Abstract:

Higher education institutions are increasingly expected to integrate sustainability competencies across disciplines. However, many educators report difficulties translating sustainability frameworks into concrete teaching practices due to limited time, resources, and institutional or pedagogical support. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) offer new opportunities to support educators in curriculum design, yet most general-purpose AI tools are not tailored to pedagogical workflows or sustainability education. This paper presents early design insights from the usability evaluation of WeLearn, an AI-based platform we develop to assist educators in integrating sustainability competencies into their courses. The platform combines a curated corpus of sustainability resources with AI-supported functionalities including semantic resource search, a conversational assistant, and automated syllabus generation aligned with sustainability competency frameworks. This paper reports a usability study conducted with seven higher-education professionals involved in teaching, instructional design, and sustainability initiatives across different higher education institutions in France. Participants completed a series of exploratory tasks using the platform while engaging in think-aloud protocols, followed by reflective discussions. Qualitative analysis of interaction patterns and participant feedback identified several recurring themes related to the use of AI for pedagogical design. Results show that users approach the platform with interaction expectations shaped by general-purpose generative AI tools, often defaulting to conversational prompts. Moreover, while participants perceived the syllabus generation feature as valuable, they emphasized the need for greater agency through workflows that allow educators to refine and adapt generated content. Findings also indicated that clear communication of the platform’s added value compared with widely available generative AI tools is necessary, so that educators understand the purpose of each feature and how it supports pedagogical design. These insights provide design implications for AI-powered pedagogical tools and contribute to discussions about the role of artificial intelligence in supporting educators in integrating sustainability across higher education curricula.

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence in Education, Education for Sustainable Development, Higher Education, Usability.