AI in action

From live case studies to personalized student feedback, AI is helping reshape business education and research.

The W. P. Carey School of Business introduced the speaker series "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" during the spring and summer of 2023 to share the impact of generative AI and ChatGPT on teaching and learning and to bring faculty and staff together to learn from each other. The series rotates around the business school academic departments as conversation starters and involves faculty and staff across W. P. Carey, along with colleagues from other ASU units and the Office of the University Provost. This story is the fourth in a series about "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" to share learnings with the broader community.

Since its founding in 2023, W. P. Carey's "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" series has covered topics including the ethical integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in business and education and ASU's partnership with Open AI, which resulted in six W. P. Carey faculty members securing licenses during the first round of the university's AI Innovation Challenge. During the series' first meeting of the fall 2024 semester, Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning Dan Gruber led a discussion on Sept. 17 featuring business school teaching leads and their plans for incorporating and navigating generative AI in their teaching this semester. The session marked the series' 12th meeting and was followed by a hands-on AI application event.

"We believe in fostering a space that allows us to learn, share, and innovate together. That is what we are trying to accomplish here," said Gruber, co-founder of the Teaching and Learning Leaders Alliance, which connects associate deans and other business school leaders from across the globe.

Cara McDaniel, assistant chair and clinical professor of economics, described how W. P. Carey economics faculty are using AI to assist in providing personalized feedback for students on Canvas and as a tool to create forms and codes.

"I treat it like a student," said McDaniel, the economics department faculty teaching lead, who described walking AI through the content she wanted to create while providing more complex instructions. "I draw on my teaching skills even though it's me that's being taught."

Clinical Associate Professor of Accountancy Melissa Samuelson and Associate Chair, faculty teaching lead, and Clinical Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship Mathias Arrfelt discussed how their departments are using AI to help generate exam questions based on case studies and other materials, as well as rubrics for grading assignments.

Clinical Professor of Marketing, Associate Chair, and teaching lead John Eaton described collaborating with corporate partners to understand how students are using AI outside the classroom to better prepare them for internships and life after ASU.

Roland Burgman, clinical associate professor of management and entrepreneurship, is using individual research including using AI to replace Harvard case studies in online courses. Burgman instead provides students with a company name and prompts that emulate case study questions.

"So far it's gone remarkably well and finessed many of the issues associated with students using widely-available online solution content to complete traditionally-used HBSP cases," said Burgman.

Clinical Professor of Information Systems and the department’s teaching lead Matt Sopha is focusing on exposing students to generative AI to help them learn how to use the technology effectively and responsibly. Sopha is also using the AI-powered assistant Microsoft Copilot to create data sets for student analysis and testing a new GPT chatbot available through MyEducator, a virtual textbook platform that uses the chatbot to answer student questions based on textbook content.

Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management Yimin Wang and Clinical Professor of Information Systems Nitin Walia, recipients of ASU Innovation Challenge licenses this fall, wrapped up the event by discussing how they are using OpenAI to further their research. Wang described using his license to perform research tasks like creating data sets based on information from real companies. Walia discussed using OpenAI to aid in a research paper focused on harnessing large language models to summarize reviews on websites like Yelp and Amazon. Some of the university leaders who are leading the implementation of the Challenge grants joined the discussion, too.

"This work is providing opportunities for us to rethink, reimagine, and innovate as we consider the range of things happening in this space," said Gruber.

The "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" conversation model is being implemented by other business schools to cultivate discussions on the intersection of technology and education, and the series will featured at an upcoming AACSB conference next month.