Professors integrate generative AI into classes to train students for future workplace

As artificial intelligence continues to be adapted by industry and to change work processes, Rutgers Business School is innovating its course work with the technology to ensure students are prepared for the future.  

When it partnered with Google last year to provide AI-powered tools to students, faculty and staff, Rutgers Business School also announced a broad directive to integrate AI into curriculum across the areas of study.

The focus on AI included the creation of an MBA concentration in AI, a Master of Science in Marketing Analytics and Insights, and a Master of Accountancy in Accounting and Analytics, a program which offers a specialization in AI. 

“Every student who graduates will have knowledge of AI for business. That was the main motivation,” said Professor Hussein Issa, who chaired a task force charged with integrating AI into undergraduate academic courses.

The moves by Rutgers Business School leaders have gotten some notice. In the spring, RBS was listed – along with Wharton and Maryland’s Smith School of Business – as having a top MBA Program for AI by MBA Crystal Ball.

Lei Lei, Rutgers Business School’s dean, said it is imperative for students to learn how to use emerging technologies that are changing work and the way we do business. “Our ambition is to prepare graduates with the skills and talent most in demand by industry,” Lei said. “At RBS, we describe that preparation as future proofing.”

A group of Rutgers professors provided a glimpse of how generative AI is being integrated in their classes to foster critical thinking and to teach everything from demand forecasting to negotiations.

Practicing Negotiation 

Management professor Zeki Pagda introduced generative AI into his Management Consulting class after reading about how the U.S. government uses it to help employees improve their negotiating skills.

Pagda can select from dozens of scenarios – movie producer and movie director being just one example – and then assign ChatGPT a role to play. The simulation enables his undergraduate students to practice the negotiation styles he’s teaching them.

The student speaks to ChatGPT in the role-playing exercise, and ChatGPT responds in writing. “ChatGPT can play a role,” Pagda said. “It can ask a question and negotiate.”

That’s what his students used to do: Role play with one another.

Partnering them with AI is better, Pagda explained, because ChatGPT can respond with feedback and the student can try again. Practice is essential in learning negotiation. With AI, the feedback is more meaningful than another classmate, who is also learning negotiation skills, he said.

Pagda is able to create different scenarios, giving students an opportunity to practice the different negotiating styles. ChatGPT provides feedback based on the student’s words and tone. “It’s able to challenge the students,” he said.

Analyzing Demand

Supply chain professor Rudolf Leuschner started using generative AI in his graduate-level demand management classes more than a year ago.

He incorporated an assignment into his curriculum that requires students to feed AI their forecasts using the different methods he has taught them. The students ask AI to analyze the forecasts, allowing the large learning model to look for patterns. While the students are permitted to use AI to analyze the forecasts, they are required to critique the information it generates.

“I don’t want them to rely on AI tools, but I want them to be familiar with how to use them to make their output better,” Leuschner said.

Leuschner said students were excited to use generative AI when it was novel, but now they’re more familiar with it. He still provides them with specific guidance on how he wants them to use it.

“There’s a level of scrutiny,” Leuschner said. “People aren’t really sure what to make of it or where it’s place is.”

He feels a responsibility to teach students when and how it’s appropriate to use the technology to make them more efficient in their work.

Putting AI to use, and checking its work

Students in Erich Toncre’s Marketing Strategy course use generative AI as part of an assignment that requires them to find an article about a marketing strategy. He gives them latitude to choose a business they’re interested in – giants like Apple, Tesla and Amazon are excluded because they are already covered extensively in business media – and then they must critique the strategy described in the article.

“The critique itself must be their own,” Professor Toncre said. “They’re graded on their understanding of the marketing strategy and their ability to apply the concepts to other current business situations.”

“We want students to spend less time on busy work, like searching for an article, and more time on the area of critical thinking,” he said.

Toncre said he is as transparent as he can be about how students are permitted to use AI in his classes. He spells out his expectations for students on the course syllabi.

The marketing strategy assignment allows them to use AI as a tool. “If they use AI as a shortcut for working on the entire assignment, they’re using it wrong,” he said. “They are not only committing an academic violation, but they’re also cheating themselves for not using it properly as a helpful aid.”

In another class, the professor allows his students to use AI to enhance the visuals for the power points. What they’re graded on, though, is their command of the material – “What they say and how they say it,” he explained.

-Susan Todd