The rapid growth of Artificial intelligence in the field of education (AIED) is revolutionizing the pedagogy, associated teaching and learning practices and needed competencies. Based on the literature review, recent studies focus on contributing to developing a better understanding of how AI may enhance teachers’ roles as catalysts in designing, visualising and orchestrating AI-enabled teaching and learning. In addition, many studies focus on developing and testing AI tools, applications or data-driven inferences of the pedagogy. Some attention has been placed how AI could be designed and developed as means to help students to acquire 21st century skills.

It is clear that AI-assisted learning is here to stay and it would even be naïve to claim otherwise. However, a few researchers call for attention towards the lack of critical thinking. Based on the findings, there are challenges and risks of AIED and towards the necessity for more comprehensive research on ethical and pedagogical techniques in the deployment of AIED in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding if the hands-on creative process could serve as a pedagogical method and an alternative of AI for understanding the digital, constantly and rapidly changing environment. The focus was on how learning, teaching and internalizing the overall view can be promoted in e-learning environment.

For a research method, an educational experiment of visual methods for higher education students was chosen. The development of technology has opened up new opportunities for visual and collaborative learning. Technology now allows us to create and present images and animations easily. Different ready-made templates are available for different situations, from which you can choose the one that suits you. The advantage of a template is that a ready-made visual model helps to perceive the big picture and build a common understanding. Although the experiment was now conducted only for students, the results can also be applied to face the challenges faced by teachers.

As a result, a wide list of benefits of visual learning were identified. Drawing and sketching are important techniques to achieve overall vision and based on the findings students appreciated having the opportunity to develop and experiment with their visual expression and thinking. Another advantage of such experiment is that it may deepen the understanding of the current and new practices of the use of visual methods in e-learning environment. In order to optimize the learning outcomes in the AI-era and competences in the future, it is important to understand how non-AI practices can be enhanced and managed.

Keywords: Visual learning, visual methods, e-learning, higher education, educational experiment.