Jun
28
2026
Face to Face
Scenario-Based Learning through and with AI: Evidence-Informed Simulations for Education Leaders
Workshop at Seoul Festival of Learning - AIED Conference
This workshop explores how generative AI can strengthen scenario-based learning for the professional development of school and district leaders. Building on IIEP-UNESCO’s work in online and blended learning and Télécom Paris’ expertise in AI-supported learning, we present an approach in which AI not only helps generate context-aware scenarios, but also delivers simulations, prompts reflection, and provides evidence-informed feedback during leadership practice. Participants will experience how AI can place leaders in realistic school situations, invite them to analyse challenges, take decisions, justify their reasoning, and receive coaching-style feedback informed by literature on school leadership, educational planning and management. Participants will examine design principles, test simulation formats, and co-design scenarios for leadership learning.
Keywords: scenario-based learning; generative AI; school leadership; AI coaching; professional development; AI literacy; ethics
Introduction
Education systems increasingly need school and district leaders who can make sound decisions in complex environments. Leadership development programmes have used cases and scenarios to foster critical thinking, problem-solving, reflection, and transfer to practice. Such approaches allow participants to work through realistic dilemmas rather than simply absorb abstract principles (Yin, 2015). However, such approaches often depend on intensive facilitation and are therefore difficult to scale across contexts and languages.
Recent advances in generative AI create new possibilities for scenario-based professional learning. AI can now support the creation of context-aware leadership cases, simulate stakeholders through text or voice interactions, adapt prompts to participants’ responses, and provide timely feedback that encourages reflection rather than simply giving an answer. A key challenge is therefore to design AI tools in ways that encourage participants to justify decisions, consider alternatives, and connect their choices to evidence-informed leadership principles. This opens new opportunities for more interactive, personalised, and scalable leadership training. At the same time, international guidance stresses that such uses of AI should remain human-centred, ethically governed, and designed to augment rather than replace professional judgement (UNESCO, 2023).
In this workshop, we will explore how AI can be used not only for designing learning scenarios but also to deliver them: as a simulation partner, reflective coach, and structured feedback tool. We focus on leadership challenges faced by school and district leaders, such as instructional supervision, health and well-being in schools, or communication with parents.
Theme and Goals
The workshop explores how AI can support scenario-based learning and coaching for leadership and management in education. It has four interrelated goals.
First, it aims to show how AI can deliver scenario-based learning through simulations in which school and district leaders respond to realistic cases and receive structured feedback. Second, it examines AI as a training tool that supports reflection, professional judgement, and iterative decision-making rather than simply evaluating performance. Third, it invites participants to co-design practical formats and research questions for future use of AI-enabled simulations in leadership development. These goals are aligned with wider work in AI in education, which highlights both the pedagogical opportunities of AI-supported interaction and the need for careful human oversight and sound design (UNESCO, 2023).
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
identify key design principles for AI-supported leadership simulations,
analyse how AI-generated prompts and feedback can support reflective practice,
and co-design a short leadership scenario with an accompanying AI-supported feedback sequence.
Table 1. Workshop Timetable
Activity | Time |
|
Welcome & framing | 15 min | Introduction to the workshop rationale, with a focus on AI-enabled scenario-based learning for the professional development of school and district leaders and its relevance to current debates on AI in education and leadership for learning. |
Live demonstration of an AI-delivered leadership case | 20 min | Participants observe or actively engage in simulated leadership scenarios involving a realistic school or district dilemma. The AI plays multiple roles, including generating scenarios, stakeholder interaction and reflective feedback. |
Deconstruction of the simulation | 20 min | Unpack the pedagogical design of the simulation, including the leadership competencies targeted, the structure of prompts, the role of reflection, and the ethical safeguards guiding the use of AI. |
Break | 15 min |
|
Co-design activity: creating a leadership simulation case | 60 min | In small groups, participants design a short leadership scenario and an accompanying AI coaching sequence. They define the dilemma, identify stakeholder roles, formulate prompts, and decide what kind of feedback the AI should provide in line with the current literature and latest research and evidence. |
Group synthesis | 20 min | Participants share their draft scenarios and discuss recurring design choices, tensions, and opportunities for AI-supported scenario-based learning. |
Closing discussion and next steps | 30 min | Final reflection on implementation challenges, research priorities, and opportunities for future use of AI-enabled simulations in leadership development. |
Speakers
Ella Hamonic
Associate Programme Specialist - Learning design and Innovation
Ella Hamonic
Associate Programme Specialist - Learning design and Innovation
Ella Hamonic joined UNESCO in 2023 and now serves as Associate Programme Specialist in Learning Design and Innovation. In this role, she supports the development of the UNESCO-IIEP Global Campus, contributing to efforts to strengthen the capacity of Ministries of Education and policy leaders around the world. A graduate of Sciences Po Lille, she has over a decade of experience in online pedagogy, having worked with institutions such as UCLouvain, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Dartmouth College, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and Coursera. Her research on online pedagogies has been presented at major international conferences, including MIT, Stanford, and UC San Diego, and in 2019, her team was awarded the edX Prize. She co-chaired the EMOOCs international conference on AI in Education in 2025. Beyond her work in digital learning, she has also contributed to public advocacy on consent education and advised the French Ministry of Higher Education on preventing gender-based violence.
Annina Demirag
Junior Consultant
Annina Demirag
Junior Consultant
Annina Demirag is an education specialist working in international educational planning and development. She holds a Master’s degree in Education with International and Comparative Specialization from Stockholm University (2024) and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of Groningen (2021). After experience in the education section of UNICEF's India Country Office in 2021-22 as well as of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) in 2024-25, she joined UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), where she now works as a junior consultant on a project in Guyana that focuses on strengthening instructional leadership at school and district levels. Her work focuses on the support of training development including AI-supported scenario-based learning, of qualitative research and document revision, and of the revision of planning and governance guidelines.
Paola Mejia
Co-founder & CTO Schole.ai
Paola Mejia
Co-founder & CTO Schole.ai
Dr. Paola Mejia is the CTO and co-founder of Scholé AI, an AI-personalized learning platform building adaptive tools for workforce upskilling. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from EPFL with Professor Tanja Käser, where her research focused on personalizing learning and empowering educators through multidimensional student modeling, teacher dashboards, and AI-hybrid learning systems. She has conducted research at Monash University’s Center for Learning Analytics and has published across leading venues in AI in education, learning analytics, educational data mining, and human-computer interaction. Paola has taught machine learning, behavioral data analysis, and data science at EPFL, and her work sits at the intersection of AI, learning science, and scalable personalized education, with a focus on turning research-backed systems into practical tools for learners, educators, and organizations.
Vinitra Swany
CEO & Co-founder Schole.ai
Vinitra Swany
CEO & Co-founder Schole.ai
Dr. Vinitra Swamy is the CEO and co-founder of Scholé AI, an EPFL and UC Berkeley spin-off building AI-native learning tools. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from EPFL with Professors Tanja Käser and Martin Jaggi, where her research focused on human-centric explainable AI for education. She was named a 2024 “Rising Star in Data Science” by Stanford, UC San Diego, and the University of Chicago, and recently won the 2025 Patrick Denantes Memorial Prize for EPFL’s best CS thesis. She has taught data science and machine learning at UC Berkeley and the University of Washington, and currently serves as faculty for Harvard’s agentic AI intensives. Vinitra’s work sits at the intersection of modern AI and scalable personalized learning, with a focus on making AI systems more transparent for the learners, parents, and educators that use them.
Seyed Parsa Neshaei
PhD Candidate in Computer Science
Seyed Parsa Neshaei
PhD Candidate in Computer Science
Seyed Parsa Neshaei is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at EPFL, advised by Professor Tanja Käser. His research lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and learning sciences, where he studies how AI systems can help people learn more effectively, reflect more deeply, and develop stronger metacognitive skills. His work spans AI-powered educational technologies, large language models, interactive writing support, personalized learning, and learner-centered system design, with publications in leading venues including CHI, AIED, IJAIED, BJET, LAK, CSCW, ICIS, EMNLP, ACL, and more. Parsa's research focuses on making advanced AI systems more effective, transparent, and human-centered for learners and educators. Beyond his research, he has served the community as an Associate Chair for CHI Posters, as a member of the SwissCHI association's student chapter board, and as a co-organizer of the In2Writing 2026 workshop on intelligent writing assistants.
Resources
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Participate:
AIED + EDM + L@S (Co-located Conferences). One registration provides full access to all conference sessions, workshops, and official events across AIED, EDM, and L@S.
Contribute as presenter:
We welcome expressions of interest from colleagues and partners whose current work aligns with the workshop concept note. Contributors will be invited based on the relevance of their expertise and proposed contribution to the workshop objectives. Colleagues and partners who have developed tools, approaches, or resources that could inform the design of scenario-based activities for school leaders are warmly invited to reach out.
Please contact: Ella Hamonic, Associate Programme Specialist Learning design and innovation: e.hamonic@unesco.org
