• A new report AACSB reveals six beneficial ways schools can use AI
• AI helps learning become more effective and accessible for students
• Businesses should coach both staff and students about AI when deciding to implement AI into their systems.

It’s no lie that AI is changing the future as we know it.

AI is a goldmine filled with endless possibilities and everyone wants to get their hands on it. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report finds AI will be prioritised by 42% of surveyed companies by 2027.

We’ve already seen AI fill in for multiple roles from managerial ones to customer service. Now we see it step foot in the land of teaching.

A new report from AACSB International reveals six beneficial ways business schools can use AI:

– To elevate productivity
– Create new jobs
– Personalise learning
– Holistic learning
– Enhance creativity
– Make education accessible

“In four or five years, AI technology will exponentially change, and so it’s up to us to embrace a more collaborative, technology-enabled education model,” says Gareth James, the Dean of John H. Harland Goizueta Business School, a school that has conducted its own experiments to see how AI can truly change the educational field.

Goizueta Business School isn’t the only one experimenting with AI. Multiple other business schools are integrating AI and VR technology within the classroom to strengthen learning and improve the teaching experience.

Avatar teachers in the classroom

Emory University Goizieta Business School created an educational metaverse featuring doppelgänger avatar teachers to help students perfect all the elements of their course.

Rajiv Garg, a professor from Goizieta set up a small study where 40 students were assigned to different classes: one taught by a human teacher, one by AI assistants and one taught by both.

Teachers were made to design avatars that shared their features, voice and mannerisms and feed the AI scripts to deliver content in the form of videos that can aid classroom teaching.

Human teachers were still at the top of their game when it came to providing and organising material students need to learn, the study found, but AI did a better job at delivering content.

Interestingly, students performed best in classrooms that integrated both AI and human teachers. The second-best performers were taught by humans only and the poorest were students taught by AI tutors only.

AI tutors help save schools both time and money as faculty now can focus on putting together syllables that keep up with the times and culture whilst AI can help automate tasks within a course and help students with any questions they have inside or outside the classroom without them needing to go to their teachers.

Using AI to sort learning speed

NEOMA Business School, who also offer a virtual fourth campus, believe AI is a tool, not a replacement. NEOMA has reworked its teaching and assessment structures in order to adapt to AI so students can have a more interactive experience.

They’ve integrated AI into their teaching to sort students into profiles: slow learners and fast learners.

Professors were then able to adapt their own teaching to the different learnings. They decided to give faster learners an active role and have them act as mentors while focussing on the more challenging parts for slower students.

NEOMA Business School has found that using AI to personalise student learning allows them to be more engaged instead of passive.

Alain Goudey, Chief Digital Officer and Professor of Marketing at NEOMA Business School said, “The time saved means there’s more human interaction, which is beneficial for teachers and students alike.”

Pairing educational video games with AI

Gamification is gaining popularity as a form of learning in business schools around the world.

Play has always been a valuable factor in learning, allowing people to learn in a way that is fun and increases classroom engagement plus can be done outside the classroom.

However, the popularity of AI is leading to new developments in how it can be used in digital gamified learning to adapt games to individual students and their learning processes.

INSEAD Business School did this using XR, creating an extensive library dedicated to management and research. This library is filled with 20 XR experiences.

One of these allows students to undertake a fictional mission to Mars. In the game, they are asked to build a base, but while they are doing this an accident occurs and students have to problem-solve and work together to save themselves.

Bruce M. Mclaren and Huy Nguyen from Carnegie Mellon University conducted a review of multiple studies about digital learning games in AI education and found that AI gamification can help in a few ways:

• AI gamified learning can adapt to students in real time and provide customised support to help students solve problems via hints and error messages.
• AI can also help decision-making through interactive dashboards and recommendations that aren’t just based on problems students come across but on their performance and choices.
• Virtual characters can now be used as support companions instead of opponents to assist and teach students.

The researchers have also found AI gamified learning made learning more accessible and effective to students from different backgrounds. The game Decimal Point was found to increase performance in female students (having the potential to bridge the gender gap in math education) and in low-income students.

The AI career coach

Career guidance counsellors often get a bad rep for not providing sound career advice and we often see this stereotyped in movies and TV shows such as Ms Heron from Mean Girls and Mrs. Paraclete from Lizzie McGuire.

Of course, this isn’t reflective of all guidance counsellors. Research shows that this stereotype might be a result of burn-out and stress from the sheer workload of their role.

Many have large caseloads of students beyond their means have loads of other responsibilities in addition to helping students with their careers. This makes it challenging for them to be at the top of their game and provide the best support.

But just as AI has helped lessen the workload of teachers, AI can help lessen the workload of career counsellors.

POLIMI Graduate School of Management have launched an AI career coach called FLEXA, in partnership with Microsoft.

FLEXA analyses student career ambitions, compiles together the best opportunities for them and tells them how to improve their skills.

It does this by sorting through 800,000 pieces of learning material, from digital courses and webinars to podcasts, articles, and case studies and personalising them to each student.

FLEXA doesn’t just act as a career coach, it can act as a recruiter for organisations wanting to hire new talent too.

AI opens doors for all

AI allows business schools to reach more students, provide much better results in academic performance, and more meaningful classroom exchanges with students than ever before.

Whilst AI can bring about so much good change, it’s still relatively new and a lot of people are weary about it taking their jobs. Because of this, business schools should provide their faculty with support in regards to AI, how to use it and how it can help them.

Not only teachers, but business schools should also coach their students on the legitimate ways to use AI so they won’t engage in plagiarism – such as restructuring courses so it’s difficult for students to purely rely on AI – or lose out on developing key skills like innovative thinking and leadership skills.

AI coaching would also help address inequity and biases that may occur with AI learning and how to combat that. It’d also provide a reminder of the value of human-centric skills like empathy that may go unnoticed or unprioritised with AI and how to upskill in those areas.

Stephanie Adams from Goizuta Business School says, “We have folks who embrace innovation and technologies and folks who are more fearful, sceptical…It’s important to build a space where they feel comfortable learning new things, comfortable exploring, and okay when something doesn’t work.”

AI-focused learning will play a heavy role in the future and growth of business schools and if business schools want to keep up and offer the best facilities, they must learn and adapt.

By Sharmin Ahmed

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