The AI Advantage in Teaching and Learning

• AI systems continue to alter the world of education, and they could be used in ways that encourage students to connect with their peers for academic support.
• To prepare for a future increasingly intertwined with AI technologies, students need to understand how the tools can be integrated in organizational contexts.
• Artificial intelligence can support faculty in every step of course creation—from sourcing content to personalizing materials based on students’ individual needs.

Transcript

Soumitra Dutta: [00:15] AI can help in many different ways in helping students enhance the learning experience. The most important one is, of course, in personalizing the quality of what they learn and how they learn.

[00:28] It’s also important to keep in mind that students have different career objectives. They have different skill requirements for the careers they choose, and AI can help customize the kind of skills and kind of study areas they focus on for their chosen career areas.

[00:45] AI can also help in connecting students to each other. Let’s say a student has a need in some certain section of an assignment. Other sections that student has probably done well and other students have performed well in those sections can be connected to the student much more easily using AI.

There are many different skills that the workforce of tomorrow will need in the field of AI.

[01:04] So AI can actually connect people together much more easily also.

[01:07] There are many different skills that the workforce of tomorrow will need in the field of AI. At a very simple level, you need to educate students about AI itself. What are the basic skills, what are the basic technologies, and how can you use the technologies tomorrow?

[01:25] If you think about it, people will use AI tools in a similar way like today how people use Excel and other Office tools—it will become as routine as that. So you need to basically understand the tools and understand how to use the tools. That’s the very first and very basic level.

[01:40] Second, I think AI is changing the way organizations work.

[01:44] So, students will need to understand the transformational impact of AI on businesses and organizations, on processes, and to be able to understand how to interface AI with the proper organizational context in which they’re actually operating.

Business schools do need to have the expertise and the faculty to be able to teach about the transformative impact of AI on business.

[01:59] Finally, I think students might be interested in creating businesses using AI products and tools. So the whole idea of, can you, in fact, get students to develop their own apps using a variety of AI-generated, no-code or low-code techniques is also very important because you can actually create apps that can be leading to, or can lead to, small businesses.

[02:21] Business schools do need to have the expertise and the faculty to be able to teach these kinds of AI courses, to be able to teach about the transformative impact of AI on business in general, and also to help create these kinds of AI-based applications, all these low-code and no-code app situations for students.

[02:39] So I think that expertise has to be, let’s say, built up inside the business school. And for that, you might need to hire new faculty, or you might need to, in fact, educate current faculty and do both, probably.

[02:54] So AI can enter into the faculty’s whole learning and teaching cycle at every single moment. Think about a faculty member trying to design a course.

[03:04] For designing a course, you need to actually understand what kind of content materials are available in the literature to be able to help create the best possible course. AI can help you in finding the best possible sources of content to include in your own course.

AI can help faculty in understanding the learning needs of each student, and customizing the curriculum to the needs of every single student.

[03:19] Faculty need to then think about how to combine the content into a proper, effective course curriculum. Once again, AI can actually help in creating the best course curriculum by helping combine the different modules in an effective manner.

[03:31] Faculty need to think about how to translate that course curriculum to the students’ needs. How do you actually make students learn through the curriculum? As you do so, you need to be able to make sure the curriculum at least addresses the individual learning needs of every student to the degree possible.

[03:48] AI can once again help the faculty member in understanding the needs, the learning needs of each student, and customizing the curriculum to the needs of every single student.

[03:58] And, of course, you can look at a post-course situation where the alumni of the course want to be sort of updated on the recent developments in that area, connect with other colleagues in the area with what work they’re doing.

[04:11] So, once again, AI can help keep the community alive and network with each other. So everywhere, actually, AI is there in what the faculty does.