Scott McMahon
Adjunct Instructor
Schneider School of Business and Economics
St. Norbert College
May 7, 2026
When it comes to AI, how many of you feel like Major T.J. “King” Kong in Stanley Kubricks’s film, Dr. Strangelove?
Do you find yourself screaming while strapped to the side of a falling bomb destined to bring devastation and terror to the higher-education landscape?
That is how I felt during the past few years. I found myself filled with uncertainty about what to do next, where to turn, how to begin, or whether to incorporate AI into my lessons. But I knew that inaction could not be my default position.
I have not been in higher education for long. After almost 30 years working in several industries, I became an Instructor of Business Analysis and Data Analytics at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in August 2023. In January 2025, Dr. Kevin Quinn brought me on as an adjunct business instructor, teaching Introduction to Operations and Supply Chain Management.
When I started in education, AI was beginning to become something available to business and students on a widespread basis. Admittingly, I did not know much about how to use it because I had never been asked to use it and had not yet taken the time to learn it. But it did not take long for me to discover that my credibility was in jeopardy for not having this exposure and that I needed to up skill quickly.
After my own self-education on the free versions of several AI tools and some training at NWTC and SNC, I felt comfortable enough with my knowledge to be dangerous – not much different than the usage level of the students I was teaching.
What struck me as the most important aspect of whatever I did, I needed my students to understand that AI is nothing more than a tool. A tool that, if not understood, could bring damage to everything it touched. I also wanted them to understand Maslow’s Hammer – “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
To do this, I took the following approach: educate my students on the good, bad, and ugly of AI; demonstrate how to best prompt for AI output so that it is used for more than a fancy Google search; and, where the human is still the most important part of the activity, regardless of the output.
To do this, I take an entire class period to walk through the history of AI and how the students have been using AI without knowing it. We examine where it is being used for good and bad. We discuss their current familiarity with the tools, which tools they use, and their feelings about their own usage. We acknowledge the perils of its impact on future work, the environment, and the biases often included in AI’s training data.
The emphasis is always on that AI is a tool – nothing more, nothing less – trained on enormous amounts of data. That AI works by recognizing patterns and produces guesses on these patterns to produce output. We discuss hallucinations, how they are produced, and how to avoid them. We build a mindset that AI must be treated like an amazingly fast, but often inaccurate intern, for which we must check the work it produces.
After that discussion, I have the students use AI to complete a case study.
They can use AI as little or as much as they want, but they must use AI in some form or fashion to complete the assignment. Some students hand the case study over to AI and submit little more than the initial output it generates. I see that, and it is reflected in the comments I share with them.
To my delight, most students really do take the time to critically analyze that output and confirm the findings. They engage in prompting that questions the output and ask deeper questions related to the implementation of solutions, financial calculations, and crafting better executive summaries and problem statements. They use the tools to compare their work against my rubric to decide if they are directionally correct. They use it to help explain concepts we have not yet covered in class and may be addressed in the AI output. They begin to use AI as a learning partner, a resource to help them better understand the problem at the root of the case study.
The students then include their prompting conversations in the output. We examine their prompting conversations and demonstrate the best practices the students created.
Once they submit this assignment, the follow-up assignment is a reflection page based on the theme, “Now that you’ve created this output with AI, why should anyone hire you to do this work?”
This is where the shine really begins to show. Again, there are always some examples of student reflections singing their glowing support for AI and how it made their life easier. However, the real discovery is that for most students, the lack of humanity in the transaction leaves them feeling empty and uneasy with the practice. They discuss how their interaction with the tool helps them craft solutions much more quickly than they could produce. They share that even with their emerging understanding of business principles, they can already see that the output they have received is often only surface-level output and their own experience and knowledge is where they can provide the real polish on the output.
The students discuss that while the tools make them more efficient, it is their experience and newly earned knowledge that make the final presentation of information effective. They share that while they are concerned that AI may take jobs, we will not have future business leaders if we do not first have entry-level employees. Entry-level employees who can synthesize information and build relationships with trust and understanding with co-workers and customers.
What I have learned from this practice is that providing guidance with the AI tool usage and taking time to discuss the ramifications of its use has helped develop students who are using AI in a more thoughtful manner. My students see the humanity needed for the integration of output with human audiences and its application in a specific business environment.
And in the end, while not being an expert, I see that my ability to guide them in this exercise helps them become better equipped to handle what they will meet when they graduate and find themselves in their first jobs.
And now I find myself not screaming while AI continues to make its impact around me.
