requires effortful, skill/knowledge-building and what can benefit from AI scaffolding to reduce extraneous cognitive load and increase meaningful processing.
O
Outline the Trellis
Design the scaffolded learning structure with a deliberate AI integration approach. Specify AI functions by where judgment resides. Clarify expectations while building metacognitive awareness.
W
Watch for Authentic Evidence
Design the culminating unaided assessment that requires genuine situated knowledge and demonstration of human capabilities such as empathy, relational intelligence, and judgment, work that outsourced AI work cannot produce.
Current/Upcoming Learning Design workshops & presentations
A Design Framework for Integrating AI and Developing Professional Skills. K. Wojdak, M. Mittal & S Phillips, International Education Conference, Dublin Ireland, July 24, 2026.
Protecting Learning and Growing Human Capabilities in an AI World: A Learning Design Framework. K. Wojdak, S. Phillips & M. Mittal. Pre-conference workshop at the AAC&U Conference on AI in Higher Education, Atlanta, GA, October 28, 2026.
Designing Deeper Learning in the AI-Flipped STEM Classroom. K. Wojdak, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. January, 2027.
Publications
Beyond the Answer Machine: Designing (and Redesigning) AI Chatbots to Support Student Learning. K. Wojdak, K. Sutton & J. LaFrance, The Teaching Professor.