Introduction to the Special Section on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in Learning Design: An Editorial with a Commentary

Abstract

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has rapidly become embedded in the professional practices of educators, learning designers, and learners, changing expectations around productivity, creativity, authorship, and expertise. This Editorial introduces the International Journal of Designs for Learning (IJDL) Special Section on Generative Artificial Intelligence in Learning Design, which features sixteen peer-reviewed Design Cases documenting how GenAI is being designed with, constrained, and interrogated across diverse learning contexts. These contexts include higher education, K–12, informal learning environments, professional learning, civic education, expressive arts, engineering, and open educational resource development. Rather than positioning GenAI as a miraculous or autonomous solution, the Design Cases foreground it as a facilitation tool, creative material, and site for critical inquiry within human-centered design practice. Across cases, GenAI functions as a co-designer, co-writer, co-critic, and provocation—supporting ideation, drafting, reflection, and iterative design—while remaining dependent on human judgment and contextual expertise. Authors explicitly address ethical tensions related to authorship, accuracy, bias, accessibility, equity, and rapid technological change. This Editorial synthesizes key themes across the collection and argues that GenAI does not replace learning designers. Instead, it makes their design work more visible, more complex, and more essential than ever.