Category: Gen AI

Collaborative Innovation: An AI-Driven Adventure in Redefining Course Creation

Post date March 12, 2026

Written by Evan Rozantes, Associate Director, Innovation Portfolio

At the Jay Hurt Hub for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Davidson College, we recently embarked on a collaboration with Universidad Galileo that pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in online course development. We’re excited to share our journey in creating the “AI for Marketing” program on edX, a project that stretched our approach to course creation

The Spark

Our journey began at the 2023 edX Global Forum in Washington, DC. It was there that we first encountered the Innovation Team from Universidad Galileo, led by Rocael Hernandez Rizzardini (“Roc”) and Miguel Morales. Their presentation on incorporating AI into online course development was revolutionary. While many higher education professionals in the audience approached the concept with trepidation, we saw an opportunity to push the envelope of innovation. After eagerly linking up to say hello following their presentation, this serendipitous meeting blossomed into a working collaboration. Our shared vision? To create a course that not only taught learners about key concepts of using AI within marketing but was itself a testament to the power of AI in education.

AI as the Process

What sets our “AI for Marketing” program apart is its comprehensive integration of AI at every stage of development. From crafting the syllabus to generating course video scripts, we researched, tested, and incorporated multiple AI tools to streamline and enhance the creation process. Perhaps the most innovative aspect was the introduction of “Vanessa,” an AI-powered instructor for Davidson’s portions of the course.

This innovative approach allowed us to achieve several key objectives:

Rapidly develop and iterate on course content.
Ensure consistency across all three courses in the program.
Explore new possibilities in asynchronous online learning experiences.
Demonstrate practical applications of AI in real-time.

Beyond Borders: Cultivating Global Learning

The collaboration between Davidson College and Universidad Galileo brought together diverse perspectives and expertise. This cognitive diversity enriched our program in several key ways:

Comprehensive Content: We created a broad curriculum covering concepts spanning from AI fundamentals to advanced applications in marketing strategy and creativity.
Theory Meets Practice: By combining academic rigor with real-world applications and current-day tech industry examples, we ensured that learners could immediately apply their knowledge.
Global Perspective: The partnership allowed us to incorporate diverse case studies and examples, making the content relevant to a global audience.

Learning by Doing

Throughout this process, our team at the Jay Hurt Hub embraced a “learning by doing” approach. Working alongside the Universidad Galileo innovation team, we gained invaluable insights into:

The practical applications of AI in course development.
Strategies for integrating AI tools into existing educational frameworks.
The potential of AI to personalize and enhance the learning experience.

This hands-on experience has informed our approach to future online courses and sparked ideas that we’ve brought to our AI Innovation Initiative on campus.

The Outcome: Exploring AI’s Role in Modern Marketing

The result of our collaboration is a three-course program positioned for existing marketing professionals:

Intro to AI for Digital Marketing
AI Technology for Marketing Optimization
AI for Marketing Strategy and Creativity

Each course is designed to be completed in one week for a total of a three-week program and offers a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical skills. From understanding the fundamentals of AI in marketing to leveraging the technology for optimization and strategy development, the program equips learners with the tools they need to thrive in the AI-driven marketing landscape.

Beyond the Course: Broader Applications and Aspirations

This partnership has transcended traditional course development, ushering in a new era of thinking about how we can harness advanced technologies to enhance our educational methodologies. As we reflect on this experience, several key takeaways stand out:

The Power of Collaboration: By bringing together diverse expertise, we created something greater than the sum of its parts.

AI as an Educational Tool: AI is not just a subject to be taught; it’s a powerful tool for enhancing the teaching process itself.

Innovation Through Experimentation: Embracing new technologies and methodologies can lead to groundbreaking educational experiences for both learners and educators.

As we look ahead, we’re enthusiastic about offering the insights learned from this project to Davidson College’s broader campus community as part of our engagement with the AI Innovation Initiative in the forthcoming academic year. The “AI for Marketing” program is just the beginning of what we believe will be a transformative journey in AI-enhanced education.

We invite learners from around the world to join us in this innovative educational experience. Whether you’re a marketing professional looking to upskill or an entrepreneur seeking to harness the power of AI, this program offers a unique opportunity to learn, experiment, and grow. Together with Universidad Galileo and edX, we’re not just teaching about the use cases of AI, we’re helping to shape it. And we can’t wait to see where this journey takes us next!

Choosing the Right AI Avatar: Ethical Considerations

Post date October 7, 2025

One of the more recent innovations in AI and video production is the introduction of AI avatars. Using AI avatars reduces production costs, provides consistency across multiple videos created at different times, and allows for easy translation into other languages due to lip-sync technology. They might be valuable for trainings, product explanations, or videos that require frequent updates.

As AI progresses, avatars are becoming increasingly realistic in their movements and speech. We now have the opportunity to choose everything from skin color to wardrobe—but how do we ensure that we’re making the right choices, and what does “right” even mean in this context?

Our Experience

Our online learning team recently created an AI avatar named Vanessa as the “teacher” of a class on using AI products in marketing. (See our blog post on how we produced these courses using AI at every step.) We didn’t want to use our own images because none of our team members are experts in the subject, and because the information was being provided by AI.

For Vanessa, we chose the most realistic and least robotic voice from HeyGen, an advanced AI video and audio generator, then selected a face we thought matched the voice. This process raised subtle questions—how did we know the two “matched”? How do accents and tone affect our mental image of a person?—but these concerns will only intensify in the future as AI voices become equally realistic and avatar options grow more diverse.

Key Considerations for Choosing an AI Avatar

Representation and Authenticity

When selecting an avatar, we need to think not only about what we want to display but also who we are. For example, imagine a company primarily composed of white, cis-male employees. Is it misleading to have a Black woman as the avatar for recruitment videos? Or does it invite those who have been underrepresented within the company?

Depending on the company culture, future employees might feel betrayed by the use of an image not actually present in the organization, or they might feel welcomed by the attempt. Importantly, it isn’t the avatar that will enforce those feelings—it will be the behaviors of people in the company.

Marketing Implications

For marketing applications, the choices become even more complex. Do you choose a young, energetic woman as your avatar, or an older, established-looking gentleman? Why should we associate those traits with this particular product or service?

How do we avoid falling into stereotypes when the avatars themselves may make it even easier to do so? These choices communicate values and expectations to your audience, whether intentionally or not.

Future Challenges

As AI technology advances, these questions will become more nuanced. Soon, all AI voices will sound equally human, and avatar options will expand dramatically. Organizations will need to develop thoughtful frameworks for making these decisions rather than relying on instinct or convenience.

Finding Your Way Forward

There’s no checklist to determine whether your avatar is the ethical choice; like many moral dilemmas, you could make an argument for either side. However, some principles can guide your decision:

Think carefully about representation and what your avatar choices communicate
Consider options that don’t seem initially obvious
Request and listen to feedback from your audience
Align your avatar choices with your organizational values
Be transparent about your use of AI

Your goal is to reach your audience effectively; ultimately, only they can tell you if your messaging resonates. The most important thing is to approach these decisions thoughtfully rather than defaulting to the most convenient or familiar options.

Creating Content with AI

Post date September 2, 2025

For the course collaboration with Galileo on AI for Marketing, we wanted to experiment with making as much content with AI as possible. We were dedicated to integrating AI into every aspect of the course production:

Creating learner personas
Brainstorming and organizing concepts
Writing scripts and comprehension questions
Creating graphics and slides
Recording and editing videos

Luckily, AI development has expanded into each of those areas!

ChatGPT as Thought Partner

Before we could do anything else, we needed to know what we were actually teaching. None of us–an instructional designer, an innovation portfolio manager, and student intern studying mathematics–had any expertise in marketing to share, so we turned to our trusty partner: ChatGPT.

We knew the basics of what we wanted to cover: the history and possibilities of AI technology in the marketing world, its direct applications, and its use as a creativity enhancer. With those goals in mind, we asked ChatGPT to outline the broad strokes of what three short courses focusing on those subjects might include. Once we had the outline, we narrowed down the list by creating learner personas. We asked both ourselves and the GPT why someone would be interested in taking a class on AI in Marketing and chose the most relevant topics from the pool of ideas. We then arranged those ideas into the outlines for three online courses, each one week long, with four to five concepts in each.

ChatGPT as Writer

Once we had the course outlines and four to five concepts that each course would cover, we could begin working on the scripts. Using our learner personas to inform the tone and our research into attention spans to determine a length of five minutes, we instructed ChatGPT to write scripts for each section. This is where iteration and our experience with prompt engineering became absolutely vital. Initially, ChatGPT wrote scripts that were styled after movie scripts, with lines for what the instructor should do at certain points and stock footage that would appear onscreen. We experimented with the prompt until we got a format that worked for us: a simple summary of the subject. We also had to fuss with the requested length of the summaries–a request for a five-minute summary didn’t typically go into much detail, but a request for approximately 600 words was often more in-depth.

The scripts made it exceptionally easy to write comprehension questions. We asked the GPT to highlight the three biggest points in each video, then write reflection or multiple choice questions about those points. We had it write several of each, then chose the two we believed were strongest to include in the course.

DALL-E as Graphics Magician

We knew our videos would need graphics and slides to illustrate the concepts within, so we used DALL-E to create comics, fake brand logos, and general illustrations. For each video, we took the three biggest points that ChatGPT had summarized for the comprehension questions and thought about ways they could be illustrated. We then asked DALL-E (via ChatGPT) to make those illustrations, iterating on previous ones. We found that DALL-E had difficulty distinguishing and modifying skin tones and gender, which was interesting. It also tended to represent AI as a classic old-school robot, with a rectangular head and lots of wires–a beautiful self-portrait!

HeyGen as Film Crew

Now, for what might be the coolest part: video production and editing!

We have the scripts and the graphics, but how do we turn those into engaging videos without an instructor to stand in front of the camera? HeyGen is an AI tool that takes in text and puts out video and audio. Users can select a pre-recorded avatar or go to a recording studio and film themselves saying different phonemes and making gestures for the AI to compile into a fluid, natural-looking video.

Galileo had recorded one of their professors and used his avatar, but we chose to use a pre-recorded voice and avatar for our course and dubbed her Vanessa, our AI instructor. Read more about our selection process. To edit the video and audio HeyGen produced and integrate the graphics and slides, we used Adobe Premiere. Editing was quick and easy because, unlike a human instructor, the AI did not fumble words or need to go back and re-record certain sections.

Thoughts

Our journey of creating an entire course using AI tools has been both enlightening and challenging. After completing this experiment with Galileo, we’ve gained several valuable insights worth sharing:

Strengths and Limitations

While AI excelled at providing broad overviews of marketing concepts, we noticed limitations when we needed deeper, more nuanced discussions. ChatGPT gave us solid foundational content, but the expertise and lived experience of a human marketing professional would have added valuable depth to specific examples and edge cases. This balance suggests that AI works best as a collaborative tool rather than a complete replacement for subject matter expertise.

The AI also tended to return similar responses for each prompt. The AI was unable to “think” beyond stereotypes, especially in image generation. For instance, DALL-E defaulted to images of an old-fashioned robot any time we asked for an image of AI doing something. As the algorithms behind the AI become more complex and nuanced, it is likely that this will change, but currently, human creativity is still required to make the courses more engaging.

Workflow Improvements

The process revealed several opportunities for improvement in AI tools:

Content Management: We found ourselves manually uploading and organizing content across platforms. An integrated solution that could automatically transfer scripts to video creation tools and then to learning management systems would dramatically streamline the workflow.
Accessibility Features: HeyGen produced impressive videos, but we had to manually create subtitles. Native accessibility features like automatic captioning would make the content more inclusive and save significant production time.
Consistency Challenges: Maintaining a consistent voice and style across multiple AI-generated pieces required careful prompt engineering and editing. Future AI systems could benefit from better “memory” of stylistic choices throughout a project.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

The time savings were substantial—what might have taken months of research, writing, and production was compressed into a few weeks. However, we did invest considerable time in prompt refinement and output curation. As these tools mature, we expect the efficiency gains to increase even further.

Ethical Considerations

Our experiment also raised important questions about transparency and attribution. We decided to be fully transparent with learners about Vanessa being an AI avatar and about the AI-generated content. This disclosure seemed important for building trust, though we wonder how perceptions might change as AI-created content becomes more commonplace in education.

Future Possibilities

Looking ahead, we’re excited about how AI tools might evolve to support more sophisticated course creation:

AI that can generate interactive elements and assessments beyond simple multiple-choice questions
Systems that can personalize content based on individual learner progress and preferences
Tools that combine AI capabilities with easier human modification and oversight

This project has convinced us that AI-assisted course creation isn’t just a novelty—it’s potentially transformative for educational content development, especially in rapidly evolving fields like marketing where content needs frequent updating. While the technology isn’t perfect yet, it’s already changing how we approach instructional design and content creation.

What began as an experiment has evolved into a new methodology we plan to refine and expand in future projects. The most effective approach seems to be finding the right balance between AI efficiency and human creativity—leveraging technology to handle the routine aspects while focusing human effort on adding nuance, connection, and authenticity.

for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
at Davidson College