AI and games are shaping real-world skills

Speakers across ASU share how they're bringing artificial intelligence into the classroom — from game-based learning to personalized large language models — at W. P. Carey's final "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" event of the semester.

The W. P. Carey School of Business's "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" speaker series invites faculty and staff to learn from each other about the impact of generative AI and ChatGPT on teaching and learning. The series involves personnel from across the business school and colleagues from other ASU units and the Office of the University Provost. This story is part of an ongoing series highlighting insights from the "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" speaker events to share learnings with the broader ASU community.

Since W. P. Carey launched its "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" series two years ago, university faculty and staff have gathered 16 times to share insights on AI's impact on higher education. From helping faculty connect with students to improving online learning to approaching AI ethically and mindfully, the series has highlighted dozens of ways the ASU community innovates to improve teaching, learning, and work.

At the final event of the spring 2025 semester on April 16, Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning Dan Gruber led a discussion featuring speakers from ASU's business school, the Endless Games and Learning Lab, and Enterprise Technology. They shared their experiences with AI creative tools, game-based learning, and accessible large language model classroom activities.

"It was an energizing final 'Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT' for the academic year that brought together a wide ranges of perspectives, teaching practices, and AI tools — amplifying the innovation happening across ASU and the W. P. Carey School of Business while creating a space for all of us to learn together," says Gruber, co-founder of the Teaching and Learning Leaders Alliance, which connects associate deans and other business school leaders from across the globe.

Mark Ollila, arts media and engineering professor of practice and founding director of the Endless Games and Learning Lab, and Elina Ollila, arts media and engineering professor of practice and the lab's associate director, shared how the lab uses AI to identify skills learned while playing mobile and video games.

The lab, which was founded by ASU President Michael Crow eight months ago, is built around three pillars: make-to-learn, or learning skills like art, engineering, or project management through playing games; learn-to-earn, or being able to make a career out of the skills learned; and play-to-learn, or learning any skills through playing games like history from the game Assassin's Creed or team management from World of Warcraft.

The Ollilas demonstrated how they use the MIRANDA (multimodal intelligent recognition and assessment for next generation digital accreditation) program to monitor games and simulations and identify the skills players learn while gaming.

"Through MIRANDA, we're using AI based on the idea that people play games all the time, and learn things from those games," said Mark Ollila.

Using an example of a person playing a waste management game, the Ollilas shared how MIRANDA, which was running in the background, identified that the player was learning skills like strategy, negotiation, resource management, technical troubleshooting, sorting, time management, and critical thinking.

Mark Ollila shared that the lab is focused on using MIRANDA to identify games that have learning outcomes but are not marketed as educational. Since the program can be used in conjunction with any game or simulation, it has the potential to help game players earn micro-credentials for skills learned through gaming.

"Let's look at rewarding these players with some sort of micro-credential that could be a pathway to a degree," he said. "Say someone playing this game often and gets a sense of it, gets a half or full microcredential that leads into a supply chain management degree? Because through the game, they're demonstrating some competency."

Following the Ollilas' presentation, Michael Stordeur, AI creative learning specialist at Enterprise Technology's Learning Experience Design, shared Adobe AI tools accessible to ASU faculty, staff, and students.

As an Adobe Creative Campus, ASU is part of a cohort of schools dedicated to creative teaching and learning strategies. Stordeur shared how tools accessible through Adobe — including Adobe Firefly, Adobe Express, and Adobe Education Exchange — can help users of multiple disciplines and skill levels infuse creativity into their projects through AI, including text-to-image, text-to-template, text effects, animate from audio, video captions, and more. ASU students can request access to either Adobe Express or Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) for free. ASU Faculty and staff can submit a form to request access to Adobe Express free of charge, or Adobe Creative Cloud (CC), which includes a chargeback to their department.

Matt Sopha, clinical professor of information systems and teaching and learning lead, gave the final presentation on running small and large language models on a device without an internet connection. Since these models are self-contained and private, they can be trained on personal data and documents, allowing instructors to create more detailed and personalized classroom content.

"These examples can help us show students how this technology works," said Sopha. "We can start building chat interfaces to use in the classroom while maintaining FERPA compliance. There's a lot of opportunity here."

When Gruber launched the "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" series two years ago in partnership with the W. P. Carey Faculty Teaching Leads, he didn't anticipate it would become a model for conversations around generative AI at other universities across the nation. The series is built on Principled Innovation, ASU's newest design aspiration, which encourages creating new concepts and ideas through the lens of cultivating positive change through humanity.

"Placing character and values at the center of decisions and actions allows us to focus on the moral, civic, performance, and intellectual practices of principled innovation," said Gruber.

As generative AI continues to reshape conversations around learning, research, and work, "Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT" has become a catalyst for collaboration, experimentation, and innovation at W. P. Carey. The series will return in the fall, offering ASU faculty, staff, and students a space to share insights into the impact of AI on education.