PEDAGOGY
all, the type of instinctive and emotional thinking Kahneman describes as “fast” does not necessarily apply to the rapid pace of TikTok’s content delivery. The linguist researcher Walter Ong, meanwhile, has presented a complex argument about orality and literacy to highlight the differences between offline and online reading. While the former is more focused on a single target, with surrounding stimuli less dominant, the latter pivots on simultaneous targets and multitasking inputs. What this means for business education My experience of working in US academia and Latin American business schools is that the average postgraduate student has little training in critical thinking. Adding new technology into the mix, therefore, stands to make this the most challenging subject in any business school curriculum because of the required focus on multilayer analysis training. Is ChatGPT, for example, a helper at our disposal or are we mere assistants to its large language model? Sachs posits that there is no future for education focused on specific skills or tasks because this is precisely what smart machines will handle more effectively. Moreover, Musk believes that super intelligence machines, through complex hardware and algorithms, will become strongly autonomous and develop the capabilities to control human minds. In this scenario, it is the machines that will programme humans, rather than the other way around. What we know is that traditional methods of teaching and learning are crumbling, with the influx of action, podcasts, links, videos, films, apps, virtual gadgets and augmented reality into the classroom. Traditional ways of writing and reading are also vanishing because of the influence of WhatsApp, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok. In this light, we must consider the debate between STEM fields and the humanities. While the market demand for STEM experts remains high, in my experience these subjects have become more focused on engineering, with students often receiving little training on epistemology literacy [ie how scientific knowledge is evaluated and justified], or the principles of scientific knowledge. Humanities, meanwhile, have a strong connection to critical thinking but tend to present prospective students with fewer incentives in terms of careers. Instead, most students head for courses that emphasise practical, hands-on skills and tasks – attributes and areas that GenAI stands to replace with ease. If humanities are considered less important in higher education and STEM fields become ever-more susceptible to the advances of GenAI’s evolution, where does that leave business education? Now is the time to sit up and take note of whether we are moving towards pedagogies focused on app management, or whether we can design and create a new form of human intelligence capable of counterbalancing the dominance of AI tech algorithms.
the highest social media engagement rate per post. There are many reasons that speak to TikTok’s ability to share short videos and clips on topics that span entertainment, marketing, dance, music, sports, fashion, pop culture, teaching and news. It’s a format that is creating new psychological effects on users because of its deep immersion experience and profound engagement, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has highlighted. The new world order The platform’s growth and associated trends contribute to what Yuval Noah Harari has described as a world flooded with information, where it is hard to discern truth from falsehood. And here lies a challenge for pedagogical methods in higher education and business education. Technology is developing rapidly and the university curriculum is behind the curve, according to economist Jeffrey Sachs’ Common Wealth . Students, for example, now go to class loaded with social media consumption. As educators, we must ask ourselves if are heading towards a technological, oral and visual culture in business practice, critical thinking and MBA programmes. This is a puzzling question, because we must consider how we can analyse oceans of information and distinguish truth from lies, when operating under an algorithm akin to the TikTok model. Critical thinking may become reduced to a couple of clicks and likes, or indeed a combination of scientific logic and one‑minute entertainment clips. Michael Roberto, a former management professor at Harvard University, now attached to Bryant University, is an expert in creativity and the art of teaching smart technology in classrooms. His insightful, experimental classes demonstrate the difficulties in reaching a “wise usage” of these technologies. ChatGPT, for example, has a tremendous power over the thinking process of students and while TikTok may not be used openly in the classroom, there is the sense of it running in the oral and visual minds of their final papers or essays. Today’s emerging technologies also challenge psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s renowned theory relating to fast and slow modes of thought. After
BIOGRAPHY Iván Figueroa is a professor at the
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). Previously, he was a professor at the University of Miami, Florida and the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Figueroa is also a member of the Peruvian public policy think tank, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), where he is developing research on education. He holds a BA in philosophy from PUCP and a PhD in literature from the University of Miami
Ambition • ISSUE 3 • 2025 23
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