UVA Darden Goes ‘All-In’ on Use of Generative AI in Core Strategy Course

Darden School of Business MBA students received guidance on the first day of the core Strategy course this quarter that probably sounded unusual, even somewhat radical.

Generative AI is fully welcomed here, the Strategy professors told them.

Use ChatGPT, Claude, CoPilot, or any chatbot you prefer to conduct research, complete work, and even to help take exams in the course required of all 359 first-year students at the University of Virginia’s graduate business school.

“We’re diving all the way in,” says course head Jared Harris, regarding the embrace of AI.

Harris, the Samuel L. Slover Research Chair and one of the academic directors of Darden’s Institute for Business in Society, worked over the previous six months to reimagine what the Strategy course might look like in the age of generative AI. While initially he intended to simply revamp the course’s learning assessments, it quickly became apparent that a larger opportunity presented itself: figuring out how to harness AI for classroom learning.

“This is why we wanted them to embrace AI as part of their learning journey. It simply reflects the world they’re living in now, and they will be expected to be AI-literate in summer internships and beyond,” he said. “That’s why it’s incumbent upon us as faculty to be able to incorporate AI as a learning tool. So, our surprise message on the first day of class was: have at it!”

But that’s not all.

AI Discussion Agent

The students also will be required to use a new “AI discussion agent” called CAiSEY (Classroom Artificial Intelligence Studio for Engaging You) to meet a small percentage of course requirements.

CAiSEY is configured to have realistic, voice-based conversations with students about the course material, including interactions that Harris describes as “polite but adversarial,” meaning it is designed to challenge assumptions and analysis voiced by the student.

Using AI in the Strategy course is not only encouraged, it’s part of the requirement now.

The tool is designed to better prepare students for in-class case discussions by allowing them to practice conversations about the course material beforehand, and stress-test their arguments and analytical logic. After each conversation, the student receives tailored, automated feedback summarizing the interaction and pointing out strengths and suggestions on how to improve.

All students in all five sections of the first-year Strategy class at Darden are expected to embrace AI in not only in their general preparation for classroom discussion, but also with specific verbal conversations with CAiSEY. The AI discussion agent is being used on five of the 14 cases that students work on during the course in the second quarter of the fall semester.

B-School Partnership

The agent was created by Professor Dan Wang of the Columbia Business School, which is simultaneously piloting the use of CAiSEY in Columbia’s core Strategy course this fall. Harris said Darden jumped at the chance to partner with Columbia on testing usage of the tool, which Columbia describes as “an AI-powered learning platform that engages students in adaptive, voice-to-voice conversations with real-time feedback.”

“It has been so generative partnering with Jared and the first-year Strategy teaching team on piloting CAiSEY at Darden,” Wang said.  “We have been iterating on CAiSEY through various pilots and experiments for two years, and it is gratifying to now see its application and value across different classroom environments.”

Wang notes that CAiSEY allows instructors to easily integrate a personalized and dynamic AI learning experience in their courses while giving them transparency and feedback into how students are using AI in new ways. And early feedback from students indicates that CAiSEY helped them absorb class material more effectively while elevating their motivation and engagement in classroom discussion.

Welcoming AI to Class

Harris and his colleagues spent several months learning about how MBA-aged students use chatbots and working to better understand the expectations of employers around using AI as a tool for their new hires.

Their conclusion: Students not only use it, they expect it to be taught and incorporated in programs, and employers want new hires ready to put AI to work from day one on the job.

“There was a sense that, to be relevant, we need to lean into the usage of the best technological tools available in order to supercharge student learning,” he said.

To do so, Harris and the other professors on his teaching team had to carefully consider the challenge posed by embracing AI usage while still assessing and aiding student learning independent of AI. This is why half of the course’s learning assessments relate to mastering the course concepts, and the other half reflect the learning method and pedagogy Darden is famous for: the participant-centered exchange of ideas in the classroom itself.

And Darden embraces UVA’s famed Honor Code that forbids lying, cheating or stealing by students, which necessitates full disclosure of AI usage. Approaching the revamp of the course in that way, Harris said, allows students and faculty to be “all in” when it comes to AI in the Strategy class.

“We are asking for full transparency. If you use it, tell us what you used it for and how you used it. Which chatbot did you use? Be willing to share your prompts and results,” he said. “Explain how you verified AI’s output for hallucinations, and how your own thinking improved what the AI produced. We want to get better at this together.”

Harris and his teaching team also developed a new Generative AI policy specific to the class, which outlines accepted uses (do’s and don’ts), suggested uses, and expectations around being transparent and honest in how it’s used, and improving analytical skills through trial and error.

Learning Together

On embracing AI for both preparation for in-class work and on exams, Harris acknowledged that there is a degree of experimentation to everything they are trying out in the course this year. The professors expect to learn (just as students will learn) from the Strategy classroom experience and adjust for future classes. That includes honing the faculty’s ability to evaluate students in ways that require them to demonstrate an independent grasp of the material – as well as ways to assess how students effectively used AI to complete their work.

“We want to support students becoming competent in using AI as a workplace tool or companion,” he said. “This is exactly what businesses will expect of them after they leave Darden.”

While moving this Darden core class more fully into the AI-era, Harris stressed that the defining feature of a Darden student experience – the in-person, discussion-driven Socratic method of teaching – remains squarely in the driver’s seat.

“It’s crucial that students develop mastery about the subject, not just about how to write a ChatGPT prompt,” he said. “In the age of AI it will be more important than ever to add human value and insight on top of anything AI may be providing as an input. That analytical mastery remains the focus of the course – strategic thinking and action.”

The course even requires students to address the topic of the disruptive potential of AI in a new case Harris co-authored with fellow Darden professor Rory McDonald, “Expertise Disrupted? Consulting Confronts Generative AI” (UVA-S-0477), in which they ask students to consider the impact of AI on the business models and success prospects of the world’s leading consulting firms. In other words, not only has the course embraced the pedagogical usage of AI as an element of student instruction and learning, but also now asks students to analyze the advent of AI as one of their business cases itself.

AI Across Darden Classrooms

AI is also being introduced elsewhere in the curriculum, in different ways.

For instance, during the current quarter in the core Leadership Communication course designed and led by professor Brian Moriarty, all first-year students interact with an AI “speech coach” that records student videos and provides immediate feedback on both skills-based observations (such as grammar, overuse of filler words, talking too fast or slow) and content-based factors (for example, how to be more convincing or better organized or concise).

Students can also experiment and create their own custom GPTs to practice conversational interaction with different partner “profiles,” to help them prepare for job interviewing or other contexts. A similar use of AI has been introduced into the MBA elective course on “Professional Advancement.”

Last quarter, in the elective course “AI in Marketing,” part-time MBA students used a chatbot co-created by faculty and Darden’s Instructional Design & Assessment team to hone their marketing plans for an automobile manufacturer’s driverless trucks. Students submitted their draft plans to the custom GPT, which evaluated them and responded with questions intended to help students sharpen their analysis, challenge assumptions and highlight potential limitations in the plans.

At the institutional level, Darden is leading UVA-wide emphasis on research, exploration and practical application of ethics in AI. The School in 2024 launched the LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business, made possible by the largest gift in Darden’s history by UVA alumni David and Kathy LaCross.

Vice Dean Yael Grushka-Cockayne, an academic director of the LaCross Institute and special advisor to the UVA Provost on AI, said Darden’s growing momentum “lets us embed responsible AI across the curriculum and into practice.”

Vice Dean Yael Grushka-Cockayne

“Society is begging for intellectual debates and advanced thinking on what is now made possible by AI and how it should be delivered upon,” she said.

In April, Darden also announced the launch of a new AI, Data Analytics and Decision Sciences concentration, offering students 25 courses from which to choose to provide another track to gain specialized skills and experiences that position them to secure careers in these areas in high demand by employers.

Harris said the newly-launched approach in the five sections of the core Strategy course add a significant element to Darden’s evolution of teaching, incorporating – and learning from – the presence of artificial intelligence in the classroom.

“AI’s capabilities are evolving quickly, so we must evolve too,” Harris said. “I couldn’t be more grateful to my teaching colleagues for their valuable input, support and willingness to try some different approaches and learn from them.”

Harris and his colleagues – Professors Yo-Jud Cheng, Young Hou, Michael Lenox, and Anna McKean – are on the front lines of Darden’s new effort to embrace AI and elevate the school’s game.