The strongest results usually come from a short sequence of focused prompts rather than one request to “create my whole seminar.” Pause after each response, decide what is useful, and tell the AI what to revise.
Gather Your Starting Details
Before opening an AI tool, identify the basic decisions that will shape the seminar.
- Write a working title and a two- or three-sentence explanation of the topic.
- Identify the intended audience and what participants may already know.
- Note the number of sessions and the length of each session.
- List required books, articles, films, images, sites, or examples.
- Write down what you most want participants to understand, consider, or discuss.
- Identify anything the seminar should not attempt to cover.
Example Starting Notes
Topic: Dayton’s aviation heritage and the people, places, institutions, and ideas that contributed to it.
Purpose: Help participants connect familiar local history to larger themes of invention, experimentation, industry, public memory, and regional identity.
Scope: Four sessions, with time for images, stories, questions, and discussion. The course should be informative without trying to cover every person or event.
Give AI the Full Context
Begin by explaining the seminar idea, audience, format, and type of assistance you want. Ask AI to act as a planning partner—not as the final authority.
Sample Prompt: Establish the Context
I am designing a four-session UDOLLI seminar called Exploring Dayton’s Aviation Heritage. Each session will be two hours, and the audience will be adult lifelong learners with varied levels of prior knowledge. I want the seminar to connect local aviation history with broader themes of innovation, experimentation, industry, public memory, and regional identity. It should include presentation, historical images, stories, and participant discussion. Act as a seminar-planning partner. First, identify the most important planning questions I should answer before creating the outline. Do not invent sources, quotations, or factual details.
Why this works: The prompt identifies the audience, time, purpose, instructional approach, and boundaries. It also asks AI to begin by clarifying the plan rather than immediately producing a finished course.
Request a Seminar Blueprint
After answering the planning questions, ask AI to organize the idea into a draft blueprint. A blueprint should give the seminar direction without locking you into every detail.
Sample Prompt: Create the Blueprint
Using the context above, propose a four-session seminar blueprint. Include a clear focus for each session, the logical connection between sessions, two or three key ideas for each session, and one possible engagement opportunity. Move from an accessible introduction toward deeper interpretation and synthesis. Keep the scope realistic for four two-hour sessions, and flag any topic that may be too broad or require additional research.
Session 1: Dayton, Curiosity, and Innovation
Establish the local setting, introduce key questions, and consider the conditions that helped experimentation and invention take root.
Session 2: Experimentation and the Pursuit of Flight
Explore the iterative process of testing ideas, solving problems, learning from failure, and communicating new discoveries.
Session 3: Aviation Expands
Examine how aviation became connected to industry, research, military activity, employment, and Dayton’s changing identity.
Session 4: Preserving and Interpreting Aviation Heritage
Consider how museums, historic places, archives, stories, and public programs shape what communities remember and value.
Moderator decision: The outline is only a starting point. Add, remove, reorder, or rename sessions based on your expertise and the resources you can confidently support.
Test the Scope and Sequence
AI often produces more content than a seminar can realistically cover. Ask it to challenge the plan before you begin developing individual sessions.
Sample Prompt: Challenge the Plan
Review this four-session outline as an instructional designer. Identify where the scope may be too broad, where two sessions overlap, where important background may be missing, and where participants may need time to pause, ask questions, or discuss. Recommend no more than five targeted changes. Explain the reason for each recommendation.
- Remove topics that are interesting but not essential to the seminar’s central purpose.
- Confirm that each session has a distinct role in the overall learning sequence.
- Allow time for transitions, questions, breaks, and participant interaction.
- Check that later sessions build on ideas introduced earlier.
- Reserve some content as optional material in case time permits.
Draft an Accurate Seminar Description
The participant-facing description should clearly communicate the topic, approach, and likely experience without exaggerating what the seminar will cover.
Sample Prompt: Write the Description
Using the revised seminar blueprint, write a participant-facing description of approximately 100 words for Exploring Dayton’s Aviation Heritage. Make it inviting, specific, and appropriate for adult lifelong learners. Explain what participants will explore and how the seminar will be conducted. Avoid hype, unexplained jargon, and promises that exceed the four-session scope.
Example Revised Description
Explore Dayton’s aviation heritage through the people, places, experiments, institutions, and stories that helped connect the region to the development of flight. Across four sessions, participants will consider how curiosity, persistence, industry, research, and public memory shaped Dayton’s aviation identity. Historical images, short presentations, guided questions, and group discussion will help connect local history to broader themes of innovation and change. No specialized aviation knowledge is required—only an interest in discovering how a community’s history can influence the way it understands itself today.
Create Clear Learning Goals
Learning goals clarify what participants should be able to understand, explain, compare, connect, or discuss by the end of the seminar. They also help you decide what content belongs in the course.
Sample Prompt: Draft Learning Goals
Draft four clear learning goals for this seminar. Use observable verbs such as explain, trace, compare, connect, interpret, or discuss. The goals should be realistic for four sessions and appropriate for a noncredit lifelong learning seminar. Avoid vague goals such as “learn about” or “understand everything about.”
Possible Learning Goals
By the end of the seminar, participants will be able to:
- Explain several factors that contributed to Dayton’s importance in aviation history.
- Trace connections among experimentation, innovation, industry, research, and community identity.
- Compare ways that historic sites, museums, archives, and public stories interpret aviation heritage.
- Discuss how local aviation history connects to broader questions about invention, change, and public memory.
For more help refining measurable goals, visit Creating Quality Learning Objectives.
Identify Engagement Opportunities
At this stage, identify where participants might discuss, compare, interpret, reflect, or apply an idea. You do not need to write every question yet; that work is covered in Module 3.
Sample Prompt: Locate Engagement Points
Review the four-session blueprint and identify two places in each session where participant engagement would improve learning. Suggest the type of engagement—such as image analysis, paired reflection, guided comparison, timeline review, short personal connection, or full-group discussion—but do not write the complete discussion questions yet. Keep the activities low-pressure and practical for adult learners.
Next step later in the series: Module 3, Use AI to Create Discussion Questions, will help you turn these engagement points into a sequenced discussion plan.
Revise the Output with Your Expertise
Now compare the AI-generated plan with what you know about the subject, your resources, and the UDOLLI audience. Tell the AI exactly what to keep, change, remove, or reconsider.
Sample Prompt: Make Targeted Revisions
Revise the blueprint using these decisions: keep the four-session structure; reduce the amount of background in Session 1; emphasize the process of experimentation in Session 2; add a clearer connection between aviation growth and Dayton’s regional identity in Session 3; and make Session 4 more focused on how communities preserve and interpret history. Retain time for participant discussion in every session. Show the revised plan and briefly explain what changed.
Specific revision instructions are more useful than asking AI to “make it better.” Continue working in short rounds until the plan reflects your actual intentions.
Save a Moderator-Approved Blueprint
Do not leave the final plan only inside an AI conversation. Copy the parts you approve into your seminar-planning document and label them as your working draft.
- Save the final title and participant description.
- Save the approved learning goals.
- Save the session sequence and purpose of each session.
- Record possible engagement points and resources still needed.
- Note factual claims, sources, quotations, or examples that require verification.
- Add your own stories, expertise, activities, and teaching decisions.
Your Product from Module 1
You should now have an AI-Assisted Seminar Blueprint: a focused title, accurate description, realistic learning goals, logical session sequence, initial engagement opportunities, and a list of next steps for developing the seminar.
University of Dayton Olli