The artificial intelligence assistant, or AI bot, is trained to lead students through proposing clubs that fit university guidelines, as well as help them draft a constitution, set a budget and develop fundraising ideas.
ClubCompass is meant to streamline the way new clubs are created, all while being ready for approval by Doane’s Student Congress.
Or, at least it would be if the bot were put to work for real.
The platform, automating some processes and making others more efficient, was developed this fall by business students in Charlena Miller’s “AI-Enabled Strategic Analysis” class.
Miller, an assistant professor of management at Doane, said the class models for students how to best use AI as a tool in an ethical way, while also demonstrating the limits to the rapidly spreading technology.
Students had to think creatively to solve problems for clients on campus. In one instance, a group developed a bot that helped schedule on-campus events and offered options for follow-up with attendees. Another group built a bot that analyzed the hitting of Doane's baseball team and suggested drills that could improve their performance at the plate.
“It’s not all about AI,” Miller said. “It’s about strategic and critical thinking and how AI can help or hurt, which is important for these business, marketing, and management students to understand because it’s such a big part of what they’ll be doing.”
GOING ALL IN WITH AI
Doane is among a growing number of small private universities in Nebraska that have leaned into the new technology, teaching students to harness AI responsibly rather than try to ban its use on campus.
Last year, a survey of more than 3,800 college students found 86 percent were already using AI to search for information, check grammar, summarize reading and even complete a first draft.
The Digital Education Council polled students from various degree levels and across fields of study, finding more than half (54 percent) of respondents relied upon AI on a daily basis.
While nearly half of the survey's respondents said they felt inadequately prepared for an AI-enabled workforce, Doane students in Miller's class said the opposite.
"If I go out into the workforce and all I can do is what the AI can do, then businesses are just going to hire the AI," said Kathryn Johnson, a senior from Omah. "We talk a lot about being able to outsmart the AI."
Johnson said early in her college career, she would turn to common AI apps like ChatGPT to provide her with an answer to questions. Now, through classes like Miller's, she's learned to be more strategic about what she asks in order to get better results.
Used properly, Johnson said, an AI will provide a framework for her to find the answers to her questions. In that, it almost acts as a second teacher, she added: "I talk to it like I talk to Dr. Miller."
Andrew Schmitz, who, along with Johnson, was on the ClubCompass team, described AI as a scaffolding that lets you ascend to high, hard-to-reach places.
During a capstone project exploring how AI could be used in accounting education, Schmitz said he was able to efficiently comb through nearly 200 research articles using a detailed set of prompts.
The AI was able to return published articles that matched the parameters he had set, providing him with a structure he used to narrow his sources to the 25 he incorporated in his final paper.
Schmitz said he could see how AI could be useful in courses that train accountants or auditors, easily identifying potential mistakes that then allow students the time to dig into analyzing what went wrong.
“It can be the difference between having busy work in a class and doing really meaningful work,” Schmitz said.
'PERMEATE EVERYTHING'
While Doane students said the experience of training an AI bot to solve a problem for a client has helped them prepare for their future careers, students at Nebraska Wesleyan University are using AI to simulate the dynamics of a group therapy session.
Role play has long been the signature pedagogical tool for teaching advanced clinical skills, according to Megan Pendley, an assistant professor of social work at NWU. But there are several limitations of those practice sessions in her "Advanced Practice with Groups" class.
Students might not have the lived experience of the patients they are meant to portray, leading to inauthentic sessions. Others might be too nervous to act in front of their peers and professors.
The bot serves as a bridge between the classroom and the real-world encounters those students will have, Pendley said.
"We're still doing all the things in the classroom, we're still doing lectures and reading from the textbook," she said. "But this is something where they can practice the skills we have talked about in an environment that I control, that gives feedback that I have trained it to give."
On one Tuesday evening in November, the master's students worked through a series of prompts to inform the AI on the type of therapy session that would be conducted, the population being served, the format and setting, as well as what theoretical orientation would be used.
Developing the scenario requires iteration and for students to use their own knowledge and judgment to solve any challenges that arise.
When Chelsea Thorton and Cassie Shambaugh-Miller asked the bot to produce an easy-to-understand prompt for a group therapy session focused on relational trauma and betrayal, the AI indicated the setting would be a "safe space."
"You can't guarantee it's going to be a safe environment for people because safe looks different for everybody," Shambaugh-Miller explained. "For some people, the conflict might not look safe."
Thorton then asked the bot to use a different phrase that would better reflect the kind of environment the group wanted to create while still using terminology that the everyday person could understand.
The AI obliged, changing "safe space" to "supportive environment." The humans, as well as the computer they had partnered with, agreed that was the right wording to carry forward.
Both students said the AI bot's ability to better help them understand concepts has been surprising.
"I had never really done anything with AI before, but I feel like it helps me analyze the text more," Thorton said. "We still have to think critically about what we're doing, but it helps you organize your thoughts and think differently."
Pendley’s graduate-level class is among a trio of AI-focused courses offered at NWU this fall.
Graciela Caneiro-Livingston, the university’s provost, said NWU is not abandoning its heritage as a liberal arts college with a large emphasis on the humanities. NWU is also not blind to the rapidly changing world, she said.
“We can see how this is going to permeate everything we do,” Caneiro-Livington said. “There are so many ethical, legal, and social questions that need to be answered. What we’re trying to do at NWU is answer them through a multidisciplinary approach.”
To that end, NWU also began offering a sports marketing communication class that examines how AI can be used in real-world applications, as well as in a biology class for non-majors, where it has been used as a tool to brainstorm and conduct research.
Students at the school will eventually be able to earn a minor in AI literacy.
At Doane, AI has been adopted in courses across the campus, including by biology professors in research centered on breast cancer.
Miller, who has been teaching about businesses deploying machine learning, virtual reality or other products well before the latest AI wave, said successful integration on college campuses will keep the focus on “not just where the human is in the loop, but the wisdom.”
It will be up to teachers and students to explore how new knowledge is generated as well as how decisions are made in moral and ethical ways. Those aren’t new questions to higher education, Miller adds.
“AI just gives us a good reason to make that sexy again.”
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