Learning Designer Agent: AI-Powered Course Generator
Builds a complete course with you, in a conversation. You describe what you need, the agent asks one question at a time, shows you exactly what it will produce, and only generates after you confirm. From a PDF or from a plain briefing.
What it does
The Learning Designer Agent, also known as Gi Learn, turns a document, a manual or an idea into a structured course ready to review and publish. It is part of the GFoundry Intelligence team of AI agents.
The difference from a one-shot generator is the conversation. You are not handing over a prompt and hoping. You are briefing a designer that asks what it needs, tells you the limits before you hit them, and hands back a summary for approval.
Key capabilities:
Conversational briefing: One question at a time. It proposes options and always accepts a free-form answer.
You choose the blocks: A structured content page is always included; on top of that you pick slides, a quiz, a downloadable PDF, a curated YouTube video, or all of them.
Exact control of the content: Counts, named sections, section types, topics to focus, topics to exclude, tone, level, and sentences that must appear word for word.
Your document as the source: Upload a PDF and decide whether the course may only use that document, or may also draw on the model's general knowledge.
Confirmation before generating: It summarises the final numbers and asks before spending the generation.
No silent trimming: Ask for more than a block allows and it tells you the cap and offers you the choice, instead of quietly cutting.
Use cases
Onboarding, compliance training, upskilling, product training, policy rollout. Whenever you need to turn an internal source, or your own subject knowledge, into a structured course at scale.
It is particularly useful when the course has to say something specific. A compliance course where six named principles must each appear with an explanation, an expected behaviour and an example is exactly the kind of brief the conversation is built to capture.
How do I create a course?
In the backoffice, open the Learn module and start creating content with AI. Optionally upload the PDF you want the course to be based on.
Describe the course you want, in your own words. A sentence is enough to start.
Answer the agent's questions. It needs a course title, a course objective (one sentence saying what the course lets someone do) and a target audience, plus which additional blocks you want.
Go deeper wherever it matters to you: topics, exclusions, tone, level, structure, counts. Skip whatever does not, and the agent decides.
Read the summary. It lists the title, the audience, the blocks and the final counts.
When it asks Can I generate the course based on this?, answer yes. Generation starts in the background.
You can delegate any of the three required fields. Say "you decide" or "suggest one" and the agent writes it, shows it to you in the summary, and does not ask you again.
What can I decide in the conversation?
This is where the new designer earns its keep. Everything below is optional, and anything you leave out the agent decides for you.
Which blocks: The structured content page is always generated. Choose one or more of slides, quiz, downloadable PDF, and a curated YouTube video.
How much of each: Quiz 1 to 50 questions, multiple choice and/or true or false, with 2 to 6 answers each. Slides 1 to 60, plus up to 12 insight cards and up to 10 true or false cards. Structured content page 1 to 12 sections. Downloadable PDF 1 to 6 modules. Practical scenarios 1 to 8. One curated YouTube video.
The structure of the content page: Name the sections yourself, in your order, with your titles. The agent keeps them exactly as you gave them.
The shape of each section: Plain text, callout, highlight, definition list, comparison, card grid, steps, FAQ, checklist, list, table or scenarios.
Items that must appear: Dictate a list and it is carried over word for word. Ask for one example per category and each category gets its own example, not a bare list of names.
Grouped content: Ask for two columns, such as benefits against risks, or for six groups each with an explanation, an expected behaviour and an example, and the course is built that way.
Exact sentences: Give a sentence that must appear verbatim, for example a line from a policy, and it is reproduced literally in the section you chose.
Learning objectives and description: Dictate them and they are kept word for word rather than reworded.
Tone and level: Tone professional, neutral or casual. Level beginner, intermediate or advanced.
Authoring instructions: General guidance such as "turn this into key messages and visual comparisons" or "avoid long blocks of text" is kept and applied to every block.
When you give a number, that number is what you get. When you give a range, the agent picks a value inside it and tells you which, so you can adjust it before confirming.
How do I work from my own document?
Upload the PDF and the agent summarises it back to you, then confirms how strictly the course should stick to it. There are three source scopes:
Document only: The course uses nothing but the uploaded document. This is the right choice for compliance, policy and contractual content, where outside facts are a liability.
Document plus knowledge: The document leads, and the model fills genuine gaps.
Knowledge only: No document, or the document is background. The course is written from the model's subject knowledge.
With a document uploaded, document only is the default, so you have to opt in to anything looser.
How do I keep a topic out of the course?
Exclusions come in three kinds, because "leave this out" rarely means the same thing twice. Say which you mean and the agent records it in the right channel:
Must never appear: The topic is kept out of the course entirely.
Covered in a later module: At most a short note that it comes later. No section, no definition, no example.
Mention is fine, do not develop: The topic can be named in passing but never expanded.
Be explicit. "Do not develop X" without saying that X comes later is treated as a hard exclusion, which is usually what people mean.
What is generated?
The course arrives in the Learn module, ready for review. Depending on what you asked for:
Title and description, plus skill tags for the course.
Structured content page: The core block, built from the sections and section types agreed in the conversation. It is not only an introduction: use it as the first course content or as a developed information block.
Slides: With insight cards and true or false cards. Slides and true or false cards get a photo matched to their content; insight cards do not.
Quiz: Every question has one correct answer, and duplicates are removed before you see it.
Downloadable PDF: A document organised in modules, chapters and sections, with text, tables, lists, concepts, tips, warnings and quotes.
Curated YouTube video: Chosen for relevance to your topic, objectives and audience, and for source credibility, quality, language, length and how current it is. It is an existing video selected for you, not a video the system produces.
Practical scenarios: Rendered inside the course content and the PDF rather than as a separate block.
Generation runs in the background and takes a few minutes, depending on how many blocks you asked for and how large the source document is. You can leave the page and check the job later.
What if one block fails?
Blocks are generated independently, so one failure does not lose the whole course. When that happens the course is delivered as a partial result, flagged as such, with the failed block identified. You can review and keep what came out, and regenerate the rest.
If the core content page fails, or every block fails, the job is reported as failed rather than handing you an empty course with a title on it.
In which language is the course generated?
In your platform's base language. Everything you write during the conversation, from the title to the dictated sentences, goes into the course in that language.
If your account has other languages configured, translate the whole course to them after you have validated the base version. Do that in the right order: validating first and translating second means you review once instead of correcting the same problem in every language.
Can I edit the generated content?
Yes, and you should. Every part of the course can be reviewed and edited before publishing: title, description, content page, slides, quiz questions, video choice and PDF.
Treat the output as a strong draft, not a finished course. AI models make mistakes, so read the text and look at the generated images before you publish. Use the review pass to add company-specific examples and to check anything with legal, compliance or contractual weight.
Tips for better courses
Answer the objective question properly: "Recognise risks and apply safe behaviours at work" produces a far better course than "learn about AI". The objective steers every block.
Say what must appear: If the course exists to cover seven specific concepts, name the seven. The conversation is built to hold that kind of detail, and the result is checked against it.
Upload the document for strict scope: For policy and compliance content, upload the PDF and choose document only.
One course at a time: The agent generates a single course per run. If you are planning a path of five modules, brief them one by one; the agent will ask you to confirm that is what you meant.
Give the exclusions: Saying what to leave out shapes a course as much as saying what to include, especially when another module already covers it.
Correct at the summary, not after: The summary before confirmation is the cheap place to fix a count or a section title.
Privacy and data handling
The Learning Designer Agent uses an external AI provider (OpenAI API, under a contractual no-training clause) to draft content. Prompts and uploaded files are processed for the purpose of generating the course; they are not used to train the provider's models. All generated content stays inside your GFoundry environment and follows the same retention rules as other Learn content. Uploaded source documents are scoped to your account. Your organisation's data stays in your organisation.
Which article should I open next?
To edit, improve or translate any generated text field, see AI Writing Assistant: generate, improve, shorten, fix and translate text in any form.
For creating Learn content items with AI support, see Content Item Creation with AI.