Building AI Competency Through Practice

From exposure to transferable capability

Students do not become competent with AI because they have seen a tool, completed one prompted task, or produced a polished result. Competency grows when learners can see the progression, rehearse meaningful work, receive feedback, repeat the work with less support, and exercise judgment in a new context.

Six sequenced, interactive Practice Studios
Facilitator-supported discussion and application
A competency-development blueprint as the cohort project
Private responses stored in each participant's browser

Free foundation: From Prompting to Partnership is available before this pathway, but it is not one of the six required Studios. Facilitators may waive it when participants already demonstrate the foundational capabilities.

Discuss institutional access

Pathway at a glance

The design question this pathway answers

Central question: How do students progress from AI literacy to disciplinary competency?
Primary audience: Faculty and teaching cohorts designing repeated opportunities for student practice.
Unit of change: A course, assignment, or connected learning sequence.
Best readiness fit: Awareness moving toward Integration.
Participants produce: A competency-development blueprint with practice cycles, feedback, and transfer checks.

Choose this pathway when...

Students can use AI but their capability is inconsistent.
Assignments provide too few chances to rehearse and revise.
Students cannot see how AI competency develops over time.
Support is either absent or never designed to fade.
Polished output is being mistaken for sound judgment.

How it differs from the other pathways

Thinking With AI develops foundational Human+AI practices that transfer across faculty and staff roles. AI-Partnered Courses redesigns one disrupted assignment or course. This pathway focuses specifically on how learners develop competency through repeated practice, feedback, fading support, access, and transfer.

For a program-level map across Expertise, Experimentation, Engagement, Evaluation, and Ethics, choose Designing With the 5E Competency Framework.

Cohort experience

Who it is for and how it works

Participants bring a real course, assignment, or learning sequence. Each Studio adds one layer to a blueprint for helping students move from awareness toward capable, independent performance.

Faculty-centered pathway

Design the conditions for competency

Faculty examine the progression students can see, the practice they actually receive, the role of feedback, where support should fade, who has access to consequential experience, and what counts as evidence of discernment.

Instructional designers, faculty developers, librarians, and academic support professionals can participate when they work directly with faculty on learning design.

Local facilitation

A convener and design-review partner

The institutional facilitator keeps the cohort on schedule, hosts short discussions, monitors completion, and helps participants connect each Studio to their own learning design.

The competency package includes facilitator onboarding, discussion guides, a project-review framework, and completion reporting. Facilitators see completion evidence, not private Studio responses.

A sample eight-week schedule

Six self-paced Studios lead into a pilot, revision, and review of the participant's competency-development blueprint.

Before launch

Prepare the cohort

Identify the facilitator, complete onboarding, enroll up to 25 participants, and select the courses or learning sequences participants will examine.
Week 1

What Students Want Is Not What We Are Offering

Locate the gap between the experiences students seek and the developmental opportunities current courses provide.
Week 2

The Ladder Students Can See

Make the progression from literacy to competency visible through concrete stages, expectations, and evidence.
Week 3

The Practice Gap

Replace one-shot performance with a deliberate cycle of rehearsal, feedback, pressure testing, and revision.
Week 4

The Guide That Fades

Design support that helps learners begin and then recedes as their independence and judgment grow.
Week 5

A Foot in the Door, for Everyone

Create an equitable route to consequential practice, professional feedback, and participation.
Week 6

Judgment and Discernment

Define the observable evidence that distinguishes developed judgment from fluent output or task completion.
Week 7

Pilot and gather feedback

Pilot one practice cycle or review the blueprint with students, colleagues, or an instructional-design partner.
Week 8

Revise, submit, and review

Submit the revised blueprint for facilitator review and the assessed Human+AI Competency credential.

Estimated time: 75 minutes per week for Weeks 1–6. This includes approximately 45 minutes for the self-paced Studio plus a 30-minute cohort conversation. The pathway can stretch to 10–12 weeks when a cohort needs more time for design and testing.

Six connected Studios