Teaching in the Age of AI: A Conversation with Professors Aaron Duncan & Michael Myers

In this episode of the Entrepreneurship@DU Podcast, host Joshua Ross sits down with DU professors Michael Myers and Aaron Duncan to discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping higher education. Together, they explore how AI is transforming the way students learn, faculty teach, and universities prepare graduates for an evolving workforce. 

The conversation dives into creating psychological safety in the classroom, integrating AI, and the importance of collaboration between students and educators. Myers and Duncan share how they are rethinking assignments, assessment, and engagement to help students build curiosity, adaptability, and critical thinking skills in an AI-driven world. 

Transcript:

Aaron Duncan:

I think we really need to start teaching in the classroom is how to collaborate with ai. It’s not just let it replace you, but use it as a thought partner to move forward.

Joshua Ross:

My name is Joshua Ross and welcome to the entrepreneurship at DU podcast. In this episode, I sit down with University of Denver professors Michael Myers and Aaron Duncan to explore the evolving role of artificial intelligence in higher education.

Michael Myers:

So I think a lot of collaboration with students, which is the phase I think we’re really in right now. It’s not like, Hey, I know everything and you guys just listen. It’s like, no, no, no. Tell me what you’re using. Tell me how you’re using it, and then together we’ll create something amazing

Aaron Duncan:

If we’re not adapting very quickly and being agile, we’re getting left behind by our own students.

Joshua Ross:

In this spirited conversation, we discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping the classroom from redefining student expectations to transforming how educators teach, collaborate, and prepare students. For an AI driven world,

Aaron Duncan:

It really is trying to transform the way we learn, the way we teach, and way we interact with not only technology but other people as well.

Joshua Ross:

Here’s my conversation with Michael Myers and Aaron Duncan. Mike Lynn. Aaron, welcome to the entrepreneurship at DU podcast. Funny enough, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. So to get started, can each one of you give a little overview on your background, what you’re teaching, focus, who you are? Michael, I’ll start with you.

Michael Myers:

So I’m the faculty director for three of the four MBA programs. I am currently in the executive PhD program with a focus on generative AI and business and basically started the digital marketing area of expertise here at Daniels 15 years ago. So I teach digital marketing and fourth industrial revolution technologies.

Joshua Ross:

Have you always been an academic?

Michael Myers:

No, I was in corporate for about 20 years prior and so with Experian e-marketing and a host of agencies and then did a lot of consulting and worked with startups as well.

Aaron Duncan:

Awesome.

Joshua Ross:

Aaron,

Aaron Duncan:

That’s a tough act to follow.

Joshua Ross:

It is a very tough act.

Aaron Duncan:

I’m sorry, I went last or I’ve been at Daniels for 21 years. My academic interest is emerging technologies, emerging industries and how those create competitive advantage while they’re creating their own space in the market and those types of things. Have my PhD in behavioral change and management of organizational change and marketing professor associates. My interests really rely around transition theory and innovation hubs and building new regimes around technologies and how organizations, cultures and really society starts to enhance and realize new technologies.

Joshua Ross:

So audience, I’m going to point this out and you will realize this throughout the podcast. I am clearly the least educated person in this room. All right. Why integrate technology tools into your classroom? Because in terms of faculty adoption, I’d like to believe that you are the norm, but I kind of believe you guys are the exception. So the question is why, and I’m not just referring to artificial intelligence, but you both talked about your backgrounds in terms of the way you look at technology. You’ve been looking at technology for quite a long time. You’ve been in integrating it. Michael, I know you’re always taking students to South by Southwest, looking at what’s next. Aaron, you also created our digital transformation graduate course. You consult, so neither of you are new to this concept, but why?

Aaron Duncan:

I don’t think we have a choice. I think in terms of leading the space in terms of helping students get jobs and realize the shift, I mean transformation isn’t slowing down in recent years. The amount of scholarship that’s gone on to or around emerging technology is doubled in just one year in terms of what we had previously. So I think organizations are starting to feel out what that is. I think they’re starting to understand what emerging technologies are and they’re starting to bundle and put these things back together for value for the customer. And if we don’t get ahead of that and if we don’t start teaching and pushing the boundaries within our classrooms, I think we’re not really serving our students.

Michael Myers:

I would agree with everything Erin said. I think business school is probably an interesting hybrid between academia and business. And so the more we can mirror business, the better off we are for our students. I am excited and have been excited by new technologies every time it’s come around. Last one being mobile was probably the most exciting for me as far as kind of a cultural shift. This one is interesting, AI specifically just because it’s so easy to access. So I’ve got my mom email or texting me questions. I got my dad texting me and that did not happen for previous technologies. The adoption was such a challenge as far as whatever, technology, blockchain, anything like that. This one’s real easy. And I also think that we have amazing students and as a consequence they come in with, have you seen this and what is this and how does this work and how do I get the best out of this? And so I think a lot of collaboration with students, which is the phase I think we’re really in right now. It’s not like, Hey, I know everything and you guys just listen. It’s like, no, no, no. Tell me what you’re using. Tell me how you’re using it and then together we’ll create something amazing.

Aaron Duncan:

And Michael, I’d like just to echo that and for the first time being in the classroom, I asked people about their internships and so many of ’em were in startups with AI and doing interesting things and I was kind of felt humbled in terms of, okay, I’m up here to tell you what AI’s going on, but they’re on the frontier of this stuff. And so if we’re not adapting very quickly and being agile, we’re getting left behind by our own students.

Joshua Ross:

I also like it because it requires us as faculty to leave our ego at the door. Amen. And just say, I always tell ’em, I’m like, I’m going to learn as much from you as you are going to learn from me and you guys are all going to learn from each other as well. Totally. And I think that really lends to an amazing experience. So with that being said, and you have students bringing artificial intelligence into the classroom, and you mentioned blockchain, which is not as an accessible technology, but AI is how are you integrating it into your classrooms?

Michael Myers:

So I used to teach hyper-personalized marketing starting in 20 17, 20 16, 20 17, and it was primarily a focus on API enabled, so algorithmic enabled kind of personalization and so kind of got that ball rolling, but obviously the interface to interact with it wasn’t really there. So I’ve been doing that for a while, but then I got a series of tools that they come in with when we show them, and it used to be like AI day, it used to be like, okay, here it is and then here’s everything else. Now it’s like, okay, here’s how AI touches this technology. Here’s how AI touches this technology, here’s how AI touches this business model. And I think that’s a better way to approach it. Definitely the analogy has been, it’s very similar in as far as teaching to ethics. There is no ethics day. It’s like ethics throughout, so now it’s AI throughout. So I think that’s been part of the challenge with faculty, which is, oh, I might be okay with AI day, but I’m not okay with an AI layer.

Aaron Duncan:

I think adding to that, I think what I try to do especially now is trying to learn by doing the kind of heuristics way of looking at it, getting into the applications, rolling up my sleeves. I think the other thing is building psychological safety in the classroom. A lot of these students come in from especially the freshmen and they get kind of scared to use these because the professors don’t necessarily know or encourage them to use it and they think it’s a way of cheating. I used to approach it as that they’re using it to cheating and you really have to change your paradigm in terms of building psychological safety and really getting them into this. And so it’s also encouraging you in the classroom to say, okay, what are some different ways to do this and what’s ways to encourage them to use it, not replace their thinking, but really just to enhance and to optimize. And I really like the idea of AI using or being something that we optimize our way of thinking and doing rather than just saying it replaces us.

Michael Myers:

If you give it a simple prompt and it coughs something up, you have one group of people that are like, that’s good. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is why it’s not good. And you highlight the limitations and the missing elements and then all of a sudden it’s like, okay, so now what going to do? And so it really is an iteration kind of thing where I have to figure out, okay, that’s not perfect and how do I change how I ask for things? Going to take some grit to figure this out because yes, it can cough up a bad answer really easily, but boy, if you want real value, that’s going to take some work.

Aaron Duncan:

One of the things I think are interesting is recent MIT study said people that use this, 83% of the students forget what they wrote within an hour. And so it’s really starting to understand how they collaborate with AI rather than saying it’s an end all be all type of thing. And so it really is trying to transform the way we learn, the way we teach and way we interact with not only technology but other people as well. So it’s really an opportunity for us to lead the way and lead by example in the classroom, but boy, it’s being challenged by the students daily.

Joshua Ross:

And so Aaron, I copied your lead, this which I do quite a bit just in life, and you had created A GPT and I went and did that for our business 1440 course and one of our entrepreneurship courses and also A GPT for our faculty. What was your reasoning around building A GPT and how are you using it in the classroom?

Aaron Duncan:

My reasoning again was building psychological safety, getting them in the program, getting them used to prompting, getting them used to understanding. One of the fascinating things is kind of what Michael said is you have to ask it a couple different ways to get that answer even where’s my faculty? But it gets them using it, it gets them prompting it and it gets them kind of understanding how to optimize it again to get information and just even on a low hanging fruit. I think it’s also a piece of modeling the Daniels way in terms of meeting students where they’re at and helping them understand that there’s tools and there’s applications and there’s things that they can use that will help their educational four D experience. That it’s not just here’s theory, here’s lecturing, here’s a quiz, now get out of my face.

Michael Myers:

I have students create GPTs in class to train it on that data to help personalize those things. I think we’re all headed towards a world where the word I’ve been using is kind of a symbiosis, which is you’re going to have a personal assistant that helps you with the things that you’re bad at and you’re good at things that this thing is bad at. So together you’re much more of a complete picture. So getting ’em used to training it and seeing where the limitations are, seeing if you can get it to hallucinate, seeing if you can get it, you can get it to trick it. I think it’s Repl has a thing where you try to trick the algorithm or try to trick the AI into spitting out something that’s not supposed to, which I think is interesting. It really kind of gets him to think, I hate to say it, but outside of the box. I would also say that Aaron mentioned a couple times psychological safety is super important. I think we have students, brilliant students, but a lot of ’em have been institutionalized as far as right and wrong. I’m like, this is not that. I’ve got a new tool and how do I figure this out? And it’s okay to not be successful. It’s totally okay because every time that happens you figure out, well, it’s not going to work this way.

Aaron Duncan:

And I think one of the most exciting things about that is introducing AI into the classroom. It gives the students an opportunity to fail fast, and so it creates that double loop learning where it’s not the student turning in something where they created and you say, this isn’t quite right, go rewrite it. They can go through iteration after iteration after iteration and say, okay, now I’ve got the most valuable product or the least valuable product, but it’s something that I went through a couple times and said this is how I went to improve it. And so it’s allowing them to learn from their mistakes in terms of AI as well. And so again, I’m not preaching that it replaces them, but it enhances their abilities to really learn and grow.

Joshua Ross:

But from a behavior perspective, do you think students are actually spending the time to put in prompt A, right, and then obviously as we’ve talked about, that’s not the greatest output and then they have to keep iterating. Are they doing that? Are they putting their effort in and B, do they realize when some of the outputs aren’t at the level that they should be?

Michael Myers:

For me, they are when it’s something they care about. If it’s something that they don’t care about, they’re like, that’s good enough. But if I say, what is your area of expertise? And they go backcountry skiing, I go, okay, so let’s ask it some questions and see, you can tell me how accurate you think this is. Or I love baseball, how accurate is this? And they go, that’s sort of true, sort of not true. So I think that is I’ve had to motivate them by having them do something they’re interested in as opposed to I think this is great, go and do it.

Aaron Duncan:

I think we’re starting to feel like prompts are the Excel formula to get output. I think what we need to do is really challenge the students to say there’s multiple ways to get different information. I mean I think it’s a way of we just got to start asking the right questions because studies have shown that Chet PT five has an IQ of what 148 and the average American has an IQ of a hundred, and now we’re starting to ask students to start integrate with a medical doctor or a PhD or something like that. And it’s really that latency or trying to get those right capabilities to say, how do I get that answer out of chat GPT or how do I even get chat GPT to do something different? And so I think it really is up to us to not just to say here’s a formula for a prompt or a persona. It’s really starting to challenge them to even exceed us or even exceed chat GPT itself.

Joshua Ross:

I really like Michael’s approach starting with something that they’re interested in to see how many times they actually have to keep asking it and changing the question to get to the right answer. So then when they look at things maybe they don’t know as much about, they realize it’s not one question, one answer and then move on to the next.

Michael Myers:

Totally. It feels a lot. And we’ve seen, I mean we’ve all been teaching a long time, you’ve also seen students in the wild just not Google very well. You’re Googling for something, you’re like, why would you? It’s like, I don’t understand how you’re framing that. This is how I would frame it and it may be better, it may not. I think the same kind of thing is happening, which is you can have it type up an email to your aunt, that’s great. Not the best use case, but something. Tell me more about what I think is important and then see how smart it’s

Aaron Duncan:

Michael. That’s fascinating too because for a long time when we started Googling and the internet came out, we started, okay, well how do we help people do search prompts? And it was how do we do Boolean logic, put the quotes and then the plus and I mean no one does that. And so it’s kind of the same prompt engineering of understanding what this is. And really when I hear prompt, I think that’s so last year, right? Because prompts are going away and now we’re starting to communicate with ai. I’ve heard use cases where people are driving with their AI and having a conversation for two hours with it, the voice recognition with it, and it’s really starting to learn from each other and what their preferences are. And so I really think it’s up to us to encourage and to engage our students to be at that level.

Joshua Ross:

You made an interesting point earlier in terms of AI gets more layered in like ethics does, but some faculty want to have ethics day and they want to have AI day. So they leave your class and they have these skills, hopefully these tools. What’s your goal for them throughout college? How do they apply it? How do they end up the next quarter, the next year?

Michael Myers:

This quarter, we are spending quite a bit of time front loading that expertise because of that very issue, which is we’ve got faculty that are kind of on the fence or unsure and I’m like, well, I’m going to arm you to the teeth as much as I can in 10 weeks. And then you get to take the message to the next faculty member to say, how does this apply to finance? How does this apply to, and we have, by the way, just kind of categorically, we have a lot of faculty that have no problem doing this and are fantastic and are using tools. It’s awesome. They reach out, they ask questions, I ask questions. Fantastic. And for those that are timid or afraid of whatever, it’s like I understand that, but can’t, not to Aaron’s earlier point, we can’t not arm them with this knowledge and then encourage ’em to go out. And I just tell ’em, I said, so this is heavy. It’s front loaded and to the rest of the program just to ask your professor, if you’re not getting enough ai, go, how does this apply and how can I use it and try to figure that out and work with the professor to figure out how that could be used.

Aaron Duncan:

I think where we need to be is really that flipped classroom where they learn online, they learn that short snippets we reinforce in the classroom, but then they come in and they actually apply. And so it’s really, okay, we built out a business case and then how do we look at it and use AI to do this? And so even thinking about going backwards and saying, okay, rather than having AI predict the future or learn what it was, there’s so many business cases that have failed, why not go backwards and say, let’s do a case study on Kodak and what they could have done with a digital camera and come in and talk about competitive advantage and start talking about how they could have optimized this using AI rather than say, here’s what it’s going to do in the future, but really seeing if there’s some opportunities and some old failed business cases. Even with the 1440 and the fourth impact challenge. Are there past winners or losers or not losers, but people adding it first? Are there real business opportunities that we could use AI in the classroom to be able to say, here’s how we’re going to enhance it.

Joshua Ross:

That’s a really good idea. Not always just looking forward, but going back and kind of doing a post-mortem on some of these different things and how AI can improve

Aaron Duncan:

That. And there’s a lot to be said about looking backwards in terms of that forensic way of saying, what could we optimize or how do we do this?

Joshua Ross:

So I’m going to change kind of directions a little bit and talk about the job market. Obviously this helps our students in the job market, but how does it set them apart for internships and jobs really, how does it make them special?

Aaron Duncan:

I think first of all, I of our students are special, but I think the idea is coming into an organization say, rather than give me a job, I have the solution to your business problems. And so not being quite so arrogant, but being able to go in and say, I’m here to help you make money and got to think about it. And I think Michael said it as well, understanding the reverse side. A lot of organizations are struggling with this as well. There’s a lot of things about how do organizations integrate this. There’s a lot of imposter syndrome with C-suite folks. They say, I know we have to implement this, but I have no idea where to start. So if we can empower our students to be able to come into organizations and not just start at zero but start at a hundred and then move forward, that’s a boon to both business and also the business schools.

Michael Myers:

So I think I tell my students that you will be, you’ll be applying for jobs and you should come with potential solutions to their problems and figure out what those problems are ahead of time. And then also I just tell ’em, it’s like, listen, in the short term, this is going to be it, but in longer term you will be partnering, for lack of better way to say it, with an AI to help you manage certain situations and scenarios. Again, back to symbiosis, because I don’t it’s entry level now, but it’s quickly going to move up to middle manager and then beyond.

Aaron Duncan:

And Michael, you said something really interesting and that’s one of the things I think we really need to start teaching in the classroom is how to collaborate with ai. It’s not just let it replace you, but use it as a thought partner to move forward. And it’s also helping organizations kind of start doing that as well. It’s really more of collaborating with AI rather than having it replace you.

Michael Myers:

Totally. And I can’t remember, it’s something somebody’s name paradox and it basically says we are good at what computers are not good at and computers are good at things that we are not good at. So it’s this great combination. So together it’s a much more complete solution. So I think five, 10 years, that’s kind of the solution, which is I’ve got this, I’ve got something riding shotgun with me and we’re going to go do amazing things.

Joshua Ross:

But I also think right now when you’re talking to students, you can back that up with pretty hard data. I mean, you look at the job market and the unemployment for students coming out, and there’s just that huge gap right now that a lot of companies are holding off hiring because they believe AI can do this. I’m starting to read a number of articles that are actually saying that’s actually not the fact, but when I talk to my students and I say, Hey, look around the classroom, I’ve said this for years. I’m like, you are going to compete with everyone in this classroom and their friends and their friends and their friends across the United States, really across the world for jobs. So what makes you special? But now I’m like, you also have this thing called artificial intelligence that you’re competing against as well. And so your point is like what can you do and bring to a company that shows that day one, I can actually provide value? And when you can bring some tools and examples of projects and it’s like, wait a second, we don’t have to train you from day one. We can actually put you in and actually create some activity.

That’s where the value is that I see.

Michael Myers:

Totally agree. And I think as a new hire, you have the benefit of being objective, which is awesome, right? It’s very hard. At six months at a place, the Kool-Aid, everybody’s drank the Kool-Aid. I think it’s much better if you come in and go, okay, I’m going to objectively take a look at what the problem is, and I’ve got a new tool set that helps me solve those things. And so let’s figure out how that works. And I think that is where rubber meets road. And I think to your point about businesses, it’s not working in a lot of businesses. I think people need to rethink how they solve problems and rethink problems. And people are not very used to that. It’s like, man, I got an MBA five years ago and this is how it works and this is what I do. It might be reframing that.

Aaron Duncan:

And I think part of that too is kind of understanding the way we teach and the way we teach problem solving. And so now we have to raise our game. I mean, we have to understand that these students are using ai, and so we have to grade them harder and just say, I expect that you’re using this tool, so now I expect more of an output from you. It’s not just, can you tell me the four Ps or something like that, but can you integrate this into an organization and really be able to use it in an effective way? And I think now we’re into that environment of value creation. It’s no more, can you regurgitate? Do you have a bachelor’s degree or something like that, or MBA, it’s what value can you create using these tools through your critical thinking, decision-making, collaboration and emotional intelligence. And so it’s really, we’re in an era of digital value, and I think that’s where the bar’s set now, and it’s only going to go higher.

Michael Myers:

I think it gets us closer. To me, there’s a pretty big difference between knowledge and wisdom. So wisdom is usually knowledge with some experience behind it. So this iteration of getting outputs and seeing what works and testing and retesting and then throwing code away and then starting over, that sort of reps leads itself to more of a real depth of understanding as opposed to I’ve memorized something and I can cough it up. I can talk about the four Ps.

Aaron Duncan:

It’s fascinating you say that because I just heard something on a podcast about wisdom and AI and how AI is starting to grow wisdom because it can go through case models at a million time and it can build wisdom. When we look at wisdom, we look at the chiefs of our society or the folks who have been around the 90 year olds who’ve been in business and they can just feel it. But now we’re starting to give use cases to AI and it’s starting to build its own AI wisdom. And so you’re starting to think the idea is the differentiate between AI wisdom and AI

Michael Myers:

Intelligence,

Aaron Duncan:

And then that gets a little scary as well.

Michael Myers:

You bet it does. It’s interesting too, the quickness, the speed of the tool allows for more iterations. So instead of one big final project, it’s like you, you have four final projects, what are you talking about? It’s like escalating level of complexity, but since this makes you so fast and efficient, great, it’s due in two weeks. Let’s get started. And they have so far embraced that because obviously faster speed is always appreciated and with a lot of psychological safety to go, this is a little medium rare with this plan and here’s why. And then let them iterate out of that for the next iteration or next project.

Aaron Duncan:

If you start to think about, you hear AI say, oh, well, it’s going to take over and it’s going to help with jobs and it’s going to help ease. I don’t know anybody that’s got AI integrated that they’re slowing down what you just said. Now they’re actually going much faster and they’re producing much more. And it’s the idea of, well, how do we integrate that into the classroom? And so what we used to do in 10 weeks, now we’re doing in three, and then the students are like, how do we deal with this?

Michael Myers:

Yes, exactly. At first they feel lucky and then they go, uhoh, I’m going to be expected to do three times the work. You’re like, yeah, you are. It’s okay.

Joshua Ross:

That’s an interesting thought too, because all of a sudden we are raising what are the bar and actually what we are assessing on, but then I’m in charge of a number of courses and if I add more assessments in there, that means faculty are grading a lot more and I don’t think they’re going to be very happy with me.

Aaron Duncan:

Well, I don’t know that you have to add more assessments. I just think you have to add a little bit more feedback. And so I think it’s the idea of we can have these grand challenges, but I think now everything’s kind of in service of the end goal. So it’s the design thinking that we’ve talked about and really understanding what we want to get to. And then it’s really the idea of creating that portfolio of did I critically assess? Did I design think, did I make correct decisions? You know what I mean? And so it’s more just, it doesn’t have to be a lot of quizzes and deliverables. It’s more so of was, I mean, we could almost grade on participation in the classroom if we did these salons and flipped classrooms. Was I engaged? Did I come up with some good answers? And how did I display my critical thinking? And so it may not be that they solved the right business problem, but was their thinking there. And so we could really just have how did they perform in terms of the classroom experience?

Michael Myers:

One of my friends is an art teacher, and he divided half of his class and the one half of the class, they had him do 20 small projects over a semester, and then the other half they did one big project due at the end. The quality of output on the many small projects was far greater than the large one. This is a great example of that, but you’re right, because you’re right, they’re not going to appreciate grading. And you’re right, which is we can give them feedback on it. It doesn’t have to be, and actually I do that under the guise of rough drafts,

Aaron Duncan:

Which

Michael Myers:

Is the points are so low, but it lets me know that you’re going through the work of getting it done to the point where you can reflect on it. But I think the only way to get to real kind of wisdom is you just need lots of reps,

Aaron Duncan:

And that’s the key. So we’re at that 80 20 stage where we have to do the reps and then have them think the other thing is, che PT is not great about saying, here’s what you did last time. Now build on it. Now build on it. That’s where you’re forcing them to interject where they’re thinking and their critical thinking of, okay, well, we have this platform and now I need to scale to this platform. How do I do that? And really putting the final bow and having them present is really, I think where the power of this comes in.

Joshua Ross:

We’re very fortunate to have a small classrooms, and it’s one of the things I love about teaching at the University of Denver, just thinking about my undergrad up at University of Colorado and sitting in Chem one 40 with 200, 300 people, how do you assess at that point in time through feedback,

Aaron Duncan:

The model’s broken. You can’t teach that way anymore, at least not if you want to leverage AI and future technologies and tools. A, I don’t think that the labs of chemistry are going to, I mean AI’s infecting them. Well, it’s a poor choice. It’s seeping into the classrooms. I think the way that we assess our students now has changed, and we’re at a tipping point as well and trying to understand, well, what does that look like? What does that do? The old Soviet model of going in and saying, okay, I’m going to lecture to you for an hour and saying, now I expect you to retain, it’s gone. We need to entertain, we need to keep them. We need to reiterate, we need to get them involved. We need to get them to apply, and we need to also give them psychological safety and room to fail. And so yes, education is a safe spot, but it should be a place where now we’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. So when they get out into the workforce, I said something about imposter syndrome. It’s helping these C-suite folks. They go into the CEO and they tell her, Hey, this is how we should do it.

Joshua Ross:

So speaking of the workforce, how do you both ensure your teaching connects to the real world and industry needs? I mean, I know you’re both very well connected, but do you have some kind of checkpoints or ways in which you validate the things that you’re doing are actually what is needed?

Michael Myers:

I have a personal advisory board that we grab coffee probably every three to six months and talk specifically lately. So it used to be every six months. Now it’s a little more frequently because the changes, just new tool sets, et cetera, come out, et cetera. And it’s just go, where are you at? How is this going? And if you’ve hired students of ours in the past, how are they doing? And then what’s the future whole? But I think it’s really the connectivity that our programs have for this school is easily, besides class size, is easily one of the best differentiators, which is, and as I’ve mentioned at the beginning yet, we are a school, but we’re a business school, so we’re this weird hybrid of we’re this wonderful hybrid of we are plugged into business.

Aaron Duncan:

I think it’s also going out and listening to the community and just even watching Wall Street Journal, I mean, taco Bell failed where Wendy’s worked, and I can’t integrate this, the 300 billion deal that just went down with our Oracle, now they’re the leader. And so it’s the understanding of, okay, where is this going to take us and what is this going to do? And so it’s even just projecting forward, I think you can’t really predict the future because only arrogant people can, but it’s understanding kind of where we’re at and what it’s doing. And so there’s so much low hanging fruit, it’s just do we have the mindset to be able to take care of it?

Joshua Ross:

Yeah, no, that’s a really good point. My office just recently moved into the building and it’s blown me away actually how much access there is to really smart people all the time and just casual conversations, and that’s one of the things I’ve really appreciated. So what concerns you about these technologies? Obviously CHATT and generative AI is a tool to cheat. There’s an equity component. Some people can pay to use the different levels of subscriptions. And then the one that concerns me the most is, is there a lack of learning and a foundational understanding of things? Because very easy just to ask these tools to perform a function for you.

Aaron Duncan:

What does learning look like? And I know we have parents who want to look at the student’s syllabus and say, okay, are we hitting? But I think the idea of mom and dad looking at the syllabus and saying, this is how I learned, or this is what happened when I went to college, it’s kind of changed. And it’s the idea of even the modality of the way we get information has changed. I mean, some students look at YouTube, some students talk to other people, some students take notes. Some people say, Hey, ai, teach me this. And so I think the way we learn, as long as we’re interjecting that double loop learning and being able to say, okay, how do we help students not advance into the next career, but kind of learn more about themselves through this? That landscape of learning has changed in terms of what do we do with it and how do we measure it?

Michael Myers:

We’ve all been in a class, we’re like, man, I hate this. I’m going to memorize this so I can get an A and then I’m done and I will forget it immediately upon exit. And there’s other classes which are innately more engaging, bring more curiosity, elicit more curiosity out of me. And you go, okay, I’m leaning in. Even if I don’t think I’m leaning in, you are leaning in. The challenge for learning, at least for the last, since I have been teaching has been how do I figure out what that nugget is in each and every single student to go, okay, so you seem to be passionate about this. How do I do this? And then how does AI facilitate that? But it’s not going to replace it. And honestly, it won’t be a core to it, but I think it could be a healthy symbiosis again to go, okay, well, I learned a lot about this. I mean, at the end of these prompts, et cetera, if you’re using perplexity to ask a lot of questions, they all do, but it’s like, oh, I didn’t even know that was a question. That additional context building really helpful in a lot of ways. And so I think learning has evolved from memorization to now real engagement and reasoning, critical thinking.

Joshua Ross:

The thing that I struggle with is there’s certain things, especially in our business 1440 class when we talk about certain technologies, let’s say blockchain or neurotech, and they’re not the most interesting or exciting topics to some of these students. And I’m like, you need to really understand, maybe not how they work, but the application, the consequences of these. And I know it’s incumbent on me as the professor to bring them along that learning journey, but sometimes there’s just not that connection and it’s like I just want to say, know this.

Michael Myers:

Yeah, it’s interesting. We spend some time going, how do I personalize this technology? And then just ask them. And you can tell it’s a lot of mumbling and asking questions, but then one or two people give ’em enough time. Someone comes up and someone’s like, what do you mean? And then they start to explain that, and then you’re having conversations between each other. Those kind of conversations, as you both know, you both teach a lot as well, which is peers. They’re more into peers than they’re in. They’re like, professor, yeah, whatever. It’s more about what are my peers thinking? What are my peers questioning and what engages my peers? That may not pique my interest, but maybe something adjacent to us. And so I think, again, we talked about this a little bit, which is the collaboration which lends itself towards classroom. It’s like, okay, well, we are a learning community for 10 weeks, and so I’m going to make you do this stuff outside, but in we’re going to be actively figuring out how it’s relevant to you. And that is the sign of a good teacher. And that is a huge challenge.

Aaron Duncan:

Well, and I agree, and that’s the challenge of all of our peers is saying, okay, the way we used to do it, even pre COVID has changed. It’s gone in COVID technology advanced three years in one year, and it’s not going back. And so it’s the idea of, well, we’ve got to start. And I go back to the idea of creating value. It’s also creating value for that student and engaging them. And maybe it’s not blockchain or I joked with my students yesterday about they’re all taking business calculus. And I was like, oh boy, I had to take that twice. And they’re just like, I was joking with ’em. I was like, when are you going to whip out your calculus? So they kind of get it, but it’s transitioning from that memorization as you call it, to that realization and start saying, okay, this is how I add value to these organizations. But it’s also up to us to frame that conversation in different way. And I’m not saying I’m great at it. I’m not saying I know how to do that, but it’s the realization of we’ve got to kind of give them the future with guardrails now, rather than saying, here’s how it’s been done since Mesopotamia and saying we are challenging them to create the future.

Michael Myers:

It’s like, well, AI has you on the memorization part, so let that part go. So let that part go, and now you need to think through it. And you go, okay, so if you were a student that’s a master memorizer, it’s like uhoh or you’re like, okay, this is great. AI is great. It’s like now, but I’m asking you to do more. And they go, what does that mean more? And really it is more, it’s like, I’m not going to give you a Scantron with a number two pencil and blah, blah, blah. It’s like, I’m going to ask you to figure this out. And especially specifically to marketing or even tech, it’s like, well, there are many answers.

Aaron Duncan:

Yeah, I love that. And that’s what drives students crazy. There’s not just teaching to the test. There’s not just one answer. It’s the alternative to, well, what other things could I do? And they are so afraid of failing in that respect that they just hate it when you can’t just get to X equals y or something like that.

Michael Myers:

Totally. And our students are amazing students, so they’ve all mastered that process and all of a sudden it’s like push that process aside. Now we’re doing this. And they go, what are you talking about? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Am I going to be safe doing it this way? And you’re like, this is the way it’s going to be done.

Aaron Duncan:

Yeah,

Michael Myers:

Sorry. It’s like it’ll be some semblance of this wherever you go professionally, it will not be because we joke about tests all the time. It’s like, so when you go to your first job, are they giving you tests? I mean, there might be certifications, there might be bar exam, whatever, CPA exam, but for the most part, the testing portion is now gone. Now you need to execute. COVID was an accelerant on lots of things, and I think we are now beyond memorization, at least in the business school. We are way beyond that. We need to mirror business and people aren’t taking tests in business and we need to

Aaron Duncan:

Create

Michael Myers:

Doing things. Yes.

Joshua Ross:

Yeah. I used to tell my employees all the time, I said, the valuable employers are the employees are the ones that can go out and do and not come to me with every single question. And I realized, you are going to make mistakes and that’s fine. What I want to understand is what was your thought process? What was your critical thinking through the process? And then we can walk through and see where the gaps were. And that’s what I hope we’re teaching in our classrooms now as well is right. Go out and think. Don’t be afraid to fail and if you do get back

Aaron Duncan:

Up,

Joshua Ross:

But you’re going to have to learn how to navigate uncertainty. And nobody likes uncertainty, but I am certain that there will always be uncertainty. I have a couple more questions, and this is kind of a nice segue into this. Where do you see higher education evolving over the next five years? What looks the same? What looks different? And where does all this technology, especially generative ai, play this? And I’ve talked to both of you on this at different times, and so drop a little knowledge.

Aaron Duncan:

I think it’s up to us, do we want to be a leader in this or do we want to be kind of a laggard and do we want to play it safe or do we want to get out in front? And it’s the idea of, well, we know what the past looks like. Do’s been around forever. It’s scary to think about what the future’s going to look like, but if we don’t take charge now, I think do we want to a disrupt or do we want to be disruptors? And I think that’s facing education right now.

Joshua Ross:

Is Aaron Duncan stills in front of the classroom in five years?

Aaron Duncan:

No, at least not in the, I don’t want to retire, but No, just kidding. He’s in The Bahamas. Yeah, I’m in The Bahamas. I think in a different way. I think I am facilitating classes. I think kind of the flip classroom way, I think it’s more of a salon, more of a what don’t we know? Those types of things. Or even just being in real world cases and saying, or even doing forensic, what could have Henry Ford done differently to create the car? You know what I mean? Or those types of things. I like the idea of going backwards, but I also like the idea of creating these innovation hubs and how do we make those things work and how do we do regime and then transition that into the larger scale.

Michael Myers:

I don’t know, five years is the timeframe for this, but I see a lot of deconstruction and a lot of removing of barriers between the school and businesses. I see a lot of partnerships and students. So an average, so let’s say, let’s pick the ideal situation for an MBA. So an MBA comes in and they do two quarters with us, and we at the end of those two quarters, so two full-time quarters, and at the end of it, we pair them with an employer or a couple of employers, and then that student is there for a year, 10 hours a week for a year interacting with that employer and potentially different employers, giving them what they’re learning in school, what they learn in school, and adding value and learning about how the business works. And then they come back after that and they spend another six months, et cetera in school partnering with that business.

So it’s a lot of, instead of this 21 months or 18 months solid all the way through, it’s a lot more. And it’s not an internship, it’s like a residency or something like that where you’re in that building where you’re learning about business realities. And this makes executive leadership a little bit, makes ’em happy. Like, okay, I’m relying on you to take over part of this. You can help educate us internally. And because the other thing too is, which we’ve been talking about, it’s not like we’re done in two years and it’s fully cooked. It’s like this is going to be the next 10 to 20 if not more of constant iterative change as to what it can do, what we will ask it to do. And students need to be a part of that. Students and business people need to be a part of that.

Aaron Duncan:

What I’d like to see universities do is solve business problems, not just for one company, but then say, what’s competitive advantage and how do we do it for the 3D manufacturing industry? Or what is the right corporate social governance that we could give to it is why do we need businesses to create or to solve the folding problem? Why can’t we just have Daniels start to say, here’s what business problems are and here’s how to overcome ’em, and there’s huge business problems out there. Why can’t we just say, here’s how to run a business definitively.

Michael Myers:

So right now I’m meeting with businesses that know or don’t know what their problems are and trying to figure out how to help MBAs get to a point where they can walk in and help them solve those problems on a consistent,

Joshua Ross:

Even though they don’t know what their problems are.

Michael Myers:

Yeah, sometimes it’s funny. I mean, we’re not making enough money. You’re like, okay, let’s break that down into

Its constituent parts. But a lot of times, especially now, it’s like we are not fully utilizing AI as much as we could. The tool set that we have chosen is not as good. Is there something better? And there’s always going to be something better. It continues to grow and iterate. I mean, I get this question all the time is who’s the winner? You’re like, not yet. We’re not going to know that for a while. And there’ll probably be many, many, many, many winners. So I think helping them, well, having them partner with us to help them solve their problems, because we as a business school need to be focused on solving their problems.

Aaron Duncan:

I think we live in such an abundant universe in terms of understanding that we can share these things. It doesn’t just have to be a net sum for one company and one company and one company. That’s why I go back to the idea of we could start solving world problems like AI is great for medical now, and it’s saying, here’s all the great medical advances. Well, yeah, business is not anywhere near compared to medical, but it’s the idea of we could solve business problems. We could take Academy of Management papers and say, okay, how do we apply this to retail stores down the street and what does this mean for them? And so I’d like to see us kind of push that envelope, but share this stuff. It doesn’t have to necessarily be, I’m doing it for Google or Apple or those types of things, but here’s a universal way to look at a business.

Joshua Ross:

What about looking at it from a little bit different lens in terms of teaching our students to become their own brands, their own businesses?

Aaron Duncan:

Yeah. I think it goes back to what we were talking about early on is that double loop learning and understanding and empower them to get out in front of this. I mean, there’s so much low hanging fruit with AI itself in terms of the computing and the capacity and what could be done. I mean, think about the introduction of the stove. You and I have talked about that they thought it was going to kill restaurants, the home stove, and it just added to utensils and everything else. I mean, the idea that AI is going to kill jobs well, but it’s also upping up new frontiers and new possibilities.

Joshua Ross:

Mark Andresen had a really interesting comment. I was listening to a podcast the other day, and I just find him fascinating. He’s with a 16 Z or one of the partners in there, and they were talking about the unintended consequence and the negative sides to ai, and he is like, look at the shovel. Look at all the cool things you can do with a shovel, how productive you can do. He’s like, but you can also bash in somebody’s head with a shovel as well. And I was like, yeah, you think a lot of things that are out there, there’s some good you can do and there’s some evil you can do.

Michael Myers:

What’s interesting, listening to you and Aaron talk made me think of, I think AI is going to be a magnifier of whoever you are. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re like, I can do amazing things. I want to do low level work and get it done quickly and make whatever I can make, I can do that as well. So I think there’s an opportunity there for sure to become more of whatever you want to become. But what I really relish is the thousands of people that we have all talked to, which is, I have an idea, but I can’t create anything with my hands code wise. And I’m like, oh man. I mean, honestly, I feel like I should have kept a list of every individual and every email and just email ’em now and go, guess what the show is now on. Use these three, four tools to get started and iterate through because not joking, I mean, would’ve been so helpful. 15 years ago,

Aaron Duncan:

There was a debate about the speed of it. And the thing was is do any of us want less ai? No, we want more. Right? And if had, let’s say you had a challenge or an opportunity to go to another planet where they’re moving ahead slowly 10% at the pace we are, but they’re making sure that they’re building it, they’re being very meticulous. The ethics are there. Would you enjoy that? Would you want to, no. You want to come back here and say, I want to drink from the fire hose and yeah, ethics, great, but we need to kind of understand how to do this. And so we really love the speed of change and we’re getting a little addicted to it.

Joshua Ross:

So my last question, we’ll have faculty that’ll listen to this episode just for the fact to hear Michael Myers and Aaron Duncan as they’re thinking about experimenting with the AI in the classroom and trying new things. And not everyone is moved at the speed in which you two have any advice you give to faculty as they start to think through this?

Michael Myers:

Don’t be afraid.

I would say partner with your students, your students, as you all know, because you’ve taught. So the first five minutes of class, they establish kind of an opinion of you pretty quickly. And if you are upfront with them and say, this is an amazing technology. I’m doing my best to keep up and let’s go ahead and figure out things together. And I’ve got some thoughts about what things we could do, and if you have some ideas about what we could do in class that it would be seen as a real collaboration and appreciated. And not just MBAs specifically executive MBAs down to full-time MBAs, but undergrads as well. I mean, I think that if they know that you are them fighting to keep up and working to figure this out and trying to add value to them, they will be awesome partners.

Aaron Duncan:

And I think don’t be afraid to ask for help. I mean, a lot of people just assume everyone in this building knows exactly what’s going on and how to keep up with AI and what it is. But I think there’s a lot of folks that are just like, I get it, but I don’t see how it affects me. There’s a bubble, right? The bubble’s going to break and then I can go back to doing what I do. And so it’s the idea of understanding really just that it’s not going to change. It’s just going to get faster. And what are you going to do in five years? Well, either I’m going to be a master of AI or AI’s going to replace me. And I think that’s kind of where we’re at and the precipice of understanding what that looks like.

Joshua Ross:

I would also add to that is to tell faculty, be curious and reach out to people to talk to them about AI then and people that they know that have engaged in it. But there’s lots of different podcasts on lots of different topics. And the final thing I would say is go lock yourself in a room for eight hours and just start playing with it and start with the large language models and then start to dive into these different tools. And then what Mike was talking about earlier, this whole idea of vibe coding, go build yourself a website. And just once you start to get that ball rolling, it’s kind of a little bit of a flywheel. You’ll start to get a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more engaged in it, and then kind see where that takes you.

Aaron Duncan:

So how would just gently pushing back, how would you create psychological safety for the folks that are scared of it? And I mean the faculty in terms of I don’t want it to change the way I do things. I’m a little bit nervous. I hear Michael telling me to jump in, but boy, I’ve taught this way for years and years and years. How do I change? I’m not willing to do that.

Michael Myers:

I think it’s, Hey, we’re all in the process of figuring this out. And the fact is everybody is going to utilize this as much as they feel comfortable. But I have to tell you the expectation now, students are customers and the customer expectation is, I need to be armed so that I can go out and do amazing things for my business. So help me figure this out and specifically to this topic. And if I don’t do that, then it is just not going to go well. And I don’t know else to say that.

Aaron Duncan:

Well, and I’ll be honest when I created the Cheche BTT assistant, and now I’m kind of holding my guns to, I had a student email me in the middle of the night two nights ago asking me about how to study for a quiz in 1440. I’m like, well, did you ask the teaching assistant? And I said, how do I study for the quiz? And I sent him the output and it was brilliant. But I feel like now as the professor student emails me and I’m like, go to the ai, I kind of feel like a fraud a little bit. If this young man’s telling his parents that, oh, he sent me to AI to teach me. That feels somewhat wrong.

Joshua Ross:

But you’re sending them to AI to learn how to ask questions and how to learn

Aaron Duncan:

And to assist them

Joshua Ross:

And to a system.

Aaron Duncan:

But I mean, you said customer facing, and here I am saying, geez, go to this model I built for you so I don’t have to, it’s not in the spirit of that. It was more in the spirit of helping the student along at 2:00 AM They should have been looking at the teacher, but he’s like, oh, I forgot. And I have to remember to do that. And so it’s that building of that repetition of going to an AI model.

Joshua Ross:

But they are going back to the very beginning of this conversation and talked about agentic ai. That is what they are going to have to do at some point.

Aaron Duncan:

I agree. But

Joshua Ross:

If you go so you’re not a fraud. You are the one that’s actually building a behavior that they’re going to need to know how to.

Aaron Duncan:

I agree. But if I did that and I said, okay, I’m going to empower Morgan Friedman because it’s an AI tool, and I’m going to do an online course where it’s interactive, and I say, okay, I’m going to allow AI four or five to be able to talk to these students as well, and I give it a persona and I never have to show up and I’m in The Bahamas, is that saying, Hey, they’re interacting, or is it not the personal touch? And so again, I kind of go back with this ai, I love it and I love the idea of the ta, but am I fraud? Am I losing that connection with my students? I do worry about that.

Michael Myers:

I think if we divided up things into what it is good at and say, use it for that, and what we are human being, myself as a human being are good at and divided our material in that way, it’s like, here’s the value that I provide. Here’s the memorization stuff that is important, et cetera. But to quote my son, it’s like, why am I being asked to memorize this if I can just Google it?

Aaron Duncan:

That’s exactly right.

Michael Myers:

And I’m like, so I think if we really focus on what our strengths are and what the AI is good at in the short term, we can easily divide those things and go, okay, so when you’re with face-to-face, we’re going to be focusing on stuff that I’m good at as a human. And then when you’re at home at 2:00 AM I’m going to be focused on helping you. The AI will be helping you with the stuff it’s good at.

Aaron Duncan:

And I think what keeps me up at night is kind of Michael saying, you

Joshua Ross:

Are obviously not up that night though.

Aaron Duncan:

Yeah, no, no. I was in bed by 12. The idea of, we’re going to get to the idea of super intelligence here pretty soon, and I think in the next three years, and there’s only going to be one super intelligence, and it’s going to be okay, well, prompting and everything else and memorization, that’s all going to go away. We’re going to have to redo this again

In a way that we leverage super intelligence that it can do everything a human can do already in terms of, and people, I challenge my classroom, say, what can’t iPhones do, cook, sleep, these types of things. I think it’s going to be able to do these things, right? The iot is going to allow it, but it’s the idea of, well, what’s next? How do I keep up now I’m going to have to change not only what I, because we’re focusing on yesterday in terms of ai. How do I get to the place where I’m focusing in the future? I mean, Michael, you went to South by Southwest and you hear all these great things and it’s like, I don’t know how to teach to that yet still here. AI is going to change dramatically in the next three years.

Michael Myers:

And that is also one of the things that I know that all of us teach our students, which is how to keep up

And also be very careful when you hear something that you like and go, that’s what’s going to happen. Keep going on. You can always learn something incremental from someone new talking. Do you know what I mean? You’re creating the onion. You’re layering and layering and layering. Go, okay, I have a pretty robust understanding of this from multiple perspectives, but the whole concept of keeping up because we all fight to get it done, it’s a challenge. Even if you create the ultimate feed, even if you ask Chad to summarize the whole deal, it’s like, but it’s a challenge to keep up. And because of that change you talked about, that’s what they are going to need to do because it’s going to impact them more than it is just because of our ages, right? It’s like, no, you’re 21. This is really going to impact you.

Joshua Ross:

I want to go back to something because Michael answered it and I didn’t get the opportunity, but I think it’s really important is how do we create psychological safety for faculty who have been teaching something a certain way for a very long time? And I’m very sympathetic to that, and I understand that change is hard, but I look at it very simply as our students are our north star, and our goal as faculty, in my opinion, is two things to make sure they have an amazing experience here at the University of Denver. And when they leave, they are prepared for what’s next and how we need to keep evolving in the way who we are, how we teach, what we provide. That’s our job. And I know both you spend a lot of time on your curriculum. It’s not just set and forget. And I do the same thing. I also do. I really love doing it, and I love the topics that I teach, and it’s always evolving, but I also want to make sure that when our students leave, they’re ready to go.

Aaron Duncan:

So should we then give textbooks to ai, which we do not, and say, create slide decks, create lectures, create all these things.

Joshua Ross:

Absolutely not.

Aaron Duncan:

Why not?

Joshua Ross:

Because I don’t believe in using textbooks. And two, that actually might be a legal take in those.

Aaron Duncan:

No, and I wasn’t advocating, but that’s a way, I mean, even if we said take, we say, take the today’s news and create new curriculum or cutting edge curriculum, put into ai, create the rubric and the learning outcomes, that’s great. Let’s do it. I could teach to that.

Joshua Ross:

Yeah, we absolutely could. But I still think you lose the personal touch. You lose a lot of crazy,

Aaron Duncan:

Well, that’s my whole point with the ta. You got to lose that personal touch with being able to tell students eight times when quiz one is due. But is that really needed?

Joshua Ross:

But over the past week, I’ve read four articles that I’ve integrated into class, and that’s something that they’re not going to get from that ta. I’d rather spend my time thinking about those four articles, how I can have a really good discussion and maybe not talk to them as much about how to prepare for a quiz when we have this tool that can do that much better than I can. Well, gentlemen, this was a very spirited conversation. I enjoyed it very much, and thank you both for making me a little smarter. The entrepreneurship at DU podcast was recorded in the media studio in the Daniels College of Business on the University of Denver campus. You can find us on Instagram at du Entrepreneur on LinkedIn, at DU Entrepreneur, and on Facebook at entrepreneurship at du. This episode was engineered and produced by Patrick Gore. I’m your host, Joshua Ross. Thanks for listening to the entrepreneurship at DU Podcast.