Engage Summit Recap: Getting Real About AI

Element451’s Engage Summit descended upon Raleigh, North Carolina, last week, providing strategic and tactical insights into AI’s transformative power for higher education. Featuring keynotes, workshops and panel discussions, the conference gave even the most apprehensive attendees confidence that integrating AI into their workflows was not only possible but that it would be required to remain relevant in today’s workforce.

After a couple of days of learning and seeing how our higher ed peers are using various AI tools, it’s hard not to leave with feelings of excitement about the expanded capabilities that marketing teams can unlock. 

Volt spoke with attendees and presenters to understand their teams’ general sentiments around AI adoption, how to maintain a human connection, and how AI will impact the student experience.

AI Adoption and Enthusiasm

The conference started with a crowd-generated word cloud displaying people’s feelings about integrating AI into their teams and workflows. As you might expect, there was plenty of apprehension, with phrases like “Skynet,” “apprehensive” and “job-killer” reflecting several attendees’ apprehension. However, after two days of workshops and demonstrations, these feelings evolved into “excitement,” “productivity” and “personalization.”

Discussing his approach to adopting AI, brand strategy consultant Eddie Francis mentioned he is focused on understanding the possibilities and improving his results.

“I am getting there. I’m working on my [AI] prompts more than anything else,” said Francis “Trying to get as specific as I can, but then also trying to figure out how many things I can use AI for.”

Meanwhile, Siena College Assistant Vice President for Enrollment and Marketing Allison Turcio is a bit more gung-ho.

“Anytime that I can find a way to use AI, I use it. Everything I’m doing, I try to think, ‘How can I use AI to make my life easier?’ There’s too much going on,” said Turcio. “My team members and I, we’re working on our prompt engineering skills to make sure that we’re doing it the best we can, especially making sure we’re doing content development in the right voice of the college.”

Impact of AI on Student Experience

Although the conference primarily focused on AI tools to help marketers attract students, the impact of AI on the student experience was not forgotten.

Devin Purgason, executive director of marketing and student care at Forsyth Technical Community College, emphasized how AI enables his team to focus on executing the school’s mission of being a catalyst for equitable economic mobility. 

“My goal is for AI to create a more equitable and personalized student experience. Now, our AI chat tool handles the more routine questions, and our student care team is able to actually help and focus on folks who need more personalized help and support,” said Purgason. “So, it’s allowed us to be more equitable in our student care.”

Allison Turcio also sees learning these AI tools as an important part of preparing students for their futures.

“I hope it helps students learn how to use AI in the right way, to use it in ethical ways. Students need to understand it and harness it to put themselves ahead in the job market because this is not something that’s going away,” she said. “So, I think it’s like almost how can we help students prepare for a career field in a world that’s going to have AI without it be cheating on the knowledge aspect.”

Biggest AI “Aha” Moments

With all the workshops, product demos and lightning talks, it was easy to learn something new. Here are the highlights according to Volt’s sources.

• Devin Purgason — “AI is not here to steal your job. But someone who knows AI is.”
• Eddie Francis — “It’s nice that everybody feels like they’re in the same boat. Even the presenters kept saying, ‘Listen, we’re still learning. We don’t exactly have it where we want it now.’ That made me feel a little bit more at ease about my learning trajectory as far as AI is concerned.”
• Allison Turcio — “I loved the presentation about behavioral economics that reminded us of the number of decisions that we make in a day — tens of thousands! And we have no idea we’re making them. We like to think that we’re rational thinkers and we’re in the driver’s seat always, but there’s all this subconsciousness that’s driving our decision-making. We have to remember that’s happening for the audiences that we’re trying to talk to, that there’s more to it than just a rational argument here. We like to think that we can message our way to success. Like, if we only just told the message better. But sometimes, it’s not about the message. It’s actually about how you make people feel.”