🆕 What’s New In Personalized Learning Designer (mod_pld)

The Personalized Learning Designer (PLD), enhanced in the December 30, 2025, release (4.5 MP3), introduces new capabilities that improve learner targeting and personalized feedback through cohort-based conditions and AI-assisted content recommendations.

👥 Cohort Membership Condition Check

A new Cohort Membership Condition check is now available in PLD, enabling instructors to build rules-based criteria using a learner’s cohort association within a course.

🔍 What This Enables

This enhancement enables instructors to deliver more targeted, relevant messages by tailoring PLD rules to specific cohorts.

✨ Key Features

• Teachers can select one cohort at a time from the list of cohorts visible in the course.
• The condition supports:
  • User is a member of the selected cohort
  • User is not a member of the selected cohort
• Cohort conditions can be combined with other PLD conditions using AND / OR logic.
• The user interface clearly distinguishes between:
  • Group membership
  • Cohort membership

✅ Example Use Cases

• Send targeted reminders only to learners in a specific cohort.
• Apply different interventions for internal staff vs. external learners enrolled via cohorts.
• Exclude specific cohorts from automated nudges or alerts.

🤖 Recommend Content Via AI (PLD Action)

A new PLD action, Recommend content via AI, is now available for Assignments and Quizzes.
This action automatically generates personalized learning recommendations based on student performance.

🎯 What This Action Does

Once an activity is graded, PLD uses AI to:

• Analyse the assignment instructions or Quiz questions.
• Generate tailored recommendations aligned to the student’s grade.
• Suggest relevant internal course materials or external learning resources.

The recommendations appear directly below the standard activity feedback for the learner.

⚙️ How to Enable AI Recommendations

To enable this feature, a Site Administrator must activate the required AI operation:

1. Go to Site administration → AI
2. Open the configuration page:
   local/olms_ai/admin/configure.php
3. Enable the operation:
   “Generate recommended content based on grades from PLD”

📘 For detailed AI setup instructions, refer to the Open LMS support guide on AI features.

🧑‍🏫 How to Use in a Course

1. Navigate to your course and open Personalized Learning Designer (PLD).
2. Create a new rule.
3. Select the event:
   • Activity graded, and choose an Assignment or Quiz.
4. Define grade-based conditions (e.g., less than, greater than, or within a range).
5. Add the action:
   • Recommend content via AI

🔧 Action Configuration Options

• Recommendation tone: Supportive, Formal, or Friendly
• Content source:
  • Course material
  • External sources
• Maximum number of resources to display

After grading, learners will see a Recommendation section with curated links to help improve their understanding and performance.

📝 Notes & Considerations

• Using course material as the content source may consume more AI tokens, particularly in large courses.
• External sources are currently recommended for lower token consumption.
• Ongoing improvements are focused on performance optimization and token efficiency.
• It is important to note that AI-generated feedback and recommendations may not always be accurate. All AI-generated content should be reviewed by the teacher before being sent or published to learners. At a minimum, teachers should test and validate the types of feedback and recommendations produced by the AI to ensure they align with instructional goals and learner needs.