The Standard · People, HR and L&D
Instructional Design
Designs learning experiences with AI and keeps pedagogy, not the tool, in the lead.
You turn learning goals into sequenced objectives, activities, learning checks, and production-ready storyboards for real learners. You use AI to compare strategies and draft scenarios, but polished content can hide weak pedagogy, inclusion, or alignment.
The exam for Instructional Design is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Instructional Design, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to anticipate misconceptions, compare strategies, and add practice or support the initial design missed.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with learner context, learning purpose, source content, format, length, and required objectives or interactions.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn drafts into coherent learning experiences by sequencing content, adapting activities, and adding pedagogical reasoning for intended learners.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check objectives, explanations, examples, and learning-check alignment against source content and learning requirements, correcting unsupported or misleading material.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep learner data, confidential SME material, and organisational intellectual property out of the brief and finished learning materials.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which choices the assistant may propose, which pedagogical judgements you retain, and which decisions require SME approval.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A sequenced learning architecture from a broad goal, learner needs, prerequisites, and required performance.
- 02
A design-ready storyboard from objectives, content, interactions, narration, learning checks, and review notes.
- 03
A media selection rationale from learning objectives, learner constraints, delivery conditions, and production resources.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in instructional design. They briefed the assistant with learner objectives and constraints, caught misaligned activities, and delivered a production-ready storyboard.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Instructional Design
- Who it is for
- Instructional designers, learning experience designers, curriculum designers, and L&D professionals who create structured learning experiences.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Lesson Planning
Plans lessons with AI, aligned to objectives and checked for accuracy and level.
- Assessment Design
Designs assessments with AI and validates that they measure what they claim.
- Online Course Creation
Builds online courses with AI-generated material that is verified before learners see it.
- Coaching
Coaches with AI as preparation and reflection, never as a substitute for the conversation.
- Mentoring
Mentors with AI-assisted resources and judgement about when advice must be human.
- Career Development
Plans career development with AI and tests its suggestions against real evidence.
- People Management
Manages people with AI-assisted planning and communication while keeping decisions and fairness human.
- Feedback & Performance
Gives feedback and runs performance conversations with AI preparation and human accountability.
Everything in People, HR and L&D, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Instructional Design covers this skill, and AI+ Pro teaches it as a course. Neither is required to pass.