Infusing AI in Learning Design

Whether you are a teacher, a trainer, a subject-matter expert, or an instructional designer, the idea of a free, ‘AI-powered’ quiz-maker evokes a mixed response. It is very enticing, of course—just think about all the time, effort, and hassle it will save!  It will take some weight off your shoulders and will free you up to focus on more creative aspects of your work. At the same time, you are skeptical about how well it will actually work; worried that it will disrupt your work patterns; and wary of the costs lurking behind the promise of ‘completely free’.

In this article, our goal is to lay out the concept of Quillionz, explain how it works, and help you visualize how it can fit in with your work patterns. As you will see in the following paragraphs, it is super simple to adopt and hardly requires you to change your habits. And yes, it really is completely free.

What is Quillionz?

Quillionz is an AI-driven question generator. Quillionz harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to create the right questions from your teaching material, within seconds.

Why Quillionz?

The Quillionz team has years of experience in education and eLearning. We understand that asking the right questions is central to a quality learning experience. Quillionz lets you create more questions, build more quizzes—faster and more efficiently. With Quillionz you can unlock the true potential of questions to create complex and engaging learning experiences.

How do I use Quillionz?

This is how Quillionz works, in four simple steps:

1. Submit content
   To get started, simply copy the content on which you want questions, and paste it in Quillionz. Your content could be anything in text format—a chapter, an article, a website page, or even the transcript of a video. All we ask is that it contain at least 300 words. This is because, the Quillionz AI engine relies on natural language processing (NLP) algorithms. The longer a text is, the easier it is for the NLP algorithms to understand it.
2. Choose keywords
   Quillionz shortlists the important keywords for creating questions. All you need to do is tell Quillionz which of the suggested keywords are more important, and Quillionz will know where to focus its questions.
3. Review content
   Quillionz identifies the parts of your content which need to be tweaked and edited so that the AI algorithms can smoothly process everything. Just follow the Quillionz’s recommendations, and your content will be ready for the Quillionz AI engine, in no time.
4. Get questions
   Once your content is ready, Quillionz will create a set of quality questions in seconds. We know that AI cannot replace human expertise; and no one knows your content as well as you do. That’s why, Quillionz makes sure that you are completely in charge of tweaking and enhancing the questions as you see fit. You can delete a question, and even edit it on the spot. Once you’re happy with the question set, just export it, and use it as you please!

What sort of content can I use with Quillionz?

Quillionz works best with content that is structured and factual, and doesn’t follow too complex a writing style. Most instructional and educational content, therefore, is ideal for Quillionz. If your content is very subjective or expressive—a blog post, for example; if it includes long and convoluted sentences—such as a legal text; or if it is highly specialized to a domain and contains specific jargon—for instance a medical research article, Quillionz may not be the best option for you.

What about the ownership rights of my content?

With Quillionz, there are no data sensitivity or security concerns. Your content is entirely yours. What we create, we create for you, and share with you. We do not use or monetize your original text input content nor the Quillionz-created questions.

Is Quillionz really free? What’s the catch?

Rest assured, when we say Quillionz is completely free, we mean it. There are no hidden costs. Use Quillionz as much as you want, as creatively as you want. In fact, we can’t wait to see all the innovative applications of Quillionz you come up with!

Why? Because the more you use Quillionz, the more our AI engine learns. With every quiz created using Quillionz, the Quillionz ML algorithms improve. With every question that you select or delete, Quillionz gets better at picking the right questions for you. So really, that’s our catch!

Quillionz is here to help you create quizzes more efficiently. We are excited to see you make this unique AI-powered platform your own, and transform the way you design tests and assessments. Join thousands of teachers, trainers, and instructional designers in experiencing the next innovation in EdTech.

Click here to get started with Quillionz now!

If you are a subject-matter expert or a trainer, dealing with ever-changing content is an inevitable part of your work. In a world where technology evolves with the speed of light and workplace requirements shift from one day to the next, the shelf-life of your training content seems to be shrinking fast. New regulations, updates in policies and procedures, technology innovations or product changes are just some of the drivers that contribute to the unstable nature of your content. And there is simply nothing for it… you must keep up with the change and adapt to the new requirements as they come.

Challenges with unstable content

Usually, there are four key areas that are affected by these changes—curriculum content, media assets, technology, and assessment content.

Naturally, the curriculum changes are the most critical. There is no escaping them. Fortunately, with your domain knowledge and expertise, you can handle these changes with ease and finesse. They are a matter of course for you.

As far as the media and technology are concerned, these decisions tend to fall outside of your purview. The production and deployment is often delegated to a production team, and so these changes don’t impact your workflow too much.

What remains is the assessment content, and that, I would say, is the real challenge in this whole process.

The problem with questions

Questions are indispensible in training and eLearning. Without good questions, there is no way to evaluate your learners, or reinforce their learning. Someone has to create them. But, as SMEs, your time is extremely valuable. If, with every refreshment of the content cycle, you spent hours creating simple multiple-choice or True-False questions, you would barely have time to do anything else.

In recently had a conversation with the L&D head of a professional education institution on the topic of question creation. She mentioned that her SMEs spend anywhere between 30 minutes to one hour on creating as single MCQ. Some of you may think this is an inordinate amount of time, but considering the time it takes to review learning objectives, read the learning content, frame a question, plan distractors, and write feedback for each right or wrong choice – the minutes add up.

It is obvious that writing simple level-1 questions—the most prolific ones in eLearning—is just not the best use of your time.

To delegate or not to delegate

So you delegate, or you outsource. You pass your content on to an instructional designer or a vendor, and get them to write the assessment questions. Unfortunately, even that isn’t an optimal solution. Sending your content to someone else may save you the effort, but the process remains time-consuming.

They can’t be expected to know your content as well as you do, so they must take the time to go through the content, understand it, and then create the questions. And if the questions aren’t up to your expectations, the cycle of review and rework only ends up delaying the process even further.

Looking beyond the status quo

Clearly, the conventional options available to you for handling this challenge are inadequate; they fail to address the crux of the problem. A choice between creating questions yourself and outsourcing them is not going to resolve this perpetual dilemma.

We need to look beyond these limited options. We need to think outside the box and devise an innovative framework; a framework that doesn’t force you to choose between time and quality and sacrifice one for the other; a solution that finds the perfect balance between the two. And this is where Quillionz can help you. With a perfect synergy between artificial intelligence and human intelligence, Quillionz makes your question creation process more efficient, without compromising the quality.

Click here to get started with Quillionz now!

The emergence of AI in eLearning is inevitable. And with new technology, it is equally inevitable that old jobs must evolve.

This is hardly the first time that the eLearning industry is poised to undergo such a transformation. The industry and especially instructional designers have always been the first to embrace innovations and advances in technology. In fact, the very industry itself came into existence as advances in technology rendered instructor-led training moot. Learning and training professionals transitioned from instructor-led training to eLearning courses seamlessly. They adopted authoring tools into their practices with ease and started wielding them effectively to create better more engaging learning experiences.

Time has now come to do the same with artificial intelligence. It is not a threat, but an opportunity; to work better, to do more.

With AI taking care of the mundane, the role of an instructional designer can evolve into a new dimension—the AI creates the basics, the ID curates and enhances it. Let the AI do the initial work, structure the raw content, for example, or, say, create simple knowledge check questions based on the source. It won’t be perfect, for sure, but it’s a start, and undoubtedly simplifies the instructional designer’s work. Then, taking this partially-ready content, instructional designers simply do what they do best, refine and perfect it to create the best learning experience for their learners.

The technology, as it stands today, is hardly replacing the need for problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking and other higher-level cognitive processes. What it does do, however, is handling the basics, the tedium for us, so that we can do the more complex, creative, higher-level work, which we alone can do. This, then, must be the way forward; a collaboration where artificial and human intelligence complement each-other and work together, work better.

This the true value of AI.

In theory, with NLP technology, machines can create eLearning content. What does this mean for eLearning professionals? Will AI create eLearning courses on the click of a button? What do instructional designers do, then? Will they be out of a job? Such a fear is understandable but entirely unwarranted!

That Artificial Intelligence will replace humans in the workforce is a misconception that has been proven wrong time and time again. The proliferation of Chatbots in the customer service industry did not make humans redundant—quite the opposite. As bots began to handle a massive volume of mundane requests, humans could work more effectively and needed only step in to take care of the complexities and nuances.

Artificial Intelligence seems to be taking over all aspects of our lives. From Chatbots to Internet of Things, from virtual assistants to self-driving cars, Artificial Intelligence is everywhere. The domain of eLearning and education is no exception. Artificial Intelligence and specifically the potential of Natural Language Processing holds a very attractive proposition for the eLearning industry.