Teaching with intelligence: Elevating human value in the age of AI

W. P. Carey partners with AI tools to deliver personalized feedback and prepare students for a workforce that prizes both technological fluency and the human touch.

For faculty whose courses include dozens — or even hundreds — of students, providing personalized feedback on assignments can take hours. Yet just as AI is reshaping the way we teach and learn, it's also transforming how faculty across disciplines guide, grade, and engage students.

"We all have similar challenges: every student needs individualized feedback," said Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing Todd Drennan during the final Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT event of the 2025 fall semester. "As faculty, we need time to develop and enhance our learning experiences in the classroom. And when implementing these AI tools, we must do so ethically — using them to generate insights that help us learn from our practices and further enhance the student experience."

Drennan is one of eight W. P. Carey faculty members sharing their experiences in the AI Enhanced Teaching Initiative with the broader school community through the year's Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT series. The initiative emphasizes the ethical, inclusive, and innovative use of AI to support faculty and students through enhanced teaching and learning, scaled innovation, research generation, and outcome tracking.

"Initiatives like the AI Enhanced Teaching Initiative are so valuable to faculty support and student learning because they allow us to try new things in a way that can inform our school-wide teaching and learning strategy. Additionally, by utilizing Principled Innovation as a guiding lens for this work, we are consistently asking the question, 'just because we can, should we?' as we explore these tools," says Dan Gruber, associate dean of teaching and learning, College Catalyst, and co-founder of the Teaching and Learning Leaders Alliance. This consortium connects business school leaders from around the world.

During the event, Drennan shared how he's incorporating the AI tools TimelyGrader and NotebookLM into his workflow and curriculum. TimelyGrader, a "human-in-the-loop" system, partners with faculty to provide broad assignment support and scalable, AI-powered feedback. Using a rubric and point scale, Drennan can tailor feedback to his preferred length, complexity, and tone. The tool is being piloted by a few schools across ASU to explore its potential.

After TimelyGrader delivers an initial critique of a student's work, the faculty member reviews the feedback to understand the AI's rationale and confirm whether its assessment is accurate. The instructor then provides the student with the final feedback. Drennan describes the tool as an assistant — one that helps him manage feedback at scale without replacing his judgment.

"I view the human-in-the-loop aspect as an ethical firewall for me," he said. "I'm not just implementing AI that does all the grading and work, but rather using a system where I determine the final product — and decide whether I stand behind it."

Drennan has also begun implementing NotebookLM, a custom AI assistant, into his courses. Using only faculty-provided content, the tool supports students through chatbots, audio and video reviews that function like podcasts, briefing documents, and study guides for quiz and essay questions.

Drennan said AI tools like TimelyGrader and NotebookLM help meet students where they are in their learning journeys, offering support in ways that adapt to their individual needs.

"I view this as fuel for innovation by enabling more innovative pedagogy," Drennan said. "It allows me to design more complex and meaningful assignments that shift my focus to the high-value, human-centric work — mentoring students and deepening their engagement with course material while personalizing the curriculum in ways that help them reach their goals."

Building on Drennan's presentation, Assistant Teaching Professor of Information Systems Kumar Sirugudi discussed how AI is changing industries and, in turn, how universities must prepare students for life after graduation.

To effectively incorporate AI into this teaching, Sirugudi began exploring what employers now expect from graduates. He found that many organizations require candidates to complete at least one in-person interview to demonstrate mastery over fundamentals, while also emphasizing that AI should serve as a tool — not a replacement for the unique value people bring to their work.

"The expectation from industry is that the value of humans plus AI must be greater than the value of humans alone — or the value of AI alone," Sirugudi concluded.

For Sirugudi, this realization raised a question: How can educators ensure students are proficient in using AI to produce deliverables while still demonstrating strong fundamentals and distinctly human value in their work?

He explained that by assessing students on the co-production of deliverables with AI — rather than solely evaluating the final output — faculty can ensure students develop strong AI proficiency while still infusing their work with a uniquely human perspective.

Sirugudi proposed a new rubric for course assignments with four key categories: fundamentals, co-production with AI, verification of AI output, and demonstration of human value. He also shared examples of how faculty can help students understand how they are meeting each criterion.

"This framework of assessment categories allows us to design assignments — and position them — in a way that fosters a strong partnership between instructor and student, " said Sirugudi. "It also ensures the student is fully aware of how we critique their work. This clarity provides a fantastic foundation for instructors to design the AI policy appropriately for each course."

The most significant barrier to implementing this new rubric, Sirugudi explained, is scaling it to large class sizes. Oral quizzes remain the most effective way to assess how students partnered with AI while still demonstrating human value, but they become challenging to administer when enrollment is high.

In the three years since Gruber created Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT in partnership with W. P. Carey teaching leads and in alignment with the Office of the University Provost, the series has hosted 18 sessions, covering dozens of ways faculty are partnering with AI to improve teaching and learning outcomes. Other business schools across the nation have now adopted the model. Powered by Principled Innovation — ASU's newest design aspiration — the series encourages the creation of new ideas and approaches through a human-centered lens that cultivates positive change.

The series will return in the spring, providing ASU faculty and staff with continued opportunities to connect and explore how AI is transforming teaching, learning, and research in higher education.