Series 11, Episode 11

Designing the Future: Learning Designers Meet AI
with Minh Huynh and Cory Dal Ponte

In this episode of the AI in Education Podcast, we bring you two powerful conversations that explore the evolving role of learning designers and their growing impact in the world of AI-enabled education. Together, these two interviews reveal the strategic and practical power of learning design in an AI-driven future.

First, we speak with Minh Huynh from The University of Sydney Education Innovation team, who shares her journey from being a student of AI to leading its integration within a large first-year biology course. She offers a compelling look into the behind-the-scenes work of learning designers—building trust with academics, identifying barriers to student learning, and co-creating feedback tools that make a measurable impact.

In the second half, we’re joined by Cory Dal Ponte from the University of Melbourne. Cory is both a learning designer and a PhD researcher focused on AI literacy. He walks us through some of the GPT-powered tools he’s built - from bots that rewrite learning outcomes in Bloom’s Taxonomy to AI-driven simulated patients for healthcare education - and unpacks what it really means to be AI literate in education today.
His custom GPTs are all available for you to use through ChatGPT
Bloomify – Converts unrefined learning goals into Bloom’s Taxonomy-aligned outcomes
Sim Patient Builder – Helps create simulated patient cases for healthcare education to use with Sim Patient
UnderstandMe: Supports creating key understandings from topic aims using the Understanding by Design framework.

Corey also mentioned two good resources for thinking about AI competency:
UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for Educators

Conceptualizing AI literacy: An exploratory review, Ng et al. (2021)

And finally, you can find some other resources from Cory on his linktree