PEPCAL: A Heuristic Framework for Teaching Generative AI to Continuing Professional Education Providers and Faculty Developers

Abstract: Generative AI is rapidly evolving with the potential to change the way we think about and provide continuing professional development (CPD) and faculty development (FD), yet educators may lack practical and theoretically informed guidance for its integration. This Forum article introduces the Pedagogical-Ethical-Preparation-Creative-Administrative-Large Data (PEPCAL) framework to support CPD/FD leaders in teaching about and using GenAI. Developed from the authors' international teaching experience in GenAI, evolving literature, and inductive feedback, PEPCAL provides a heuristic matrix with two intersecting axes: how we begin to teach GenAI (Pedagogical Design, Ethical Considerations, and Preparation/Practical Application) and how health professions educators may use GenAI in their teaching (Creative Applications, Administrative Educational Tasks, and Large Data Insights). The framework highlights opportunities for GenAI to enhance multimodal learning, curriculum design, feedback, and data-informed decision-making, while building a foundation in ethics, environmental impact, pedagogical design, and avoiding deskilling and burnout. PEPCAL is intended to complement existing CPD frameworks and learning theories, prompting educators to move from tool-driven experimentation toward education-first adoption, adapting to different educational contexts in CPD and FD. The authors have found it helpful in training CPD/FD providers to responsibly implement, evaluate and iteratively refine GenAI-enabled CPD/FD, as well as help foster conversations around complex and evolving sociotechnical issues.