Visualization Before Prompting: Why Teachers Still Matter More Than AI

 Visualization Before Prompting: Why Teachers Still Matter More Than AI

By Coach Amirul Iskandar Mannan

Today, almost everyone is talking about Artificial Intelligence or AI. Some are afraid that AI will eventually replace teachers, educators, and even human beings themselves. Others are overly excited and want to hand over almost everything to AI without fully understanding the true role of technology.

However, after personally working with teachers in Johor through the Visual Teachers project under the UN SDG initiative, I began to realize something very important about the future of education.

The biggest problem today is not AI.

The real problem is that people are beginning to think less before using AI.

Many people want to jump straight into prompting without having real clarity on what they actually want to create. They expect AI to instantly generate ideas, structures, and solutions without first going through the process of deep thinking.

But from my own experience, the teachers who produced the best outputs were not necessarily the ones who were best at using AI.

They were the teachers who visualized their ideas first before using AI.

This is where I began to see the importance of what I call “Visualization Before Prompting”.

This philosophy aligns closely with the concept of Visualization Through Freehand or VTF, created by Dr Ruzaimi Mat Rani, which forms the foundation of our Visual Teachers training program conducted with teachers in Johor.

Through VTF, teachers are trained to think, organize ideas, and communicate information visually using simple but impactful freehand sketches.

In our book Profits From Visuals, co-authored with Dr Ruzaimi Mat Rani, we emphasized that visuals are not merely drawings. Visuals are a form of thinking and communication.

Today, I believe even more strongly that in the AI era, the ability to visualize ideas before prompting may become one of the most important skills of the future.

“Visualization before prompting may become one of the most important skills in the AI era.”

During one of our training sessions with teachers in Johor, I asked participants to sketch their lesson ideas visually before using AI. After that, I encouraged them to use AI to evaluate their visual outputs based on several criteria, such as clarity, organization, and effectiveness of communication.

I also asked AI to provide a score out of 10, together with suggestions for improvement.

What surprised me was not just AI’s ability to provide feedback.

What surprised me most was the teachers’ reaction.

They were excited because the feedback was instant, structured, and honest.

Some teachers admitted that when they asked fellow teachers for feedback, the comments were sometimes too general, too brief, or simply rushed due to time constraints.

There could also be unconscious bias involved. If the evaluator were a close friend, the feedback might become overly soft. If someone was too busy, the feedback might simply be superficial.

But AI consistently provided direct suggestions and practical recommendations for improvement.

At that moment, I began thinking much deeper.

Could AI eventually assist teachers in evaluating visual communication and creativity?

My answer is yes.

But only to a certain extent.

AI may eventually become very effective at evaluating patterns, structure, organization, and clarity at what I would call a “machine level”.

It may even help improve consistency in educational assessment.

In educational research, concepts such as Cohen’s Kappa are used to measure agreement and consistency between human evaluators. As AI becomes more involved in education, one fascinating future discussion is whether AI could eventually achieve levels of evaluation consistency comparable to human educators.

But for me, the bigger question is this:

Is consistency alone enough without empathy and human understanding?

Because education is ultimately about human beings.

A weak student or a special needs student may produce a visual that appears technically weak according to a rubric.

AI may assign a lower score because the drawing lacks neatness, structure, or visual hierarchy.

But a human teacher may see something far more meaningful.

A teacher may see courage.

A teacher may see emotional expression.

A teacher may understand the struggle behind the visual.

A teacher may realize that the drawing is actually a form of communication from a student who struggles to express emotions through words.

This is where I believe humans will always prevail.

“AI may evaluate visuals. But humans understand humans.”

That is why I strongly believe that freehand visual communication skills are becoming even more important in the AI era, not less important.

Too many people want to use AI immediately without first training themselves to think visually.

Before someone can produce a good prompt, they must first learn how to visualize ideas clearly.

We need to see workflows, relationships between ideas, and the bigger picture before asking AI to assist us.

When teachers sketch and visualize first before using AI, they become creators leading AI.

Not merely users being led by AI.

And that makes all the difference.

The future of education is not about humans competing against AI.

The future is about humans learning how to work with AI without losing humanity in the process.

AI may become an incredibly powerful assistant for teachers.

But teachers will always remain the soul of education.

Because in the end, education is not merely about information.

Education is about people.

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