Experimenting, sharing and learning together were some of the main ideas for getting the most out of AI in the classroom proposed by professors from international universities, business leaders and the Director General of Industry of the Generalitat de Catalonia, Oriol Alcoba.
Cultivating curiosity, flexibility, and a desire to experiment is one of the key ways to make the most of the benefits that AI can offer education. This is one of the proposals shared by experts from academia, business and the public sector during the “AI Day for Education”, a conference organized at Esade to examine the impact of one of the most disruptive technologies in the world of education today. “The world is changing very quickly. My advice is: use AI for everything,” recommended Ethan Mollick, associate professor at the Wharton School and a leading thinker on AI and education. “This will radically change the way we teach in business schools. And the change will be noticeable quite quickly.”
During his remote talk, Mollick highlighted three factors to keep in mind regarding content produced with new generative AI models. “First, it’s undetectable. The tools designed to detect it don’t work well. Second, since 2023, there is no content on the Internet that is not contaminated by AI. We have entered a new post-“just human” era. Third, it is transformative. Nobody knows where we are going. No one has the answers or a secret instruction manual for making AI work better,” explained the author of the best-selling book Co-intelligence.
The international experts invited to debate this subject agree on the transformative power of AI, although with certain nuances.. Leonardo Caporarello, associate dean of online learning at the Bocconi School of Management, shared his experience using AI “agents” to anticipate exchanges of ideas and discussions in his classes. “That’s what I do every day now, but I don’t know what will happen later. Don’t be too scared now, we just need to be prepared. In five years, I hope to teach differently. How? I don’t know, but I will continue to learn because I love teaching and trying new ways of doing it. David Lefevre, professor at Imperial College Business School, believes that AI will become part of everyday life at university, “but it will happen rather gradually”. “What we really need to do to stay relevant is observe what’s happening and continue to continually learn.”
Experiment, share, learn
This “experience, share, learn” model defines the Esade approach to generative AI, explained Mar Vila, vice dean of the faculty of Esade Business School: “We need a lot of flexibility, a new state of mind. We must be willing to try new things and adapt. Joan Rodon, dean of Esade Business School, stressed that the challenge of change “can be a complex and large-scale task”. “But I remain very optimistic: one thing that characterizes Esade is our ability to approach lessons in a way that is very similar to what students will do on the job. With this in mind, we now need to keep an eye on what companies are doing and then think about how we want to train our students.”
In this context, the conference organized by the Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CTL) Esade complemented the academic point of view with a round table on the impact of AI on the business world, at which business leaders such as Pere Nebot, CIO of CaixaBank; Albert Mayol, partner at NTT DATA, and Oriol Alcoba, general director of Industry of the Generalitat of Catalonia. This was followed by another roundtable discussion in which professors Carles Torrecilla, David Murillo, Gloria Batllori, Ivanka Visnjic, Marc Cortés and Valentina De Marchi shared their experience with AI and best practices in the classroom.
Closing the event, Xavier Mendoza, general director of Esade, championed a “spirit of curiosity and experimentation as key factors when adopting AI, a challenge he sees as “a collective effort.” He also recalled Esade’s mission to train not only competent professionals, but also people of integrity, emphasizing the need for an ethical approach to AI: “We are here to make a positive impact.”
This conference was part of the “AI for Teaching” project, a program of activities that will continue during the 2024-2025 academic year with a teacher training plan aligned with the commitment for technology to be one cornerstones of learning at Esade. The business school was a pioneer by launching, in 2022, the joint program Bachelor of Business Administration and Artificial Intelligence for Business, which combines management training and the development of skills such as algorithmic thinking, computing, digital transformation and AI in the business world. Esade has cooperation and training agreements with entities such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and participates in innovation projects such as Challenge-Based Innovation (CBI) in collaboration with CERN, allowing students to learn and apply the latest technologies in some of Europe’s most pioneering science laboratories.
