Beyond learning design: supporting pedagogical innovation in response to AI

Universities everywhere are asking the same question: how do we innovate in teaching when technology is moving faster than we can adapt?

Over the past decade, much of what is celebrated as pedagogical innovation has been supported by the rise of learning design. To create online and blended programmes, universities paired faculty with education specialists who brought insights from pedagogical research, learning science, technology and media design. 

This methodology often produced impressive results. Courses were reimagined for new delivery modes, and faculty gained access to evidence-based guidance on topics such as engagement, assessment and feedback, as Rhiannon Pollard and Swapna Kumar of the University of Florida wrote in 2022. In many cases, these collaborations sparked conversations that rippled into face-to-face programmes, raising the overall quality of teaching.

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But as universities scaled up online provision, the dynamics changed. Learning design roles expanded, production models took hold, and the focus shifted from creativity to efficiency. 

Learning designers spent “significant amounts of time engaged in repetitive practices of course refinement, meaning mundane, workaday tasks like revising, updating, fine-tuning, or fixing the courses to which they were assigned”, according to a 2023 observational study from Jason McDonald of Brigham Young University.

Others have noted that the field of learning design has too often “relied on isolated frameworks and compartmentalized approaches”. 

Now artificial intelligence is accelerating these tensions. Used well, AI could give faculty and designers more space to experiment, reflect and take risks. But if it is simply used to produce more content, faster, universities risk deepening a content conveyor belt mentality.

If higher education wants genuine teaching innovation, it must recognise that pedagogy is the real driver of educational quality. This means making pedagogical improvement a strategic goal. Institutions can anchor innovation in values, build authentic communities of practice and invest explicitly in pedagogical leadership.

Align pedagogical innovation with values

Pedagogical innovation sticks when it is rooted in an institution’s educational mission. At the Stockholm School of Economics, we use a framework called Free, which is an acronym for fact-based, reflective, empathetic and entrepreneurial. Every course is expected to reflect these values.

This matters because it gives a clear compass for experimentation. When faculty pilot a new assessment approach, adopt AI tutors or trial peer feedback, we can ask: does this reinforce fact-based enquiry? Does it encourage reflection? Does it build empathy or entrepreneurial thinking? By mapping innovations back to values, we avoid adopting technology for technology’s sake.

The results are tangible. Faculty are more willing to experiment when they know changes are intentional and connected to a shared mission. Students also recognise the legitimacy of innovations. This makes efforts feel purposeful rather than performative. 

Build faculty communities of practice 

Top-down directives rarely transform teaching. Building online courses and writing “how to improve your teaching” guides is often pointless. Change spreads through faculty trust, dialogue, inspiration and shared trial and error. That’s why innovation should be supported through overlapping spaces – such as workshops and peer groups – where faculty engage with one another.

We use three formats that reinforce each other:

• open-house workshops, which any PhD or postdoc student, teaching assistant, professional staff or faculty member can attend, that introduce new approaches and tools
• faculty peer groups, which provide safe forums for colleagues to test ideas and share failures
• one-to-one consultations, with pedagogy-focused specialists and/or senior faculty, that give personalised support for course-specific challenges.

Together, these points of connection create a culture where teaching innovation feels communal, supported and tied to professional identity. Faculty are more likely to take risks if they know they won’t be doing it alone. Small experiments become collective learning, and successful practices are more likely to spread across departments.

Invest in pedagogical leadership

The days when innovation rippled out naturally from learning design are gone. Deliberate investment in pedagogical leadership is essential. As UK education consultant Neil Mosley has observed, it is almost impossible for faculty to keep up with both advances in technology and learning sciences and the demands of their own discipline. Technology is moving too quickly, and without dedicated leadership, pedagogy risks being sidelined.

Pedagogical leadership depends on clearly defined roles that make teaching a visible and valued part of academic life. One way forward is to formalise positions dedicated to this agenda: departmental leads for pedagogy or pedagogical advisers who work alongside programme directors. People in these roles can take responsibility for setting teaching priorities, advising on curriculum design, supporting new approaches to assessment, and ensuring that classroom practice is aligned with institutional strategy.

Crucially, this leadership does not happen in isolation. It works best when tied directly to communities of practice, where faculty learn from one another. Pedagogical leaders act as connectors and enablers, providing the structure, resources and recognition that allow these communities to thrive. They create the conditions for genuine enquiry into teaching, where colleagues can test new ideas, share results and reflect together. In this way, pedagogical leadership offers the scaffolding that helps communities of practice move from informal conversation to lasting institutional change.

The impact is visible. Through internal conversations, faculty report greater confidence, innovations are more widely adopted and students experience teaching that is richer and more coherent.

The test for the future is simple: do universities have the courage to put pedagogy at the heart of strategy? If higher education is serious about quality, it must deliberately invest in the system through values, community and leadership.

Charlotte von Essen is pedagogical and digital development lead at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden.

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This video covers:

02:10 The effects of AI on learning design

03:00 Three practical ways universities can reset pedagogical innovation

04:40 The case for pedagogical leadership

Hello, my name is Dr Charlotte von Essen and I am pedagogical and digital development lead at the Stockholm School of Economics here in Sweden. 

Today, I want to explore a challenge and an opportunity that every university is facing: how to drive genuine pedagogical innovation in an era of rapid technological change. This is not an abstract debate. It is a pressing strategic issue for higher education. Let me explain why. 

Over the past decade, much of what we call pedagogical innovation has been fuelled by the rise of learning design. Learning design emerged primarily as a methodology for creating online and blended programmes. 

In this model, faculty members work closely with learning designers who function as specialists. They bring insights from pedagogy, learning science and media design to reimagine courses for new delivery modes. 

Now, for many universities, this collaboration did more than produce online content. It catalysed new conversations about teaching. Faculty were exposed to systematic and evidence-based thinking on topics like engagement, assessment, feedback. In some cases, the ripple effects of learning design touched classrooms far beyond the online programmes themselves.

But as demand for online provision grew, and as universities became more dependent on the revenues from these programmes, something shifted. Learning design teams were scaled up and in the process, the work of design increasingly became industrialised. Instead of creative conversations about pedagogy, many designers found themselves managing production processes. The focus shifted from learning quality to speed and efficiency. Ironically, this content-conveyor-belt approach risks diminishing the very innovation it was meant to spark.

And today, artificial intelligence risks making this issue worse.  

AI offers extraordinary potential to free up time and extend creativity in teaching and learning. But if we simply use it to accelerate production, without reinvesting the saved capacity into deeper pedagogy, we risk churning out content at scale but stripping it of pedagogical depth and purpose. 

So, where does that leave us? 

We need a reset, a new approach to pedagogical innovation, one which treats pedagogy as a strategic core of higher education. And in the rest of this video, I want to offer three practical ways that universities can move forward on this path. 

Number one: align innovation with your institution’s educational values. At the Stockholm School of Economics, we have an educational mission we call FREE. It is an acronym for fact-based, reflective, empathetic and entrepreneurial. Every educational experience we design should embody these values. This educational mission is like a compass that guides decision-making, and it is a language we share with both faculty and students. When innovation is aligned with values, it avoids the trap of becoming technology for technology’s sake. It also builds legitimacy with stakeholders because people can see how new methods connect to the broader mission of the institution. 

Number two: create an authentic community of practice around pedagogy. Pedagogical innovation does not scale through top-down directives alone. It spreads through dialogue, trust and shared experimentation. That means building multiple avenues for educators to engage. This could be structured workshops that introduce new tools or approaches, peer learning groups where colleagues explore challenges together or one-to-one consultations that provide personalised support. The power lies in triangulating these efforts. By doing this, we create a culture where teaching innovation feels communal, supported and part of professional identity.

Number three: in the past, some universities could rely on the ripple effects of learning design projects where innovations would spread organically from online course development into other areas of teaching. But today technology is advancing too quickly for that passive model to suffice. Institutions need to invest explicitly in pedagogical leadership. 

These are dedicated people and resources whose mandate it is to explore, prototype and share new practices. This does not always mean large budgets, but it does mean treating pedagogy as a strategic priority rather than a byproduct of other endeavours. To be clear, learning design remains a vital capability for higher education. 

But pedagogical innovation can no longer be left as a convenient side effect of that process. It requires direct investment, intentional communication and strong relationship-building with stakeholders. There’s real promise of AI and other emerging technologies. But if we’re serious about the future of education, we must ensure that innovation is not reduced to content production.  

Instead, we need to anchor it in values, nurture it through communities of practice and sustain it through leadership. That, I believe, is how universities can reclaim pedagogical innovation as a creative force. 

I hope this was helpful. Thank you.