Instructional designers use AI-ARC across analysis, design, development, and evaluation to align outcomes with responsible AI integration¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

As a design heuristic, AI-ARC helps instructional designers structure activities and assessments that foster increasingly complex cognitive and ethical engagement with AI. During analysis and design, designers can "map course objectives to each ARC stage to determine where AI should support inquiry, where human judgment must remain central." During development it guides prompts, reflection checkpoints, and assignment scaffolds; during evaluation the ARC stages serve as criteria for reviewing whether a course supports ethical AI use and preserves student authorship.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Designers must treat AI-ARC as both a planning lens and a reflective scaffold across the design phases

Constraints¶

• The framework was developed for K-12 and higher education contexts; the paper offers no empirical evaluation of its use by designers

Target Learners¶

• instructional designers designing AI-integrated courses for K-12 and higher education learners

Target Learning Goals¶

• ethical AI integration
• learner agency
• critical engagement with AI
• original creation

Affordances¶

• Ai Arc Framework Ask Reflect Create

Related Strategies¶

• Integrate AI literacy instruction into study programs alongside responsible tool design
• Build ethical AI integration on four coordinated levels: faculty professional development, ethics curricula, clear institutional guidelines, and interdisciplinary updating

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Wood, D., & Moss, S. (2026). Cultivating Agency and Responsible AI Use Through the AI-ARC Framework. Journal of Instructional Design and Technology, 1(1), 8–17. https://doi.org/10.65201/CJHS2205