(TNS) — While artificial intelligence appears to be a growing technology among business and industry, research is also progressing to better understand some of the complexities and implications of its applications.
In the 2025 McKinsey Global AI Study, 78% of respondents said their organization uses AI in at least one business function.
At UW-Stout, part of our 360-degree approach to AI includes incorporating some of these skills into all of our programs. Assistant Professor Kami Banger, program director for business information technology and digital marketing technology at UW-Stout, said data showing that more and more people are exposed to this technology likely prompted the university to consider teaching students how to use it responsibly and ethically.
“As part of the expedition, this [might be] It’s the same for businesses, they have to figure out how to use it and what it can be used for to solve business needs,” she said.
As part of his research being conducted at the university, Bangor is researching the application of AI for instructors and the implementation of AI in higher education and business technology. By studying generative AI (GenAI), a tool for creating new content such as text, images, and audio, she considers its use in the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework through a study titled “Rethinking Assignment Design: An Exploratory Study of AI-Assisted TILT Implementation.”
In addition to research, Mr. Bunger also teaches a professional development course, AI Adoption Strategies, to help students design AI strategies for various organizational frameworks.
“What does it mean for students? What does it mean for companies? I think people are still trying to figure out a lot,” Banger said. “My interest is in how we can utilize these tools in a responsible and ethical manner.”
TILT is an approach that makes tasks and activities more clear to students by defining objectives, tasks, and criteria. Banger said it helps to receive assignments and make sure students understand the purpose.
“But when instructors review assignments, it can be quite daunting depending on how much assignments they have each semester,” she said. “What I’ve been working on over the last year is looking at ways to take advantage of the generative AI tools that are out there in a way that helps instructors leverage what they already have and use prompts. We created prompts here for instructors to use, making sure that the assignments are built into the TILT framework.”
But Bangor said that while the technology is useful, it’s not 100 percent effective and may never be. Although the study aims to confirm its usefulness in these applications, Banger said some of her observations recognized the need to teach how to use these tools effectively.
“If you don’t put a lot of additional information in there, if you don’t enter parameters, or if you’re not very good at writing prompts, the generative AI, like everything else, won’t be able to read your mind,” she said. “I think this is one of the misconceptions that I see and hear a lot when I’m speaking at faculty meetings and things like that. It takes effort. It’s not something you can just snap your fingers and it’s going to do everything you want it to do based on what’s in your head. You have to do everything that’s in your head.”
Banger’s work reflects one area in which the technology is being studied at Stout, along with other research experiments using machine learning in engineering and manufacturing to help solve complex engineering problems and scientific challenges. In another area, GenAI’s recognition will be tested on human-written and AI-generated poems.
While research on AI continues, Banger said one of the things Stout is doing is making sure there’s a lot of work done on the governance of AI as well.
“We’re trying to build really good governance, frameworks and policies around this, to grow our knowledge, and to help industry partners who are interested in using these kinds of tools,” she said. “Actually putting guardrails in place and understanding the tools that we use out there is part of what we continue to talk about here at Stout and in the classroom.”
© 2025 the Leader-Telegram (Eau Claire, Wisconsin). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
