Texas A&M University designed and refined an AI-enabled learning environment that strengthens instruction, gives students more authentic practice, and offers a model for thoughtfully integrating AI into teaching and learning.
Institutional Profile
Mays Business School at Texas A&M University prepares students to lead with integrity, innovation, and a strong understanding of how business creates value. Through experiential learning and close engagement with industry, the business school equips students with the skills and confidence to succeed in a rapidly changing business environment.
The Challenge/Opportunity
At Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, developing students into strong business leaders, and specifically preparing them for careers in professional selling, means more than just equipping them with sales acumen and technical business knowledge. According to Janet Parish, clinical professor and director of the Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute, and Andrew Loring, clinical associate professor and associate director, teaching professional selling also prepares students to communicate effectively, build relationships, and solve problems regardless of their eventual career path, qualities that are growing in demand.
As employers increasingly seek graduates who can combine business expertise with interpersonal effectiveness, the leaders at Mays Business School are continually exploring opportunities to expand the ways students develop these skills through meaningful, hands-on practice. One way they are expanding those opportunities is through artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled role-playing practice for students. Although role-playing and experiential learning have long been central to the business curriculum, providing personalized coaching and feedback for every student has become challenging as the program has grown. Parish and Loring envisioned an environment where students could practice interviews, sales conversations, presentations, and other professional interactions whenever they needed, not just during scheduled class time. The goal was not to replace faculty-led instruction but to make high-quality practice more available, increase repetition, and free faculty to focus on higher-value coaching and mentorship.
The team recognized that tomorrow’s graduates will be expected not only to understand AI but also to use it thoughtfully alongside human judgment, empathy, and communication skills. Rather than viewing AI as a technology to avoid, the leaders in the business school sought to help students learn how to incorporate AI into their professional toolkit, demonstrating how emerging technologies can complement, not replace, the interpersonal abilities that remain essential in business leadership.
To support these goals, Parish and Loring, along with Shrihari Sridhar, senior associate dean of Mays Business School, collaborated with Dell Technologies to develop and implement an immersive AI-driven training experience—a customizable platform that simulates business interactions and provides immediate feedback. Through this collaboration with Dell, the team pursued an AI-powered experience that could simulate a variety of important activities for their business students: job interviews, customer conversations, presentations, and coaching sessions. The AI training experience is part of a broader, purpose-built Sales Lab launched in the fall of 2026. The lab integrates the AI avatar experiences alongside existing instructional technologies, with the aim of creating an ecosystem where students can practice with greater frequency, build confidence before engaging with faculty (and, eventually, employers), and graduate better prepared for an AI-enabled workplace.
Process
Rather than implementing an off-the-shelf solution, Parish and Loring approached the initiative as a collaboration with Dell to design a learning experience tailored to Mays Business School’s particular educational goals. Conversations began after Dell invited university leaders to explore emerging AI technologies and consider where they might fit within existing academic workflows. Faculty from the Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute quickly recognized the potential to address a longstanding challenge: providing students with more opportunities to practice professional conversations while maintaining the high-quality coaching that distinguishes the program.
The team designed the initiative from the start as an integrated learning ecosystem rather than a stand-alone AI application. Students start in the university’s learning management system, where instructors assign role-play activities they can complete with an AI avatar or with a face-to-face interaction in the Sales Lab. The newly constructed facility features presentation rooms and role-play pods equipped with Dell technology to support both individual and team-based practice. Recordings, transcripts, and performance data are then captured to provide students with detailed feedback while giving faculty and students multiple perspectives, including instructor, peer, trained AI models, and role-player evaluations to assess student progress.
Building Confidence and Preparing Students to Succeed
“The new Sales Lab gives our students an exceptional environment to practice, receive feedback, and build confidence before entering the marketplace. Integrating AI avatars adds another important dimension: Students can engage in realistic, repeatable interactions that help them sharpen both their communication skills and their ability to adapt in the moment.” —Nate Sharp, Dean of Mays Business School
“Role playing isn’t just a training exercise—it’s a game changer. In a supportive lab setting, students gain the confidence, skills, and mindset needed to excel. This hands-on practice empowers them to hit the ground running in their first professional sales role, where role playing is the key to standing out and winning.” —Former student Mike Tuller ’87, Executive Director, Cardiovascular Sales, Amgen
“The role plays through the Sales Leadership Institute prepared me for success as an account executive at Gartner. This hands-on experience built my confidence for conversations with C-level executives. I always recommend students get involved in the Sales Leadership Institute and take advantage of these opportunities to set themselves up for a successful career.” —Former student Brooke Wright ’24, Account Executive, Gartner
Parish and Loring worked with Dell to tailor the AI experience to the specific competencies students needed to develop. Rather than relying on generic prompts, instructors can build detailed scenarios, evaluation rubrics, and role definitions that reflect authentic sales and interview situations. During the pilot, faculty found that the quality of AI feedback depended on the specificity of the prompts and rubrics. Breaking conversations into distinct stages, clearly defining evaluation criteria, and continually refining prompts significantly improved the realism of the interactions and the usefulness of the feedback students received.
The implementation has been iterative by design. Initial pilots within sales courses generated hundreds of student practice sessions, allowing faculty to gather feedback, identify limitations, and refine both the technology and instructional approach before expanding its use. Sridhar and the faculty are also establishing key performance indicators to compare student outcomes before and after using the platform, as well as measuring improvements in communication skills, confidence, interview readiness, and workplace preparation.
For the long term, there may be potential for expanding this initiative in ways that benefit the larger Texas A&M system and other academic programs and student learning opportunities. Over time, the model has the potential to extend beyond sales education to other programs where practice-based learning is essential. AI-enabled simulations could support students in areas such as interviewing, negotiations, leadership communication, customer service, and other presentations, providing scalable opportunities for deliberate practice and personalized feedback.
Outcomes and Lessons Learned
Focus on real educational challenges AI can solve before implementing AI. Faculty emphasized that AI should never be the starting point. Instead, institutions should first identify the specific workflow or teaching/learning challenge they are trying to improve and then determine where AI can add meaningful value. At Mays Business School, the goal was never simply to introduce AI into the curriculum; it was to provide students with more opportunities to practice communication, interviewing, and professional selling while strengthening, rather than replacing, faculty instruction. Beginning with a clearly defined educational objective helps ensure that every technology decision supports student success.
Invest the time to build AI solutions intentionally. One of the team’s biggest lessons was that creating a high-quality AI learning experience requires patience and careful design. AI is not a plug-and-play solution; it depends on detailed prompts, well-defined evaluation rubrics, and realistic scenarios to generate meaningful feedback. Faculty found that the more precisely they described learning objectives, role definitions, and scoring criteria, the more valuable the student experience became. While the upfront investment of time was significant, they believe the resulting platform is far more effective because it reflects the specific skills and career paths of their students.
Create an integrated experience that is easy for students and faculty to use. The team also learned that successful adoption depends on user experience. Reducing the number of platforms, logins, and disconnected workflows helps minimize frustration for students, faculty, and IT staff alike. Integrating AI activities into existing learning management systems and instructional workflows increases participation, simplifies support, and allows technology to feel like a natural extension of the learning experience rather than an additional burden. The integration also allows faculty to more easily quantify the amount of time students spend practicing skills.
Choose partners who are willing to co-create and continuously improve. Rather than viewing implementation as a traditional vendor relationship, the staff at Mays Business School worked collaboratively with Dell Services and UneeQ to shape the platform throughout the pilot. Faculty shared feedback from classroom use, refined role-play scenarios, and helped improve how the AI evaluated student performance. The team encourages other institutions to carefully vet technology partners, seek organizations that are responsive to feedback, and look for opportunities to build solutions together. The team’s willingness to iterate alongside its partners has created a foundation that can continue evolving as AI capabilities mature and new educational use cases emerge.
Where to Learn More
- Explore the Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute.
- Learn more about Dell Technologies Solutions for Higher Education
Thank You
Sean Burns is Manager of Insights and Evaluation at EDUCAUSE.
Shrihari Sridhar is Senior Associate Dean of Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.
Janet Parish is Clinical Professor and Director of the Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute at Texas A&M University.
Andrew Loring is Clinical Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute at Texas A&M University.
© 2026 EDUCAUSE and Shrihari Sridhar, Janet Parish, and Andrew Loring. The content of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License.