AI Literacy Needs Human Judgment

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The DOL framework seeks to define a baseline for AI literacy. But it fails to grapple with the fundamentally human aspects of the question.

If you’ve ever taken an online course, gone through new-hire onboarding, watched a training video, or used a step-by-step guide at work… congratulations. You’ve experienced instructional design.

You just probably didn’t know that’s what it was called.

What Instructional Design Really Is

Instructional design is simply the work of creating learning experiences that actually help people understand something, do something, or get better at something. It’s not just putting information on slides or uploading a PDF. It’s thinking about how people learn—and designing things in a way that makes learning easier, clearer, and more useful.

A good instructional designer doesn’t start with content.

They start with questions like:

• What do people really need to know or do?
• What’s confusing or slowing them down right now?
• How can we make this simpler, clearer, or more practical?
• Does this require training?

From there, they build learning that fits real life. That might mean short videos, practice activities, checklists, scenarios, discussions, or job aids. The goal isn’t to look fancy. The goal is to help people feel more confident and capable.

That’s why instructional design shows up everywhere:

• At work, it helps people get onboarded, trained, and promoted.
• In colleges, it helps courses make sense and keeps students engaged.
• In healthcare, it helps people learn safely and correctly.
• In EdTech, it’s what makes learning platforms actually usable.

When it’s done well

When instructional design is done well, you barely notice it. Things just click. The course flows. The training makes sense. You walk away thinking, “Okay, I actually get this.”

When it’s done badly

You feel it immediately. Confusing courses. Too much information. Not enough practice. Lots of clicking… very little learning.

That’s why instructional design matters more than people realize. It’s how organizations turn information into understanding. It’s how people move from watching to doing. It’s how learning becomes something that actually helps—not something people just try to get through.

So, if you’ve ever thought, “Why is this training so bad?” — you already understand why instructional design matters.

And that difference? That’s instructional design.