If you’ve ever needed “a hundred job aids in eight weeks,” you know the feeling:
There’s always one person who knows exactly how a process works… and zero time to get that knowledge documented for everyone else.
That’s where AI can quietly change the game. It doesn't replace expertise, but instead helps you capture and shape it faster.
First, a quick reality check on AI
This of AI as a fantastic drafting partner and detail checker.
Kind of like:
📝 An intern for first drafts – fast, eager, and decent with structure.
🔍 An editor for final drafts – great at tightening language and cleaning up.
But AI is not: the decision maker.
AI doesn’t know your policies, your risk tolerance, or your students. It will happily “please” you with confident answers, even when it’s guessing or simply making things up.
So you still need a human with context, judgement, and authority guiding the work from start to finish.
And of course: anything you paste into a public AI tool should be treated like it’s going on the internet. Work with your security team and use institution-approved tools and settings.
The 3C Method for Job Aids: Capture, Create, Check
At Legato, we use a simple three-step approach for AI-powered job aids:
1. Capture – Get the expertise out of someone’s head
Ask your subject matter expert (SME) to screen record themselves doing the task while narrating everything they think, click, and notice.
Use tools you already have: Teams (Clipchamp, Copilot), Zoom Clips, Snagit, Greenshot, etc.
Encourage them to be chatty: why they click something, what to avoid, what usually confuses people, even the mistakes.
AI loves “too much information.” A rich transcript means fewer gaps for it to guess about later.
2. Create – Let AI build the rough draft
Export or copy the transcript into your AI tool of choice (institution-approved Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.), then give a detailed prompt, for example:
“Using the transcript, create a step-by-step job aid for new staff in Student Financials. Include purpose, prerequisites, numbered steps, tips, and cautions.”
You can even specify the audience: brand-new staff, experienced users who just need a refresher, or students on a phone.
In a few seconds, you’ve skipped the hardest part: staring at a blank page.
3. Check – Use human time where it matters
Now pair the AI draft with the original video:
Verify every step against the recording
Fix any assumptions or inaccuracies
Add screenshots, formatting, and branding
Make sure tone and level of detail match your audience
Most of your time goes into quality and usability, not basic typing.
Try it with one process this week
Pick one process your team does all the time but has never fully documented. Record it, send it through your AI tool, and refine the draft. The second and third one will go even faster.
If you’d like help designing an AI-powered documentation approach for your campus (or just want to sanity-check your first batch of job aids) we’re happy to talk!
We volunteer thousands of hours helping institutions through processes like these because we believe no institutiton should have to navigate transformation alone. Click here to request a discovery call and power your job-aids with AI.
For more insights like this, subscribe to our newsletter!
