The Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics hosted an innovative workshop for its professors and staff on December 10 entitled “Meet Your New TA: Using AI to Enhance Your Classroom Content.”
The showcase was led by UD’s Academic Technology Services’ (ATS) Lauren Kelley and Kelly Cross, who were joined by speakers Bharat Patil, assistant professor of operations management, and Mark Serva, associate professor of MIS.
The event offered Lerner faculty a unique opportunity to learn the practical applications of AI in business education, as both speakers have successfully incorporated AI while developing content, lesson plans, and assignments for their courses
“Lerner College is launching our Strategic Plan, and AI plays a central role in the future of the college and in business. Our faculty need to be at the forefront of using and teaching AI. This showcase program is one of many planned in the future to better educate our faculty, who will be educating our students on what will be the essential tool that is changing the way we do business and run the world,” said Deputy Dean and Aramark Chaired Professor Sheryl Kline.
This event allowed faculty to experience and experiment with several powerful AI tools, including Brisk and Lumen, as well as more universal tools such as ChatGPT and CoPilot.
Serva shared his top five takeaways on using AI as an effective tool and figurative TA within the classroom with Lerner:
- AI can be an effective tool to automate more mundane teaching tasks, including creating quizzes and PowerPoint slides.
- AI can also be a source for inspiring faculty by generating new ideas for well-trodden topic areas.
- AI can even generate complete lesson plans, including topic areas and activities for engaging students.
- New AI tools are more specialized, allowing faculty to focus on specific areas of interest (research, teaching, assessment).
- Faculty should consider experimenting with AI over the break to understand what AI tools offer and how they might jumpstart faculty teaching and research productivity.
Lerner College looks forward to continuing this conversation with a series of teaching and research showcases that allow its faculty to share their scholarship and teaching skills with others.