Session 1 · October 16, 2026 · 10:00
Recurring client cases for judgment, ownership, and responsible AI use. My Intro to HR students joined a consulting firm as junior HR associates. The same three clients came back all semester, so students had to live with their earlier decisions.
Piloted Fall 2025. Refined Spring 2026. Running now, Fall 2026.
Give students decisions worth owning. Then bring the consequences back full circle. Built for an HR course, but the mechanic works in any course where students make professional judgments with real consequences.
De-identify student work by hand before it goes into any AI tool. Don't use AI to do the de-identifying. Follow your institution's rules on which tools are approved. The AI Decision Record Framework above includes the privacy steps.
The competency drives the case, not the other way around. Fictional cases work in any industry and any course.
I started from old client consulting documents and had AI turn them into hypotheticals. Invented problems work too, as long as they feel like real work.
Who the client is, how it runs, and who works there. Everything after this stays consistent with it.
Start from the skill, not the story. Each client email is built to practice it.
Employee files, handbooks, incident reports: only what the emails need. Students decide which ones matter.
AI keeps the record. I make the call.
Tracked all decisions by hand.
AI helped organize the record; I entered it manually.
I de-identify the work by hand; AI records decisions and flags inconsistencies.
Our internship employers rated our interns highly, but their comments kept asking for better reasoning and decision-making. Our resulting action item: develop stronger problem-solving and decision-making skills in students.
The next question: does it transfer? Do internship supervisors see stronger reasoning, decision-making, and ownership?
Everything on these pages is free to use and adapt in your own courses. If you try it, I would love to hear what changed for your students.