Campus Technology Insider Podcast August 2025
Listen: Higher Education's AI-Enhanced Future: Tools for Student Engagement
Rhea Kelly 00:00
Hello and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast. I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host. And I'm here with Dr. Anthony Lee, president and CEO of Westcliff University, to talk about the impact of AI on higher education and workforce readiness — and what universities can do about it.
So Dr. Lee, it must be an interesting time to be a university president in this age of AI. So with that in mind, tell me about yourself and your background and kind of what your priorities are in your role.
Anthony Lee 00:43
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be, to join your podcast. So I've been with Westcliff University for over a decade, and we've always prided ourself in focusing a lot on technology, and of course, now with AI, it's certainly very interesting times right now, being a part of university that tries to be innovative and progressive and really adopt the use of AI and technology as much as we can. I think that some of the things that have come to the forefront for us is how it, how we use, utilize it with students and with faculty, and what the parameters we're going to put in place, how much we encourage it, and the use of it, and ours obviously having some, a lot of guardrails around it, but I'm certainly of the mindset that technology is a priority for us. You know, we're one of the first universities to have live, synchronous, online classes. We were using, I like to say this a lot, we were using Zoom when it was in beta stage. And so over 11, 12 years now, we've been using Zoom, and one of the first universities to do that. And that really helped us, of course, as we transitioned through COVID and all those type of things. But it's certainly a priority for us, and I think it's continuing to just increase in importance in the future as well.
Rhea Kelly 02:02
So tell me more about Westcliff's approach to AI — I want to dive into all those details.
Anthony Lee 02:09
Yeah, I mean, there's, I think there's different levels, right? So most importantly is, how are we using AI in terms of delivering education, and how do we do that in terms of training faculty and educating faculty at the same time. We have a lot of faculty members that are doing research in AI, and I think that we've really encouraged that, and supported that. In terms of how we deliver classes, you know, there's a lot of ways to be able to teach students and provide education to students, and try to scale it. So I think the use of AI and the use of technology is going to help in that way. And I also think the other side of it also is going to be, how do we leverage faculty to their best of their abilities and their strengths, right? And I think using technology, using AI, to take away some of the tasks that faculty generally or historically would take on is important to us. And those are the things we're looking at so that faculty can actually teach students in, and focus on education, delivering the education, and also focus on the human interaction with students, focus on how they leverage their professional experience, their background, their knowledge and hopefully some of that knowledge transfer to students as well as part of their educational journey.
Rhea Kelly 03:27
Would you say that Westcliff faculty are generally, like, enthusiastic about embracing AI tools? Like, how is that level of adoption going?
Anthony Lee 03:38
Very well, very well. I would say, I think we're fortunate. All of our teachers teach an online class. I've been teaching online for some time. Even the ones that are teaching, teaching campus courses to our students, they teach online classes as well. So I think because of that and the fact that our university has always been, I would say, on the cutting edge of technology and utilizing it, adoption has been great. And we've also rolled out different tools, one that we built in house as well and developed in house and created, and we've seen adoption of it. And you know, it's been, it's been great so far.
Rhea Kelly 04:17
So can you tell me more about linking that use of AI in education to workforce readiness? Like, what, what is Westcliff doing to prepare students with those AI skills that they're going to need?
Anthony Lee 04:31
Our students, when they graduate, if they don't have AI skills, they're gonna be left behind. Like, it's no question the future of education and future of workforce and jobs. They need to understand how to use it the right way and really leverage their own efficiencies in their work performance and work output for companies and industry to really value them, right? So for us, we use different tools in the curriculum that will allow them to simulate real world problems, real life situations, and we have built a curriculum that's centered around that. For example, the approach to teaching and learning that we've developed at Westcliff University, we call it the CAPRI model. CAPRI stands for contextual, applied, practical, relevant and inclusive. That, that is a framework that we use throughout the institution, in every program that we offer, in every course that we offer. Our learning design specialists or curriculum developers or faculty use that as a checklist to ensure that we are touching upon all those things. So we have to make sure our programs are contextual, they're applied, they're practically relevant. And that's all related to jobs, right? Like taking education, academic, research, philosophies and all that, we need to understand, how do we make that practical and make it relevant for our students, so that they can apply those learnings in real-life situations that would simulate what would happen when they're inside, when they're working in a job.
Rhea Kelly 06:05
So tell me more about that in-house tool. What's it called, and how does it work?
Anthony Lee 06:12
So right now, it's in the pilot stage. We developed it for the last, probably last couple years now. It's called Socratic Metric. It's a tool that we use to supplement online learning, and that has multiple purposes, right? And the purposes are increase engagement, increase student learning, and to ensure authenticity of a student's work and student's learning, right? And that's to combat plagiarism, which is a huge, huge issue facing institutions all over the world. The way that we do that is we put that, we, we have this tool that we put into every course, and it's a way for students to interact with the material, live, right, in real time with the tool that they're using. And this requires them to not only understand the question that's being asked, but verbally, also understand how to present their answer with research, with evidence, and it makes them think on their feet. It gives them practice. It also curates all of the textbook, course materials, lectures and interactions with faculty, and allows them to pull that together and now utilize that and address some of the practical questions that are being asked of them. And it provides practice for them over and over again. It's a tool that allows students to continue to answer the question, practice, provide the right answer, it gives them feedback, and it helps them refine how they would provide a solution to a problem, as an example.
Rhea Kelly 07:48
It sounds like all of the materials involved in a course are sort of like the data that an AI is trained on to support the student. Is that kind of what, what's happening there?
Anthony Lee 08:01
Yes, yes, it's a, it's a culmination of all the material and information that they're getting inside the class, curated into one platform that's private, that's part, that's on our server, and it's private, and it's going to be contained in that class. And now students are utilizing that to figure out, how do we apply that to different like real-world situations, real-life problems and, and, you know, we'll provide them with scenario, provide them with questions, and they have to come up with and figure out a way to, like, critically think and, and how to solve problems. I think those are two big things in education in general, right, to prepare students for a workforce, that's really about critical thinking and problem solving. And that's a big part of what we try to do as well.
Rhea Kelly 08:41
And what is the interface for students? Is this like a chat interface? Or I'm just curious, like, what, what is the user experience like for students?
Anthony Lee 08:50
Yeah, I mean, that's something we, we put a lot of time and effort in. So we piloted this across over a thousand students that have piloted it, and we've gotten great feedback from students, with faculty, a lot of testimonials, for sure. Looking at that data, and right now we are in discussions with the executive team and with the faculty as well to see if we're able to roll that out. The experience, like roll that out campuswide, and then, and we're probably going to do that in the upcoming fall semester as well, and it's going to take some time. There'll be phases, of course, right? You can't roll it out completely. But the user experience is going to be, you know, in each classroom, you know, there's, there's, there's a prompt there, and it's, it's sort of like, I would call it a, you know, a teaching assistant, or it's more like a faculty member there in the online classroom that they're interacting with, right? So there'll be questions asked, they'll answer it, and there'll be live feedback, live interaction, like you're almost talking to somebody. And I think that also helps train them over and over again in terms of how to think on their feet and provide evidence and think in real time. We're doing that to allow faculty to be able to monitor those interactions, and then outside of that, faculty will, will talk to each of the individual students live about, you know, what had transpired in those interactions, and provide some additional guidance, teaching feedback, and those type of things live as well to each student.
Rhea Kelly 10:19
You had mentioned, you know, academic integrity as a big deal. So how does the Socratic Metric, just can you talk more about how that helps foster that academic integrity that's so important?
Anthony Lee 10:32
Historically, a lot of online classes have always had, you know, written assignments that you can just take and then you put that into ChatGPT or Grok, or whatever, Gemini, and then you could just look up the answer, then copy and paste that over, right? So what we've tried to take away from that is there's a, there's a time aspect to it, where students get the question, there's a limited time for them to answer it, and they're gonna, they have to read the question, then they have to come up with their answer, and they have to look at different ways to present that, but they have to do it in real time. So they have to go back and forth in real time. It doesn't allow them as much time to go and copy paste something in ChatGPT. They can still do that, but I think the practice of going back and forth has proven with research that that's going to help them learn even better. And our results that we have seen in our pilots so far have shown increases in student learning and student engagement, for sure, like students love it. But also looking at the data afterwards, as increased student learning, you know, the course learning outcomes or program learning outcomes, the knowledge skills that we want them to learn, they, we've seen evidence that it's gotten better.
Rhea Kelly 11:44
It kind of sounds like this is a good way to scale a student experience that would be impossible for one professor to spend that much time, perhaps with every single student. Is that, is that part of it, like being able to scale that thinking on your feet and having that conversation?
Anthony Lee 12:02
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's trying to simulate a live interaction with faculty, doing this on an individual level, customized to students' learning, students' responses, something you cannot do at scale with individual faculty members. So now we're able to bring that because, you know, we're, we're fortunate where we've been growing for the last 10 years, 20, 30% every year. So this, this technology piece of it is so important for us to, to solve for and figure out if you want to continue to scale with the right quality. And for us, faculty, of course, is the reason why students come and want to learn, but it's also program design, program development, curriculum design, and all that, and that's sort of interacting with each other to make sure we maximize all those things.
Rhea Kelly 12:52
I'm really curious, in the process of creating this tool, were there any challenges in certain in terms of, like being able to pull all that course information together, or, you know, just getting that AI to work the way you want it to work I know is not easy. So can you share any challenges you guys overcame along the way?
Anthony Lee 13:14
Yeah. I mean, I think the first one was user experience for sure. I mean, making sure that it runs smoothly and it makes sense, and it's intuitive. Because part of when you're trying to roll out a technology like this, it's going to be a lot of training on the faculty side so they understand how to use the tool, and then now faculty are going to train students on how they use the tool. So we were very intentional about having faculty committees and groups that were focused on this pilot, and then also having, most importantly, is having students provide feedback, but formally provide feedback in a in sort of a committee settings where they can provide feedback this and some of these we pilot, where some students took it in one session, they took it again the next session. So we continue to iterate it to make it better. In terms of your other point about curating content, yeah, that's, that's, that's a challenge, for sure, but we had to think through, you know, the type of content that we want to ensure students are getting, and that we're also feeding into the system to ensure that it's a competent, knowledgeable platform that can interact back and forth with the student. So, yeah, I mean, those are certainly areas that we had, we had to think about. And it, you know, it takes, you know, a lot of collaboration across departments. It takes a lot of intention, setting, goal setting in the beginning, on what is important, what are we trying to achieve here, and ensuring that we are aligning of those goals, and realigning those goals and all the the actions and steps afterwards, we know how to prioritize those to ensure that we're able to achieve and deliver a product that's going to be successful.
Rhea Kelly 14:53
I love that you brought up training. So when you go from pilot to a more like a broader rollout, would training on this tool become part of, let's say, just student onboarding from the beginning, or, you know, how are you going to tackle that training in a structured way?
Anthony Lee 15:10
Yeah, no, that's a great question. Absolutely. I mean, in student orientation, for sure, we would have that, and we do have them practice with it and interact with it and ensure they know how to use that well, and then also with faculty as well. You know, we have faculty training sessions, and they'll be going over that. But I do think the, on the faculty side, the key is, you know, we've been, we've been running a pilot for some time. We have a large number of faculty that are using it. They're the champions, if you will, of this, of this product. We're going to be using them to train and scale so we can scale and train all the other faculty members that we have. So we're fortunate, we have very, very engaged and excited faculty members, and that's always going to help, you know, when you, when you think about like change management and all those type of things, it's going to help as they try to really educate and train other faculty members how to use it. And then the, I think the excitement from students so far has been great as well, and the engagement. So, you know, we've run it out, we've run it out of several classes. Many of the students have asked us, why isn't it in our, in the next class that they have, some students that haven't had that tool yet are asking for it. But, yeah, I mean, that helps a lot. But in terms of training, for sure, you know, you have to be able to do that, not only in orientation when they first start a new program, but in the beginning of each class too. You know, you want to make sure you go through it and provide the support that we, that you need. And it's, I would say, it's not just from a faculty perspective, but of course, you know, I think that's one of the things we pride ourselves on, is how much support we provide our students from a faculty perspective, from a student advising perspective, and also from a tech and IT perspective. You know, we have the resources there, and it's important to invest in those resources, for sure, especially when you're launching a new product, to ensure that everything goes smoothly.
Rhea Kelly 17:02
So obviously, big, important project. But are there any other ways that you're using AI to support student success at Westcliff?
Anthony Lee 17:10
Yeah, so we have a MBA capstone project. We call that SMART. And this is very common in many business schools around the world, where you get a group of students together and they work on a real-life project for companies and work for industry to get practical learning. We've expanded that to have groups of students across colleges, across programs, so it's interdisciplinary, and across levels as well. It could be a bachelor, master student with a doctorate student on the same team, so that it simulates real-life situations even more. But I would say in that program in particular, we've run and developed a lot of AI projects for other companies. Like, there's one that was transcript evaluation. There was one that was automating résumés that were coming in. There was one, there was, it was a fire company, we were running simulations for the fire company. This, these were all developed by our students, and it's all about automating, you know, AI technology. And, you know, the feedback we've gotten from those companies have been great. They're, they're actually implementing it and leveraging and using it in those companies. So it's, you know, I think that's an area where we're going to continue to, to, to do a lot more things in, and I think, far into the future, we've been discussing this as well is, we have a great team of smart students, engaged students, that are excited. There's no reason why we can't offer consulting services for companies in the future that would like to, to have a product that's made with the experienced students that have done it, right? So, you know, there's a lot of possibilities there, I think. But you know, those are, those are some ways. And another way I would mention, too, is, you know, from an organizational, institutional level perspective, you know, how are we using it to, we talked about faculty, but administratively, right? There's so many ways to optimize and be more efficient. So those are things that we're also trying to develop. In addition to this tool for the, on the academic side, is, how do we automate the admissions process? You know, we, I talked about transfer evaluations, for, we did this for another school as part of the those students, but that's something we're looking at too. How do we automate evaluation of transcripts, how do wee automate admissions process, automate reviewing admissions applications, right? That's just one way. And there's, you know, there's so many other ways. Automating support, right, for students, whether it's tech support, whether it's, you know, whatever the case may be. So yeah, there's various ways that we're looking at it, and I really feel that that is a priority for us, because, again, as students are trying to understand and learn AI so they can compete when they get out into the workforce, Westcliff University needs to have an eye and a focus and a priority in that if we're going to compete as an educational institution in the future as well.
Rhea Kelly 20:03
So final question, what do you think is on the horizon, from a real, like, high level, what's on the horizon for AI in higher education?
Anthony Lee 20:14
That's a big question. What it seems like, so, I went to a conference earlier this year, and it was about innovation in higher education. I think that there are a lot of ed tech companies out there trying to leverage AI and generative AI in so many different ways. I think the future is going to be which ones make the most sense. And you know, how do we continue to value and leverage the human experience, the human background, emotional side of things, to support students in the classroom, in the online classroom, in the physical classroom, and outside that as well. As we all know in education, the whole journey is not just about the education, but how much we're able to really prepare students to be better citizens of the world, be better people. And, and I think, to me, there's just so much opportunity there that it's going to be pretty exciting, right? And there's also other things I haven't mentioned that we're working on. There's, you know, there's different ways, I want to mention this as well is, we're looking at, you know, you want to look at retention rates and graduation rates. That's most important, right? For students. We want students to graduate and be retained. So there's different ways we're looking at that as a tool to help improve it. But there's other, other ideas I haven't, that we're, that we're thinking about. But, you know, I think it's exciting, you know, it's going to change a lot of things. I think, like we mentioned, the importance of preparing students for careers and jobs is just continue to increase. There's always all this talk about the value of education, and that's why we, we choose programs and careers that lead to job, lead to well-paid jobs. So yeah, I mean, I think there's gonna be a lot, a lot to come.
Rhea Kelly 22:10
Thank you for joining us. I'm Rhea Kelly, and this was the Campus Technology Insider podcast. You can find us on the major podcast platforms or visit us online at campustechnology.com/podcast. Let us know what you think of this episode and what you'd like to hear in the future. Until next time.