Cross-Campus Transformation with AI Tools

By Meredith Lancaster, Director of Customer Experience at BoodleBox
January 8, 2025

Most of the discussion around AI in academia is centered on the classroom, and there’s certainly lots of opportunities for using AI in that setting.

But why stop there?
AI is a powerful tool, and its benefits reach far beyond the classroom doors. In fact, institutions can use AI to improve any number of areas and processes across campus, and make the academic experience so much better for students, faculty, and staff.

We’ve done a series of discussions with instructors and academic staff over the past months as we’ve been honing BoodleBox, and we’ve been excited to see just how far institutions have been able to go using AI.

Here's five ways AI can transform your campus:

1. Streamlining administrative processes.

Nobody likes doing admin – even the people who are specifically hired to do it. AI can step in and take an enormous amount of admin work off your shoulders, letting your staff focus on the things that really matter, rather than being stuck crunching data all day. For instance, AI can help out with:

• Scheduling - scheduling appointments is a pain in the best of circumstances, and leads to the email chain of doom in the worst of circumstances. AI can step in and take care of scheduling by keeping track of everyone’s calendars, proposing dates and times, keeping track of conflicts, and sending out event invites.
• Grading - one of the worst parts of academia, grading is also a common area where biases and errors can occur. AI can shoulder the heavy work, reviewing student assignments for accuracy, helping instructors create grading rubrics, and even providing thoughtful feedback on writing assignments.

What’s more, AI can help instructors eliminate some of the unconscious biases that may arise in grading, making the whole process more equitable.

• Admissions processing - similarly, AI can help out with admissions processing, reviewing student applications for suitability against a set of criteria, and saving time by only putting the most qualified candidates in front of the admissions board. Again, AI can help eliminate unconscious bias, as it simply reviews admissions packets according to the criteria you set up, without the potential biases of a reviewer.

2. Improving student support services.

Student support is one of the most important elements of the college experience, but it’s also one of the most expensive and complicated. Institutions can use AI to help make this process easier and more effective for everyone involved, leading to a better campus experience for students while saving resources for the university.

For instance, AI could be used to help with:

• Student support chat bots - chatbots can provide 24/7 support that would be unrealistic in a historical university setting, allowing students to get answers to common questions and guiding them through administrative processes.
• Identifying at-risk students - AI algorithms can be set up to identify at-risk students, reviewing their academic performance and engagement in real-time and ensuring that students don’t slip through the cracks.
• Providing career guidance - institutions can even use AI tools to provide career guidance and counseling, letting students “talk” to the AI to get a sense of what types of jobs might be a good fit for them. They can also use AI tools to help build their resumes, generate cover letters, and even practice job interviews!

3. Personalizing learning experiences.

One of the biggest benefits of AI is how it allows for individual personalization without taking up the time and resources of the instructors. AI platforms can adapt content based on students’ performance and learning style, creating custom learning paths that lead to better educational outcomes.

We've been excited to see universities using AI to:

• Create adaptive learning platforms - it would be amazing if every student could have their own individual learning plan, but that’s just now realistic with the traditional university lecture model. AI can act as an augmentation to that model, letting instructors input their lessons and then adapting those lessons to the needs of each individual student.
• Develop tutoring systems - historically tutoring was only accessible to those with the time and money to spend on it, but AI tutors can be used to provide personalized instruction in a wide variety of fields, and help students get a handle on complex topics without having to take up their instructors’ time.
• Use predictive analytics to predict students’ performance - a fantastic instructor has their finger on the pulse of how each student in their class is doing, but with class sizes increasing, that’s becoming more and more difficult to do. Predictive analytics can help out, flagging students for instructors when they start to become at-risk, and recommending targeted support.

4. Enhancing accessibility and inclusivity.

One of the best things about AI is how, unlike many other technologies in their early adoption phases, it’s extremely accessible, working with screen readers and providing voice-only options for engagement. Institutions can leverage this huge upside of AI to make their own campuses more accessible and inclusive by:

• Supporting diverse learning styles - AI allows students to interact with course materials in ways that make the most sense for them and their brains, rather than having to try to fit into the model the instructor has set up.
• Easily integrating students with disabilities - AI tools offer instant, high-quality assistance with text-to-speech and speech-to-text, making it easier for students to access materials regardless of any disability.
• Allowing for real-time translation - AI tools can translate lectures and materials in real-time, letting students learn in the language they are most comfortable with.

5. Innovating pedagogical approaches.

What would it be like if a student could learn about the Declaration of Independence by having a conversation with Thomas Jefferson, or get support in learning math by playing a game designed specifically for them? The possibilities are truly endless with AI, and instructors are starting to use it to create new and innovative pedagogical approaches by:

• Developing creative new lesson plans and learning experiences - AI lets instructors bring any number of new elements into their lesson plans with the touch of a button. From AI-assisted peer review to digital art collaboration, it’s all there.
• Facilitating collaboration and interdisciplinary learning - collaborative AI platforms like BoodleBox let students easily work with each other, AI tools, and even students in different disciplines, all from one simple and centralized platform.
• Creating an interactive learning environment - the days of the lecturer talking at students are long gone, AI allows for an unprecedented level of interaction in learning, making it much more exciting – and effective – for students and faculty.

And honestly, this is just the beginning. AI is improving by leaps and bounds every day, and academic institutions are just starting to really understand the transformations they can unlock on their campuses by partnering with it.

As an AI company that focuses specifically on integrating responsible, ethical, and effective AI into academia, we’d love to support you in bringing this kind of transformation to your campus.