AI as Professional Development Partner: Lessons from Transitioning into Instructional Design

I was designing a training module about AI adoption for teachers when I hit a wall that had nothing to do with technology. My AI instructional design partner kept flagging my content as “too text-dense” and “cognitively overwhelming.” My internal response was immediate and telling: “Back in my day, we handled complex information just fine.”

That phrase stopped me cold. Not because it made me sound old, or that my 13 year old son loves teasing my wife and I about using that phrase, but because it revealed something I’d been avoiding: for 20 years, I’d been operating under cognitively demanding standards that I was now unconsciously imposing on other adult learners.

The irony was perfect. While teaching others to use AI tools designed for efficiency and clarity, I was designing training that replicated the same high-cognitive-load patterns I’d normalized throughout my teaching career.

I chose to teach in traditionally underserved schools for my entire career. While I did have a home life that was challenging in many of the same ways that my students’ homes are challenging I had an excellent schooling experience with a wide mix of socio-economic groups. I was fortunate to have had amazing teachers throughout my public schooling and through graduate school.When I began my career, I observed that the professional standards and environment among my colleagues differed from those I experienced in my own schooling. Having chosen this path, as a school teacher, I was not only committing to the perennial and noble profession of being a school teacher, but even more, for groups of students who saw themselves as cast aside by and having little to no positive role in society.

When I was in my 20’s, likely right around when my prefrontal cortex finished developing, I realized that many of my greatest intellectual abilities and world views came from the wonderful teachers that I had. I was determined to pay those gifts back and forward, armed with the strong belief that knowledge is power and that kind of power can save and change lives. I set forth with my high minded ideals of doing what I could to change lives the way that my teachers changed mine.

Many know that teaching has never been what is considered to be an easy profession, for those of us who approach it diligently and properly. However, the schools that I was teaching in were levels more challenging. We often faced challenges of material resources, funding to make sure that our students’ stomachs were full enough to focus on school work, high staff turnover rates, students with a host of undiagnosed and/or unremediated mental and physical health challenges. There were often students who had been passed along in school and who were learning well below grade level, undiscovered learning disabilities, English language learning gaps, violence at home, and/or violence in their communities. Some schools that I taught in were in areas with a number of street gangs. There were also often issues with poverty–which goes with a number of those other challenges. As well, you could mix and match any of these for any of my students. Not surprisingly, with all of these things going on, oftentimes my students did not have a positive sense of themselves as students or even as human beings. Just as the high minded and high expectations, properly scaffolded, of my teachers helped me to see that there could be a better life for me when I grew up I attempted to offer such a path for my students.

Fast forward to 2025, taking a certificate course in a common eLearning app and designing a training for teachers about AI adoption. I thought I’d left those high-intensity patterns behind when I transitioned to instructional design. I was wrong. What my AI writing partner helped me to see, when it pointed out that my slides were too text dense and created too much of a cognitive load is that while I pride myself on having cultivated a gentle but rigorous approach to supporting young people with their learning I was still approaching adult education from the perspective of the extremely high and potentially unsustainable standards that I set for myself.

The Professional Pattern Recognition

What I discovered through designing AI training wasn’t just about cognitive load — it was about how patterns that made me an effective teacher with struggling students had become maladaptive in professional development contexts.

In the classroom, working with first-generation college students and English language learners, my approach was necessarily intensive. These students needed maximum scaffolding, careful explanation of every step, and exhaustive detail to succeed. When a student came from a home where no one had navigated academic writing, I couldn’t assume they understood implicit expectations. My thorough, comprehensive approach served them well.

But somewhere along the way, “high expectations properly scaffolded” morphed into “unrealistic standards poorly managed” when applied to adult professionals. The same attention to detail that helped a 16-year-old essay writer became cognitive overload for a middle aged teacher trying to learn AI tools during their lunch break.

The revelation was uncomfortable: I had internalized the idea that thorough meant overwhelming, that rigorous meant exhausting. If something wasn’t mentally taxing, I unconsciously questioned whether it was substantial enough.

When my AI writing partner pointed out that learning material for adults needed to be chunked out to provide a sustainable cognitive load–not dissimilar to what I did for my teen students–I realized that I was still experiencing more of my old teaching mentor, Marilee’s wisdom of “We teach what we need.” Well, at a certain point I needed to teach children, I suppose that I needed to learn to teach my inner child. Now, I’m learning to teach my inner adult.

Once I was able to wrap my head around the concept it’s easy for me to be more to the point and make fewer words do more. This is what I did for 20 years with my teen students. However, it’s also making me unpack some of the world views that I’ve been carrying with me for decades. I don’t have to work in a manner that is like the New England Protestant work ethic that I was raised with: “Just work hard and honestly. If you face challenges then just put your head down and work harder.” Just as I can create material that is rigorous, powerful, and punchy I can also work in a sustainable manner and still do great work and help to make my community better.

The Process to Improvement

The real test came when I had to redesign my AI training materials. Rather than relying on willpower to change decades-old patterns, I used my AI collaboration to systematically identify where I was still defaulting to cognitive overload. My AI instructional design partnership became the laboratory for testing whether I could actually create ‘rigorous, powerful, and punchy’ content without the cognitive overwhelm. I went through my project slide by slide, layer by layer and used prompts with my AI partner to get the support and insight that I needed to make this recalibration. The following are a couple of the prompts that I used. These are the more universal ones that would be useful with any Instructional Designer or trainer.

The Standards Translation Prompt: “I’m getting feedback that my adult training materials feel overwhelming, but my comprehensive approach worked well with struggling students for 20 years. Help me analyze what might need to adapt when moving from adolescent to adult learning contexts.”

The Cognitive Load Analysis Prompt: “I notice I tend to err on the side of thoroughness in my instructional design. What principles should I consider when balancing comprehensive content with cognitive load management for professional learners?”

However, if one is unfamiliar with working with an AI LLM as a writing partner I’m not certain how effective sitting down and writing these prompts would be without the AI having more context in the sense of your writing and personality. What I’ve found is that if one does not want to take the time to work with an AI to build some sort of communicative and reflective feedback loop then the initial prompts need to be exacting and highly detailed, think of genie wishes that don’t have unforeseen outcomes.

The key insight for professionals considering this approach: AI partnership works best when you treat it as ongoing collaboration rather than one-off assistance. Just as effective teaching relationships develop through consistent interaction, productive AI partnerships require time to understand your patterns and challenges.

For instructional designers and trainers, this process offers a unique diagnostic tool. By examining where your content triggers cognitive overload warnings, you can identify not just design problems but underlying assumptions about learning, work, and professional standards that may need updating for contemporary contexts.