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Supporting Learning with AI-Generated Images: A Research-Backed Guide - MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies
Supporting Learning with AI-Generated Images: A Research-Backed Guide - MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies
Suggestions and examples for using AI-generated images in meaningful ways to support learning, without adding confusing or distracting images. Consider cognitive load and the purpose of your images.
A study by Sung and Mayer (2012) suggests that any graphic in a learning experience will fall into one of these three categories: Instructive images: These visuals directly support learning and facilitate essential cognitive processing of core concepts. For example, a diagram illustrating Porter’s Five Forces can help students better understand this business strategy framework. Decorative images: These graphics enhance aesthetics but don’t influence learning. For example, an image of a business handshake can be visually appealing but won’t support or obstruct students’ understanding of negotiation strategies. Distracting images: Sung and Mayer call this category “seductive” images. While these visuals may relate to the topic, they impede learning because they require extraneous cognitive processing. As an example, consider a complex organizational chart of a full corporation in a lesson on team leadership. The image connects broadly to the lesson but also highlights a lot of irrelevant details, distracting students from the key concepts.
·mitsloanedtech.mit.edu·
Supporting Learning with AI-Generated Images: A Research-Backed Guide - MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies
The recent history of AI in 32 otters
The recent history of AI in 32 otters
Ethan Mollick shows the progression of AI image and video generation with iterations of a prompt about otters using wifi on a plane. He also explains the difference between diffusion and multimodal image generation models (Midjourney vs ChatGPT). These tools get such different results because the underlying technology and approach is different.
While LLMs generate text one word at a time, always moving forward, diffusion models start with random static and transform the entire image simultaneously through dozens of steps. It is like the difference between writing a story sentence by sentence versus starting with a marble block and gradually sculpting it into a statue, every part of the image is being refined at once, not built up sequentially.
But what makes diffusion models interesting is not their increasing ability to make photorealistic images, but rather the fact that they can create images in various styles.
Unlike diffusion models that transform noise into images, multimodal generation lets Large Language Models directly create images by adding tiny patches of color one after another, just as they add words one after another. This gives AIs deep control over the images it creates.
·oneusefulthing.org·
The recent history of AI in 32 otters
Rime | Voice AI
Rime | Voice AI
The advances in AI voices continue to impress me. Rime is aimed more for organizations using AI voices for customer service or live conversations, so it might be useful for voice chat in training applications. There's a free plan available to test it out.
·rime.ai·
Rime | Voice AI
AI image generators tend to exaggerate stereotypes
AI image generators tend to exaggerate stereotypes
The examples in this article are all from older images, but the problems of bias in AI image generators remain. Unless you are explicitly prompting to avoid stereotypes, AI image generators reflect the bias of the images they trained on. Even if you do prompt to avoid stereotypes, it can still be a problem.
·snexplores.org·
AI image generators tend to exaggerate stereotypes
How to achieve character consistency
How to achieve character consistency
How to video from Flora about how to create images with character consistency across different scenes. This is a more time consuming and technical process involving training a LoRA (low-rank adaptation) on an initial set of images for a character. This probably works best with real people, but there may be ways to adapt this workflow for elearning with generated characters. This is more effort than I would do for most projects, but might be worth exploring if I need something higher end for a specific project.
·youtube.com·
How to achieve character consistency
Podcast Transcript AI - Transcribe Any Podcast For Free!
Podcast Transcript AI - Transcribe Any Podcast For Free!
Generate a transcript of any podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Search for the name of the podcast, pick an episode, and get a transcript emailed to you. I wanted to get a transcript of one of my podcast interviews, and this was a quick way to generate one.
·podcasttranscript.ai·
Podcast Transcript AI - Transcribe Any Podcast For Free!
The Human-AI Task Scale | Josh Cavalier
The Human-AI Task Scale | Josh Cavalier
Josh Cavalier shared his Human-AI Task Scale showing a continuum of how humans and AI can work together. This makes so much more sense to me than a simple binary of "do it all yourself" or "AI does everything." This reflects much more range and shows opportunities for different kinds of tasks and work.
·linkedin.com·
The Human-AI Task Scale | Josh Cavalier
Timing's not everything: Immediate and delayed feedback are equally beneficial for performance in formative multiple‐choice testing
Timing's not everything: Immediate and delayed feedback are equally beneficial for performance in formative multiple‐choice testing
Indeed, there is evidence indicating that feedback delivered immediately after an item may optimise error correction (at least in some settings),43 whereas delayed feedback may enhance retention and transfer for correctly answered questions by providing an appropriately spaced second learning opportunity.44 Again, findings are mixed, and others have found delayed feedback to augment learning equally for both correctly and incorrectly answered questions.41 Interestingly, there may also be a greater advantage to delayed feedback when an initial question is more difficult
Contrary to our hypotheses, the feedback timing effect was non-significant—there was no discernible difference between feedback delivered immediately versus delayed feedback.
·asmepublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com·
Timing's not everything: Immediate and delayed feedback are equally beneficial for performance in formative multiple‐choice testing
Delayed and Immediate Feedback in the Classroom: The Results Aren’t What Students Think!
Delayed and Immediate Feedback in the Classroom: The Results Aren’t What Students Think!
Megan Sumeracki summarizes research on delayed and immediate feedback on homework assignments. The "immediate" condition here means "immediately after the due date" rather than "immediately after completing the work." Students who received delayed feedback did about 1 grade level better on the exams. However, they felt that the delay either didn't help them or hurt their learning. Student perception of what helped them most didn't align with what actually worked.
Logically if we think about feedback as correcting errors, then it makes sense that we would want pretty immediate feedback. But if we think about feedback as another presentation of the information, then a space ought to improve learning.
·learningscientists.org·
Delayed and Immediate Feedback in the Classroom: The Results Aren’t What Students Think!
Free Closed Caption Converter
Free Closed Caption Converter
Convert files between closed captions and transcript formats: SRT, VTT, TXT, DOCX. While most LLMs can also do this reformatting, this tool is a secure option for those who can't use LLMs in their work.
·recap-innovations.com·
Free Closed Caption Converter
AI Art Generator: Free AI Image Generator & Editor | OpenArt
AI Art Generator: Free AI Image Generator & Editor | OpenArt
Generate consistent character images in multiple scenes starting from a single image. You can also use image to video tools.This integrates with other tools and gives you the option to train your own AI model with your style for illustrations. The free plan is limited, but there are paid plans at different levels.
·openart.ai·
AI Art Generator: Free AI Image Generator & Editor | OpenArt
Say What You See - Google Arts & Culture
Say What You See - Google Arts & Culture
Learn how to write better prompts for images with this tool. Describe what you see in an image and see how close your generated image is to the original. This tool uses AI to analyze your results and how accurate you were.
·artsandculture.google.com·
Say What You See - Google Arts & Culture
FLORA
FLORA
Combine AI text, image, and video generation tools together for more complex workflows. I haven't tested this tool yet, but it might be worth using the free plan to experiment and see what's possible.
·florafauna.ai·
FLORA
Free Tools: Who Is Using What – And Why : Publications Library
Free Tools: Who Is Using What – And Why : Publications Library
Jane Bozarth's latest ebook includes a collection of free tools used by people in L&D plus quotes about how they're used. This is a great resource for anyone with limited budgets (and let's face it, most of us have limited budgets at least some of the time).
·learningguild.com·
Free Tools: Who Is Using What – And Why : Publications Library
AI-Generated Images: Missed Opportunities and Moral Shrugs
AI-Generated Images: Missed Opportunities and Moral Shrugs
Tom McDowell reflects on how much of our current AI image generation is very derivative and replicates specific artists. I agree with a lot of this. We could use these tools to create brand new and useful images, but there's a lot of use right now that feels problematic.
·idtips.substack.com·
AI-Generated Images: Missed Opportunities and Moral Shrugs
How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025
How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025
How do people use generative AI? I was surprised at how much of the use is for interactions like therapy and personal interaction. "Personal and professional support" was the top broad category in this research, which also includes tasks like organizing your life, resolving disputes, building lists, etc. "Content Creation and Editing" was second, followed by "Learning and Education." The popularity of learning on the list was also an interesting finding.
“Personal and Professional Support” is now the largest theme by far, stealing most of its new ground from “Technical Assistance & Troubleshooting.”
·hbr.org·
How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025
The power of generative marketing: Can generative AI create superhuman visual marketing content?
The power of generative marketing: Can generative AI create superhuman visual marketing content?
This abstract of a marketing research paper explains how they compared AI-generated images and ads to human-created ads. The AI images were not just comparable, they were better than what people created. While this research is specific to marketing, I think it's relevant to images we use in training and elearning.
First, we prompt seven state-of-the-art generative text-to-image models (DALL-E 3, Midjourney v6, Firefly 2, Imagen 2, Imagine, Realistic Vision, and Stable Diffusion XL Turbo) to create 10,320 synthetic marketing images, using 2,400 real-world, human-made images as input. 254,400 human evaluations of these images show that AI-generated marketing imagery can surpass human-made images in quality, realism, and aesthetics. Second, we give identical creative briefings to commissioned human freelancers and the AI models, showing that the best synthetic images also excel in ad creativity, ad attitudes, and prompt following.
·papers.ssrn.com·
The power of generative marketing: Can generative AI create superhuman visual marketing content?
How to create a simple 2-page business plan
How to create a simple 2-page business plan
If you're a freelancers, you're often a one-person business. You don't need a really complicated business plan, but you do need some sort of plan. This is a list of questions to ask yourself as a freelancer to clarify what you do, who you do it for, and how you make money. I did this for myself a few years ago, and I'm probably due for a refresh of my business plan now.
·blog.freelancersunion.org·
How to create a simple 2-page business plan
Inspiring Examples of Storytelling in eLearning
Inspiring Examples of Storytelling in eLearning
Great examples of how different perspectives (1st, 2nd, and 3rd person) can shift the feel of storytelling. Jonathan Hill also describes Vonnegut's "Man in a Hole" model for stories where a character overcomes a problem. I think that simpler narrative structure is much more useful for storytelling in training than the more complex "Hero's Journey."
·litmos.com·
Inspiring Examples of Storytelling in eLearning
When AI and Disability Rights Collide: A New Frontier in Workplace Accommodation 🤖♿
When AI and Disability Rights Collide: A New Frontier in Workplace Accommodation 🤖♿

This article is about accessibility and AI tools in the workplace, but it's good to keep in mind as we experiment with and evaluate AI tools for training purposes too.

"5 Ways AI Tools Create New Barriers

1️⃣ Inaccessible interfaces – Not compatible with screen readers or voice recognition software.

2️⃣ Rigid productivity metrics – Penalize neurodiverse work patterns.

3️⃣ Communication analysis – Misreads communication styles tied to certain disabilities.

4️⃣ Cognitive assumptions – Built around neurotypical thinking.

5️⃣ Sensory requirements – Require inputs (voice/vision) not accessible to all. "

·linkedin.com·
When AI and Disability Rights Collide: A New Frontier in Workplace Accommodation 🤖♿