Financial services firm Edward Jones designed its Gen AI for You & I program as a badge-based capability academy. By the end of the learning journey, associates are capable of a new skill represented by that badge. The skill is to be able to leverage Edward Jones’ first prototype conversational generative artificial intelligence (genAI) tool called Mack to assist them with design and development tasks, while using it in an efficient, effective, and responsible way.
The journey was tailored initially to the needs of 700 learning experience designers (LXDs). Following the pilot, training could be rolled out to all 54,000 associates as training for using genAI tools.
Program Details
Delivered on Edward Jones’ Ed learning experience platform, the asynchronous learning journey takes about two hours and has the following objectives:
- Explain the benefits of genAI and how to use it to provide value
- Access Mack from Microsoft Teams and effectively run prompts within the interface
- Apply operating principles for an ethical, compliant experience with genAI
- Construct prompts for Mack
- Navigate Mack through refinement and correction to achieve quality output
A Prompt Workshop addressed six specific pain points that were slowing down LXDs within the design and development workflow and provided additional application and practice for prompting. The workshop was 90 minutes of hands-on, social learning where groups of learners worked as a team to solve problems using prompting with the genAI tool. The groups then came together and discussed how they prompted, received coaching, and shared results.
Enterprise Learning also created the firm’s first prompt library and tied measurable results to it, tracking time spent writing partnership agreements or action mapping, for example, using effective prompts to drive efficiency.
After the initial six months, Edward Jones will reinforce the training with:
- A Day of Development session, Got a Case of the Mondays? Use Gen AI to Help You with Tasks. This hour-long session is designed to build perspective on how to manage the change of AI integration in the workplace. The firm models key skills—such as critical thinking, growth mindset, and adaptability—when prompting and working with multiple genAI tools.
- An Advanced Prompt Workshop for pilot participants. This dives deeper and reinforce prompting for use cases, particularly ideation, refinement, and coaching. The workshop provides the opportunity for associates to practice constructing open-end and closed-end prompts, and experiment to see how each type impacts results. Associates learn socially together as a team. Associates also practice prompting for summaries, including abstractive and extractive summaries.
- Prompting for Purpose – Ultra Pathway asynchronous experience. Released on the firm’s LXP, this experience reinforces key prompting skills and picks up where Gen AI for You & I leaves off, provides a Quick Reference, and additional starter prompts.
There are also Gen AI User Groups where learners can ask questions, share prompts and experiences, and learn from each other. They also receive coaching and consultation from the Learning Technology Center of Excellence.
Results
Edward Jones completed Wave 2 of the pilot program in April 2024, then moved on to Wave 3. According to survey results, in Wave 2, using a genAI tool for support helped to remove at least four performance barriers in the creation process for LXDs:
- Developing performance outcomes
- Developing learning objectives
- Applying learning science
- Knowing the right questions to ask
Upon completion of the Prompt Workshop, Edward Jones saw a 17 percent increase in adoption, and that adoption remained consistent for three subsequent months. The firm also saw a 20 percent increase in associates “prompting for purpose” (i.e., they thought through a use case, used prompt formats, and constructed prompts with increased confidence). Some 80 percent of participants now are leveraging Mack in their work on a weekly basis, exceeding Edward Jones’ target of 50 percent.
As a result of attendees using the Mack genAI tool, the program has helped reduce specific tasks within the learning and development workflow by 50 percent, with the largest consistent time savings occurring in the ideation phase.
Other examples gathered via user feedback:
- A designer used the genAI assistant to help create 150 sample assessment questions in preparation for a subject matter expert (SME) review. With the genAI tool, it took two days to author questions from scratch. Without the genAI tool, the designer stated it would have taken one month to author the questions for the SME.
- An associate leading the creation of a curriculum self-reported that this is normally an eight-hour task. But using the genAI tool, the associate only needed 30 minutes to create a base curriculum to share with SMEs and stakeholders.
