Skip to content

From Observation to Customized Lesson

Run the From Observation to Customized Lesson MicroSim fullscreen

About This MicroSim

Only one stage of this loop is the AI's. The rest belong to the mentor, and that proportion is the point.

The loop begins with observation -- what this student enjoys, where they got stuck -- and the panel text is emphatic about what that is not: a stored profile. The club is not building a model of the child. A mentor is noticing something, this week, and holding it in their head.

The mentor then turns that into a specific request. Not "make this easier", but a prompt naming exactly what should change: the pacing, the analogy, the difficulty. Specificity is what separates a useful customization from a regenerated lesson that is different but not better.

The agent drafts. The mentor reviews. The same human-in-the-loop gate Chapter 32 required for messages applies to lessons, for the same reason.

How to Use

  • Hover a stage to preview it; click to pin the details.
  • Blue and amber stages are the mentor's; the orange stage is the AI's; green is review and use.

Lesson Plan

Bloom level: Understand (L2) -- explain

Learning objective: Given a customization scenario, the learner explains which stage of the loop is mentor observation, which is the AI draft, and which is human review.

Before the sim (5 min). Ask how the club would customize a lesson for a student who loves music. Listen for whether anyone proposes storing that fact somewhere.

With the sim (10 min). Walk the stages and count how many belong to the mentor. Four of six. Then ask what the agent is given -- a request, not a student.

After the sim (15 min). Write one real customization request for a real student, specific enough that two different mentors would produce similar drafts from it.

Check for understanding. Ask: "What does the AI agent know about the student?" Only what the mentor put in the prompt -- and understanding why that is a design choice rather than a limitation is the objective met.

Embedding This MicroSim

Paste this into any page of the book, adjusting the relative path to docs/sims/ for the page's depth:

<iframe src="../../sims/ai-lesson-customization-workflow/main.html" width="100%" height="762" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Specification

The full specification below is extracted from Chapter 33: AI-Customized Curriculum and Rolling Out New Agents.

Type: workflow
**sim-id:** ai-lesson-customization-workflow<br/>
**Library:** Mermaid<br/>
**Status:** Specified
**Template:** https://github.com/dmccreary/ai-strategy-for-education/tree/main/docs/sims/ai-concept-hierarchy

Purpose: Tie building a student mental model, customizing lessons with AI, and AI assisted lesson customization into one traceable loop, so a learner sees where the mentor's own observation enters the process and where the human review step from chapter 32 still applies.

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2)
Bloom Taxonomy Verb: explain

Learning objective: Given a customization scenario, the learner explains which stage of the loop is mentor observation, which is the AI draft, and which is human review.

Steps (flowchart, no decision diamonds needed):
1. Start: "Mentor Observes a Student in Session" -- click reveals "The mentor's own week-to-week observation -- what a student enjoys, what they get stuck on -- never a stored profile."
2. Process: "Mentor Forms a Mental Model" -- click reveals "A working picture in the mentor's head: 'this student responds well to music-themed examples.'"
3. Process: "Mentor Requests a Specific Customization" -- click reveals "A detailed prompt naming exactly what should change -- pacing, analogy, difficulty -- following the specificity habit from chapter 32's prompt engineering section."
4. Process: "AI Agent Drafts the Customized Lesson" -- click reveals "The agent produces a revised card or lesson, keeping the underlying concept the same."
5. Process: "Mentor Reviews the Draft" -- click reveals "The same human-in-the-loop review chapter 32 required for every AI-drafted output, applied here to a lesson instead of a message."
6. End: "Customized Lesson Used With the Student" -- click reveals "The version that actually reaches the student -- always mentor-approved, never sent straight from the agent."

Interactivity requirement (satisfied): every node has a Mermaid `click` directive tied to an infobox showing its revealed text.

Color coding: Blue for the two mentor-observation steps, amber for the AI-drafting step, green for the human-review and final-use steps.

Implementation: Mermaid flowchart (`graph TD`) rendered in main.html with `click NodeId call showInfo("NodeId")` directives for every node, opening a side-panel infobox.

References