A Flexible, Asynchronous Experience for Exploring and Designing AI-Supported Learning
Designing on the Edge is a hands-on professional learning experience for faculty, instructional designers, trainers, faculty developers, and others who want to explore practical and thoughtful uses of AI in teaching, learning, and course design.
The workshop is designed as a flexible, asynchronous experience. Participants work through examples, guided activities, AIMON design resources, discussion opportunities, and practical design tasks on their own schedule.
The emphasis is on exploring possibilities, identifying where AI may add meaningful value, and developing a practical support or design strategy that can be adapted to an authentic course, assignment, workshop, or other learning context.
What Happens in the Workshop?
Designing on the Edge is organized as a self-paced pathway that moves from exploration to application.
Participants typically spend approximately 5–7 hours across the full experience and may complete the work over several days, several weeks, or alongside active course development.
Getting Started — Choose a Learning Context
Participants begin by selecting a real course, assignment, workshop, module, or recurring learner-support challenge to use throughout the experience. The goal is to anchor the workshop in authentic practice rather than abstract experimentation.
Participants do not need to arrive with an AI tool or project already selected.
Part 1 — Explore: What Can AI Realistically Contribute to Learning?
Participants explore examples of AI supporting:
- Explanation and sense-making
- Practice and retrieval
- Getting started and getting unstuck
- Feedback and revision
- Reflection and metacognition
- Rehearsal and preparation
- Deeper learning and synthesis
- Instructional and course design
The goal is to develop a broader understanding of what AI can contribute without assuming that every possibility should become part of a design. Participants also reflect on situations where AI use may be inappropriate, unnecessary, or potentially harmful to learning.
Part 2 — Locate: Find a Moment That Matters
Participants shift from exploring tools to identifying a meaningful learner-support need.
Using the Five Moments of Learning Need and the AIMON Opportunity Scan, participants examine their selected learning context and identify one moment where learners may benefit from additional or more timely support.
You will consider:
- What learners are trying to accomplish
- What support already exists
- Where support may be missing, delayed, inconsistent, or inaccessible
- What difficulties are barriers
- What difficulties are productive struggle and should remain
- What learning work should stay with the learner
The main outcome is a focused AIMON Opportunity Statement.
Part 3 — Evaluate & Design: AI, Maybe, or Not AI?
Participants evaluate what kind of support actually fits the learner need they identified. They consider AI alongside:
- Instructor support
- Peer interaction
- Worked examples
- Checklists and job aids
- Structured practice
- Existing technologies
- Custom GPTs
- General-purpose AI tools
- Combined AI and human support
- Non-AI approaches
Participants work through short design cases, examine tradeoffs, and begin developing an AIMON Design Sketch.
The goal is not to force an AI solution. A strong outcome may involve AI as a primary support, one part of a broader support system, an optional pathway, or no AI at all.
Part 4 — Strengthen & Plan: From an Interesting Idea to a Responsible Design
Participants strengthen their emerging design by clarifying:
- Learner, AI, instructor, peer, and resource roles
- What AI should and should not do
- What thinking and judgment should remain with the learner
- How learner agency and meaningful choice will be preserved
- Where human connection remains important
- Access, privacy, and transparency considerations
- The smallest useful version of the design that could be tested
Participants also review and respond to other emerging designs using an asynchronous peer-feedback guide. The goal is to move from “This might be interesting” to “This is a support strategy I can explain, critique, and test.”
Continue — From Professional Learning to Practice
The final section helps participants summarize their design and identify a practical next step. Participants develop a concise design summary that includes:
- The learning context
- The moment of need
- The Opportunity Statement
- The current decision about AI
- The support concept
- Important roles and boundaries
- The smallest useful next step
- The question they still need to answer
Participants are encouraged to test something small, learn from the results, and revise before scaling.
What Participants Develop
By the end of the Designing on the Edge experience, participants should have:
- A clearly identified learning-support opportunity
- An AIMON Opportunity Statement
- A completed or substantially developed Opportunity Scan
- A reasoned decision about whether and how AI fits the need
- A draft AIMON Design Sketch
- Clear learner, AI, and human roles
- Defined boundaries for AI use
- A practical idea for a small implementation test
- A clearer personal approach to designing with AI
Participants may develop an AI-supported activity, custom GPT concept (using any platform they have access to), guided prompt, blended human-and-AI support strategy, educator design resource, or non-AI response.
Workshop Activities
The experience combines several forms of learning and design work:
- Exploring short explanatory resources
- Investigating worked examples
- Hands-on AI exploration
- Guided reflection
- AIMON Opportunity Scan and Design Sketch activities
- Reviewing quick design cases
- Participating in asynchronous discussion and peer feedback
- Optional use of the AIMON Design Partner (a custom GPT built in ChatGPT)
- Continuing access to design and implementation resources
Participants are encouraged to work with authentic materials and real design problems whenever possible.
AIMON Design Partner
Participants receive optional access to the AIMON Design Partner, a custom GPT designed to support the AIMON design-thinking process.
It can help participants:
- Clarify a learner-support need
- Refine an Opportunity Statement
- Evaluate whether AI is appropriate
- Compare AI, human, peer, and non-AI alternatives
- Review an emerging Design Sketch
- Clarify roles and boundaries
- Plan a small implementation test
The Design Partner is intended to support professional thinking, not make design decisions for the participant.
Explore the AIMON Design Partner:
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6a72517899bc8191a98e47d8bafca826-aimon-design-partner
Who Should Participate?
No advanced AI expertise is required. Designing on the Edge is intended for:
- Teachers and higher education faculty
- Instructional designers
- Faculty developers
- Trainers
- Educational technologists
- Others who design or support learning
Participants should bring:
- One authentic learning context
- Curiosity about AI-supported learning and design
- A willingness to experiment
- An interest in moving beyond tool-first thinking
- Openness to both AI and non-AI solutions
The approach can be applied to face-to-face, hybrid, HyFlex, online synchronous, online asynchronous, and professional learning environments.
By the End of the Workshop, Participants Will:
- Use AI tools to create, adapt, or recommend learning support that responds to meaningful student needs, especially when learners are working independently or need timely help.
- Design effective and engaging learning activities or assessments using GenAI, including custom GPTs, while preserving student thinking, agency, and appropriate human support.
- Create or improve part of a course design or support toolkit with AI; something practical that can be shared with colleagues, tested with learners, or put into practice right away.
Flexible Participation
Designing on the Edge is offered primarily as a start-anytime, finish-anytime asynchronous experience. Most participants should expect to spend approximately 5–7 hours across the full pathway. Custom synchronous sessions or facilitated versions can also be arranged for groups.
Custom workshop dates with facilitated group offerings (if you’d prefer synchronous participation) are also available. Contact us with the Contact form or email: hyflexlearning@gmail.com
Certificate of Completion
Participants who complete the workshop activities receive a HyFlex Learning Community completion certificate: Design for Learning with AI
Prefer a Live, Collaborative Design Experience?
If you prefer synchronous discussion, facilitated design work, peer consultation, and individual support, consider the AIMON Learning Design Studio.
The Studio focuses more intensively on taking one specific learner-support challenge through the AIMON design process with live facilitation and feedback.
The two experiences can also be combined:
Explore independently. Design with others. Refine with individual support.
Learn more about the AIMON Learning Design Studio →
[AIMON Learning Design Studio explanation]
Registration and More Information
Registration: (Shopify)
Designing on the Edge Workshop (asynchronous)
Custom group offerings are also available. Contact us with the Contact form or email: hyflexlearning@gmail.com
Continue Exploring AIMON
Designing on the Edge is one way to learn and apply the AIMON framework.
For the broader framework, publications, presentations, design resources, and other professional learning opportunities:
Explore AIMON →
AIMON: AI in the Moment of Learning Need (HyFlex Learning Community)
