At Toronto Rotman, An AI Tool Is Changing How Teachers Teach — And Helping Students Learn Better, Too

Two Toronto Rotman School of Management professors have launched an AI teaching assistant that is already changing not only the way professors teach at Canada’s premier business school, but how their colleagues at other top schools teach, too.

“It makes no sense the way we go about education today,” says one of the creators of All Day TA, Kevin Bryan, an associate professor of strategic management at the Rotman School. “We design a course, teach it, and give a student homework. If they receive 7/10, I give it back to the student and maybe I answer if they come to my office hours, or they can try to get answers from a friend, but that’s how it works. Often I have no idea who’s doing well and who’s doing poorly until midterm.”

The tool’s function is in its name. All Day TA is essentially an extension of a professor that guides students using their professor’s specific school of thought.

A TOOL THAT’S AN EXTENSION OF THE PROFESSOR

Here’s how it works. Imagine it’s 2027: You’re a student sitting in your university’s classroom, and your professor just finished a lecture on value capture theory. As you pack up your things, your AI study assistant pops up on your laptop with the message, “Hey, it looks like you and a few of your classmates struggled with the concept of wave-particle duality today. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.”

All Day TA then walks you through personalized exercises and questions based on the lecture and class materials. It even generates a few extra practice problems to help solidify your understanding. You feel the concepts start to click.

Later that evening, the study assistant shows your professor a detailed report that says: “40% of the students found wave-particle duality challenging, particularly the part about the double-slit experiment.” Your professor now knows exactly what concepts your class is struggling with, and can revisit the topic with a new approach.

“The professor’s job becomes, ‘What do I teach, and how do I present it the first time?’,” Bryan says.

A USER BASE IN THE TRIPLE DIGITS

The new tool is part of a greater movement in higher education, where institutions are rethinking entire programs to incorporate AI. IMD in Switzerland has completely overhauled its MBA program with much support, fully embracing AI with a significant emphasis on skill development, particularly soft skills. “Nearly every aspect of this MBA experience has been rethought, redesigned, and retooled for the AI revolution,” says Omar Toulan, MBA dean at IMD.

At Rotman, Kevin Bryan and his colleague Joshua Gans, a professor of strategic management and the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in technical innovation and entrepreneurship, have both used All Day TA in their courses with tons of success.

“It started as a project we were doing internally,” says Bryan. “We felt confident it is where we wanted it to be, so we opened it up this December.”

Word quickly spread. Soon, professors from Princeton, Berkeley, UCLA, and other universities worldwide began asking for the tool. Gans and Bryan now have an impressive user base of colleagues from top universities all over the world, numbering in the triple digits.

TECH FRIENDLY TO THOSE UNFRIENDLY TO TECH

The results speak for themselves, with thousands of student-AI interactions recorded in both Bryan and Gans’s classes.

The tool is highly accessible, answering questions in multiple languages, which is crucial for a school like Rotman with two-thirds international students. It’s also designed to assist those who are visually impaired. “Even professors who hardly use technology and prefer to write all of their lectures by hand have been able to use this,” says Bryan.

As for data privacy, Bryan assures, “This tool doesn’t save data. Even when professors put their documents in, we don’t save the documents.”

HOW THIS TOOL OUTSHINES CHATGPT

With All Day TA, Bryan says, the flood of simpler questions in his inbox has significantly dried up. Office hours have transformed into engaging dialogues, and his human TAs are deployed to support the bottom 10% of the class, ensuring no one is left behind.

He says All Day TA is especially useful for courses with highly specialized material where Google and ChatGPT do not serve students well: Think of the tool as an extension of the teacher themselves, Bryan says. Large Language Models like ChatGPT take answers from the web, but don’t always include the teacher’s school of thought on a topic.

For example, one could ask ChatGPT, “Is an ICO (initial coin offering) a good way for a crypto company to raise money?” ChatGPT’s answer is “Yes, it is a good way to raise money.”

The problem is that Bryan teaches that this is actually not a good way to raise money. It used to be, he says, but the answer is outdated.

“I don’t want my students in my class to get this idea,” he says.

WILL AI REPLACE THE TEACHER?

Bryan often hears concerns such as, “Is this going to take my job?” and “How are we going to train the TAs?”

His response is simple.

“Our role is not degraded by AI, and TAs’ roles aren’t degraded any more than having a textbook,” he says.

“It’s just a tool that helps people learn better. If you are a professor with a very niche topic, the AI likely does not know it, and even if so, it won’t have your school of thought on the topic. You still need to prepare for your class.

“There’s still a role for your human TAs to help students who really need individual help, sometimes those who are not motivated enough.”

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