What a six-campus pilot taught us about AI adoption and culture

We were piloting SchoolAI in one region across six campuses, and the numbers were good.

Instructors launched nearly 1,000 instructor-led activities, while students had completed 1,200 sessions and more than 7,500 interactions with the AI agent. Usage was growing, and student and faculty feedback was great.

If anyone's keeping score, those are solid pilot numbers.

It got interesting when we looked at what happened campus by campus. On some campuses, adoption took off. On others, the tool became one more thing to do. The difference wasn't the software, but the importance of campus leadership in supporting the implementation. 

The AI itself wasn't the challenge

We used SchoolAI to build classroom activities, enhance discussion and help instructors engage students. Many of our instructors know their trades deeply but didn't come through traditional teacher training. Much of our professional development gives them the tools of the trade to do their work well.

SchoolAI was the tool in this pilot, though other schools may find a different tool that fits their campus. Do your due diligence and find the software that works for your team.

Then pay close attention to what happens after everyone gets a login.

We found that adoption directly correlated to the investment in the tool set by campus leadership. Was campus leadership encouraging, engaged and active in the rollout? Or was a new tool maybe misinterpreted as another new thing to do?

At the campuses where we saw that campus leadership investment, we were, to quote Forrest Gump, were "runnin'".  Adoption took off, usage was high, engagement was good, and student and faculty feedback was positive.

Where we saw the tool just become one more thing, faculty experienced it exactly that way. It became one more thing to do.

Leadership paves the way to adoption

When a campus struggles to adopt a new tool, it is tempting to see faculty as the barrier. I would challenge leaders to look first at the culture they've set throughout the rollout.

AI didn't create innovation at our campuses by itself. The most successful campuses had a strong culture built by strong campus leadership, and those leaders gave faculty room to experiment, learn the tool and use it in the classroom.

That's the leadership challenge with any AI (or new technology) implementation. A new tool quickly becomes another to-do list item unless your culture embraces it as a way to better support students. Leadership often determines which experience faculty have.

Faculty used AI to spend more time teaching

In our pilot, faculty used AI to spend more time teaching and supporting students and less time in the repetitive, manual tasks that made up their day-to-day.

A quiz, discussion prompt or formative assessment can take 30 minutes to create, and SchoolAI did the heavy lifting so instructors got that time back for advising, teaching, reviewing and remediating.

We can't give a bigger gift than that to our faculty or our students.

Students will remember that their instructor had time for them and made class engaging, not the tool that enabled it. This is especially true in career education where instructors love the trade and are focused on placement after graduation.

Taking away the daily slog and friction faculty experience gives them more time for the work that matters. 

Your humans stay at the heart of your institution

AI is changing the way we operate at an institutional level, from how we process aid, to recruitment, attendance, and how we show up for our students every day. That said, the value is in the people behind it, not the tool itself.

Leadership owns the culture around AI. Give your faculty room to experiment and use AI in ways that return time to the people students will remember.

Treat your humans bigger than the robots.
That's all I've got.