Purpose

Over the past decade, higher education has undergone significant changes that impact both instructors and learning designers. Learning disabilities – diagnosed and undiagnosed – are increasingly prevalent, demand for remote or hybrid e-Learning courses is on the rise, and advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) are prompting a reevaluation of traditional teaching and assessment methods. These challenges are straining the resources and causing personal stress for learning designers, instructors, and higher education institution leaders. This literature review explores the possibility of applying one of these challenges – generative AI – to help mitigate the other two.

Conclusions

• AI-generated content's future success and impact in learning will rely on providing extensive training for learning designers in the skills of prompt engineering.

• This review also revealed an over-reliance on qualitative measurements of small participant groups and a persistent lack of control groups.

• And finally, for learning designers to study the effects of AI-generated learning content on humans, it will be necessary to conduct blind studies. However, due to concerns about AI authorship, researchers may be hesitant to conduct such studies.