No matter your job or position, your ability to communicate – whether in writing or speaking – at the highest level of your capability will determine your relationships and your success in those relationships. Early on in life, most of us struggled with communicating our thoughts but you always knew developing that skill is essential.  Business, like life, is a team sport and engaging and working with others is an everyday occurrence.  The competency to communicate effectively is a continuing learning process.  It’s a critical skill for success.  The more you do it, the more competent you become.

Help is on the way. Enter AI – Artificial Intelligence.  Yes, AI, the most powerful learning tool ever created.  It can make you smarter, if you understand how it makes you learn.  At Monmouth University, we integrate AI into our oral and written communication assignments to help students excel. Oral communications take the form of creating a slide presentation analyzing real-world case studies.  Terrific learning experience to help them strengthen both their critical thinking and public speaking skills. We ask them to use AI to refine their delivery and content. For writing, we emphasize a critical process: original thought first. Write as you would have before AI ever existed, then feed your original work into AI and prompt AI to be your personal Writing Tutor to fine-tune it. This approach ensures you learn something new with every draft, steadily improving your writing skills and boosting your confidence. Again, it will make you smarter.

Why AI?

AI isn’t just a tech tool; it’s a game-changer for learning. It replaces those outdated methods with instant, powerful resources, accessible every time you have a need.

• The Library – Once, we pored over books or today e-books for knowledge. AI’s vast “Big Data” library contains everything ever written, accessible in seconds. Now it’s all in the AI Library…
• The Encyclopedia – We learned general background info on any topic from a collection of books in alphabetical order, to make it easy to find stuff. How nice was that… Fuhgeddaboudit….. Forget flipping through volumes of information for hours. Just prompt AI, and it retrieves precise answers instantly.
• News & Media – From newspapers to social media and everything in between, we’ve always brainstormed ideas and information to spark debate or insight of current events. AI aggregates, compares and evaluates that thinking, helping you form sharper, more accurate conclusions. That is if ideology does not get in the way.
• The Teachers – Many Teachers from grade school thru higher education all focused on Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic, right? Coaches, Tutors, Trainers, Teachers…all to make us smarter. Well, AI may be replacing us. Educators pass on what they know to help the learning process of others. Now, AI offers unmatched expertise, analyzing your writing for clarity, grammar, and style, and suggesting improvements no human could match in speed and scale never seen before.  So where do we teachers fit in?  Probably another blog… any suggestions?

Addressing AI Misuse

Since we are talking about education, let me end this blog by talking about the elephant in the room – Plagiarism – that is what it is and it has always been a problem.  Sure, some students will misuse AI to bypass learning, to cheat, to plagiarize an assignment. Nothing new here…….

I spend no time policing when a student cheats. That’s a personal choice for me. It’s their choice if they want to learn or not.  If they want to use AI to do all their work and learn nothing, they will find a way and it’s a losing battle for teachers, and frankly, a waste of time.  Instead, the focus should be on inspiring students to see AI’s value as a lifetime learning tool. When used correctly, AI doesn’t just help you complete assignments—it makes you smarter. The choice is simple: embrace AI to grow, or miss out on its transformative potential, is the message. Not everyone will buy in, but those who do will thrive in a world where lifelong learning is non-negotiable.  I still have faith in those that cheat.  Some are just not ready to accept that learning is a never-ending process and that there are no short-cuts. When they figure it out, they will be fine.

 The Future Is Here

AI’s full impact on education—and life—is just beginning to unfold. But one thing is already clear: it can enhance everything we do. Start with your original ideas. Use AI to refine, elevate, and clarify. You write it, AI fine-tunes it! Practice this consistently, and you’ll do more than just communicate better. You’ll think better. You’ll learn faster. You’ll work smarter. And ultimately, you’ll succeed in ways you never thought possible. Word of caution: connecting with people emotionally as well as intellectually is important for our overall health. Buona Salute!