Presentation by Jon Fila, Inclusive AI Strategies. Use the arrow keys, Page Up and Page Down to move through slides and step reveals. Press M to turn motion off or on, F for fullscreen.
Idea to Pilot-Ready in Under a Week
Think Bigger About AI
Jon Fila
Founder and AI Strategist, Inclusive AI Strategies
Get these slides iais.us/ideadlac26 (opens in a new tab)
Beside the title, a grid of course modules: six units with yellow caps, five rows of green cards in each.
About me
- 25+ years in alternative education, 10+ of them teaching online
- Facilitated the group leading my district’s equity work
- Rewrote Minnesota’s Manual of Accommodations for online learning
- Led a workgroup revising the NSQ Online Teaching standards
- Led Minnesota’s largest K–12 OER effort: 40+ courses, 200+ districts
- Built AI governance frameworks for The NROC Project
- Help schools find and reduce bias in generative AI tools
- DLAC Unsung Hero Award for Equity & Inclusion
- Minnesota Teacher of the Year finalist
- CITES exemplar for digital accessibility frameworks
- AWS City on Cloud Innovation Challenge winner
- Local Government Innovation Award, Humphrey School
Where AI training stops
LESSON PLANS
Generate a lesson in the style of…
QUIZZES
Write five multiple-choice questions…
PASSAGES
Rewrite this at a 9th-grade level…
Valuable as a starting point. Being treated as the destination.
Task level vs. system level
The course grid is empty: six units, five slots each.
TASK LEVEL
One artifact. One prompt. One reviewer.
SYSTEM LEVEL
A full course, aligned to standards.
UDLSELWCAGbuilt into every cell
STANDARDS
Building one online course
Three empty course grids side by side, one for each era.
Over a decade ago, by hand
800+
hours
Two years ago, with early AI tools
350+
hours
Now, about
one week
AI didn’t build it. I did.
Course wish list
What I have always tried to build into a course
- UDL principles
- SEL frameworks
- AI guidance and AI-resistant assignments
- SPED accommodations and ELL support
- Common Core alignment
- WCAG compliance
- Instructor slideshows, guidance and support
- ISTE Standards
- NSQ Online Course Standards
- Depth of Knowledge
- Inclusive design
- Community of Inquiry
THE COURSE
Creative Writing Through Dungeons & Dragons
Students want to tell stories.
- 1
UNIT 1
World Building
- 2
UNIT 2
Character Development
- 3
UNIT 3
Narrative Structure
- 4
UNIT 4
Dialogue and Voice
- 5
UNIT 5
Campaign Design
- 6
UNIT 6
Collaborative Storytelling and Capstone
- Grades 6–12
- Common Core ELA
- NSQ aligned
- Built to WCAG 2.2 AA
- CC BY-NC 4.0
Free course: iais.us/dndcourse (opens in a new tab)
Course details from inclusiveaistrategies.com/dnd-writing-course (opens in a new tab) and the course’s unit pages. Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast. This course is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast.
How I designed the course to make AI shortcuts unappealing
- 1
Personal connection
Every major assignment is rooted in the student’s own place, memory, or voice.
- 2
Metacognition
“Why did you choose this?” is embedded in every assignment.
- 3
Compounding work
The character from the backstory returns later. AI can’t fake continuity it didn’t make.
- 4
Capstone synthesis
The final project weaves together the learner’s own creative work from across the course.
AI GUIDANCE, WRITTEN INTO THE ASSIGNMENT
What students are told they may do
“You may ask an AI tool to ask you questions about your hometown to help you remember details.
Assignment 1.3: Hometown Fantasy Setting, Creative Writing Through Dungeons & Dragons
Built for WCAG 2.2 AA
VISUAL
- Atkinson Hyperlegible font
- WCAG 2.2 AA color contrast
- 1.5 line height
- High-contrast callout boxes
STRUCTURAL
- Consistent heading hierarchy
- Tables with proper headers
- Predictable “Next Steps” navigation
- Logical reading order
CONTENT
- Alt text on all visuals
- Descriptive link text
- Plain language with jargon defined
- Multiple formats for key concepts
Applied consistently across every HTML page in the course.
Standard: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, W3C Recommendation, w3.org/TR/WCAG22 (opens in a new tab)
What changed, and what stayed constant
One finished course grid.
- TIME800 hours to 350 hours to about one week
- SCALEOne course to courses in parallel
- REVIEW DEPTHOne pair of eyes to multi-frame audit
- ITERATION COSTHigh to near zero
- ACCESSIBILITYRetrofit to designed in
- An instructional designer reviews every piece.
- Standards shape the course from the first outline.
- Quality checks happen at every stage.
- Accessibility and equity are planned from the start.
- People who know the learners make the calls.
AI doesn’t replace expertise. It operates at the speed of it.
How AI use may affect experts and novices
EXPERTS
AI helps most at the practice stage, for students with strong content knowledge
As a tutor, study partner or editor
NOVICES
When AI does the thinking, all students risk skill decay
- With AI50%
- Without AI67%
Developers learning a new coding library: follow-up quiz scores (2026)
Sources: Kendeou, Greene, Nixon et al., “Ways Generative AI Can Support and Threaten Learning in K-20 US Education: Expert Consensus Report,” University of Minnesota, October 2026; Shen and Tamkin, “How AI Impacts Skill Formation,” arXiv:2601.20245, 2026 (preprint).
What AI won’t do by default
Choose the framework
NSQ, QM, UDL, WCAG: which standards, in what order, for what learner?
Make equity calls
What counts as culturally responsive in this community, with these texts?
Sequence cognitive load
What does a learner hold in working memory in week three?
Know your learners
IEPs, ELL supports, the student who just lost a parent. Context is not in training data.
Testing Claude on a course team’s quiz review
A fall 2026 cohort of online course designers. One dot per run.
- Caught all six planted quiz problems9 of 10 runs
- Applied the team’s question-bank depth rule without being told0 of 4 runs
- Caught the platform’s 150-character field limit0 of 6 runs
- Named the team’s approved accessible alternative0 of 6 runs
- Once given the team’s rules: every run flagged all six activity problems3 of 3 runs
YesNo
A detailed step-by-step prompt caught no more than “Check these quiz items for problems.” Adding the team’s rules is what changed the results.
Source: Jon Fila, pre-test built for the cohort, October 2026. Claude Sonnet run from the command line with a minimal system prompt; 3 to 10 runs per check; scored against an answer key and checked by hand. Results in the chat app may differ.
The training gap
TASK-LEVEL PD
What most AI PD teaches
- Prompting basics
- Tool selection (ChatGPT vs. Claude)
- Quick artifact generation
- Detection and AI-integrity policies
Prepares educators for individual classroom use
SYSTEM-LEVEL PD
What full-course AI design needs
- Layered context: standards, local rules, platform limits
- Standards-embedded workflows
- Multi-frame review (accessibility, equity, craft)
- Governance and QA at course scale
Prepares educators for course and program design
Three barriers to system-level work
The tools are ready for system-level work. What’s stopping institutions from getting there?
- 01
Expertise depth
Institutions assume AI replaces instructional design expertise. It doesn’t. It requires more of it, earlier in the process.
- 02
Quality framework
Without standards designed into the workflow, AI reproduces the field’s default mediocrity, faster.
- 03
PD scope mismatch
Task-level training cannot prepare educators for system-level course design. We need a different PD.
Three concrete next steps
- 01
Audit your current AI PD
Task-level or system-level? If it’s all task, name it and plan the next layer.
- 02
Map one course to quality standards
Pick one. NSQ, QM, WCAG at the outline stage. Feel where the work actually is.
- 03
Identify one system-level pilot
One course. One quarter. System-level from day one. Measure against task-level comparables.
Effective and efficient LLM use
Start with a profile
Who are you? The tool? The audience?
Work in persistent project spaces
Add files and instructions to a project so everything relevant is in context when you begin.
End long sessions with a handoff
Have the tool create a
handoff.mdto begin the next session.Keep a corrections list
Have the tool create a
lessons.mdto learn from corrections.Build a reusable prompt library
Use the tool to refine your prompts.
Specify output shape before you prompt
Know what an ideal finished product looks like.
The Default Sucks.
- 1
Load your standards and framework before the first prompt.
- 2
Give AI your own rules. It won’t find them on its own.
- 3
Build accessibility and equity in from the outline.
How I can support your school, district or online program
Move beyond AI artifacts to system‑level AI integration
Task‑level AI
- a quiz
- a lesson plan
- an email
System‑level AI integration
- 1
Step 1: Review the courses and policies you have
13 review dimensions (opens in a new tab) · AI vulnerability · NSQ · WCAG 2.2 AA
- 2
Step 2: Build a pilot course with SPED and ELL supports
Your standards · QM · WCAG 2.2 AA · UDL · SEL
- 3
Step 3: Train your team to build the rest the same way
Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini
Keynotes and PD days on student AI use and AI bias, in person or virtual•; 70+ workshops in 13 states
Free 30-minute consultation
inclusiveaistrategies.com/book (opens in a new tab)
Jon Fila
Founder and AI Strategist, Inclusive AI Strategies
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