The Power of Asking, Not Telling (2)

NUCB Associate Dean Dr. Wong sits down with fellow NUCB professor Dr. Lim to discuss how AI is transforming educators’ roles. As AI handles knowledge-based tasks, educators are shifting from delivering information to fostering judgment, critical thinking, and human-centered managerial wisdom.

Continued from "The Power of Asking, Not Telling (1)"

Reinventing Case Teaching for Real-World Leadership

Dr. Lim:   AI assembles knowledge from explicit sources, but real decisions draw on both explicit and tacit knowledge—experience, intuition, and judgment. What happens when we face situations with no exact precedent and limited information?
In class, students might ask AI about Prime Minister Takaichi’s policies and their potential effects on the yen or on Japan–China trade. AI can supply background information, but students contribute prior knowledge, analogies, and reasoning. By drawing on multiple perspectives—and building on one another’s ideas, including AI’s—the class constructs understanding together. Through repeated questioning and debate, we strengthen students’ absorptive capacity and stretch their thinking.

Dr. Wong:   The beauty of the case method is that learning is collective. AI interaction is usually one-on-one, but in a case class ideas collide. Participants challenge and refine each other’s thinking, and that dynamic tension sharpens judgement.
With only AI, it’s easy to stay in a comfort zone. If the answer is satisfactory, you might move on. That may be efficient, but managers must defend, debate, and refine their thinking in real time.

Dr. Lim:   Cases also allow us to explore contingencies and “what ifs” through simulations and role play. By being eclectic, we increase students’ intellectual flexibility. Your research on bricolage, improvising with limited resources, captures this idea well. Teaching today is like conducting a jazz orchestra, where participants are allowed to improvise and respond to each other.

Dr. Wong:   Our role goes beyond facilitating the class. We create a high-stakes environment with real-time pressure so students practice managerial decision-making under realistic circumstances, not just analyze cases in theory.

Dr. Lim:   Exactly. We can simulate real-world situations within the classroom.

Dr. Wong:   This approach could intensify the load for professors. How can we maintain our own well-being?

Dr. Lim:   That is a challenge. One way is to share responsibility with students by asking them to lead portions of the discussion. It takes humility, but it deepens their learning while easing the instructor’s burden.

Dr. Wong:   It also introduces diverse perspectives. When students ask the questions, they experience the process differently.

Dr. Lim:   If that sounds radical, start smaller. Remember Bob Bruner’s advice: “ask often, tell seldom.”

Dr. Wong:   The focus remains the thinking process rather than the final answer. Students must articulate and defend their reasoning. This is difficult to replicate with AI because it tends to be overly affirming.

Dr. Lim:   AI can even help with this. Instead of accepting its first answer, we can prompt it to challenge us: “Suppose you are wrong — why?” or “Ask five provocative questions.” AI will comply and force deeper reflection.

Dr. Wong:   In that sense, AI can participate in the case classroom.

Dr. Lim:   Exactly, AI is like another student, a knowledgeable but bland and overly agreeable classmate. If there were 30 students in class, now there are 31. Like any student, AI’s answers are only one perspective.

Dr. Wong:   And AI is increasingly becoming a workplace collaborator.

Dr. Lim:   Many companies now have AI with safeguards such as verifications and quality checks. Education should adopt similar policies. Since AI already provides information, we should stop rewarding students simply for knowing “what.” Instead, we evaluate how they prepare novel sets of prompts.

Dr. Wong:   In other words, we evaluate the process of the learning itself.

Dr. Lim:   Exactly. We reward students who build, summarize, tell stories, or act as “lightning rods” who provoke new thinking.
As AI advances towards AGI, everyone may have access to the same tools. The real advantage lies elsewhere. The case method expands students’ absorptive capacity, builds their appreciation of the “middle,” and strengthens managerial judgement. Ultimately, we help them learn how to be wise.

Dr. Wong:   Thank you for the inspiring discussion.