College of Education earns 2026 AACTE Best Practice Award for the Innovative Use of Technology

College of Education earns 2026 AACTE Best Practice Award for the Innovative Use of Technology

Custom made film series and carefully programmed AI bots 'exemplify the thoughtful integration of technology into educator preparation,' according to AACTE.

By Janel Shoun-Smith | 615-966-7078 | 03/25/2026

Imagine being able to access the thoughts of your professor without him having to be present. Or being able to dive deeper into the lessons of an instructional film by talking one-on-one with characters portrayed in that film.

That is just two ways that using generative AI bots have made Lipscomb's remote educational leadership programs more academically rigorous and thought-provoking for students.

While online courses make a degree more accessible and study hours more convenient and flexible for working educators, higher education faculty throughout the field are constantly striving to maintain a distinctive personal touch and rigorous deep learning in online asynchronous courses.

At Lipscomb's College of Education (COE), injecting AI bot discussions and lectures refined by AI into the academic programs has resulted not only in rapidly growing enrollment, greater student satisfaction and deeper learning reflected in students' work, but it has also earned the college a national award for innovation.

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) announced Lipscomb as the recipient of the 2026 AACTE Best Practice Award for the Innovative Use of Technology in February.

The award recognizes an innovative use of educational technologies that transcends conventional teaching methods and brings about transformative changes in educational practices.

Lipscomb's graduate certificate and Education Specialist degree programs in educational leadership, designed to prepare students for licensure as principals, certainly fit the bill. Lance Forman, assistant dean of education specialties who accepted the award in New Orleans on Feb. 20, has developed around 80 AI bots and infused them into varying assignments in the majority of the courses.

For example, in a course on budgeting, students use a packet of documents, developed by Forman, to create a needs assessment and budget for an imaginary school. The sample documents include information about the school's culture, student scores on state-required assessments, culture survey data and demographic stats such as the number of English Language Learners and the economic status of students.

Using those documents, students upload their needs assessment to the bot, which has access to all the same materials, and "the bot critiques their top priorities and provides them with a gap analysis of their needs assessment, which they can use to revise their budget," said Forman.

"The bot is only telling students what I have programmed it to say, so it's like they are basically talking to me, but at a time that is more convenient for them," Forman said of the bots used in asynchronous course formats.

"These bots guide students through a real-world experience and through conversations leading to content mastery. It's less about content delivery and more about reflecting the content in your work, not just regurgitating it," said COE Dean Leslie Cowell.

In another example, students view films in the MORAL Dilemma Video Library, digital videos acted out by real people and produced by Lipscomb for these courses. The films depict typical ethical dilemmas that often come up in the realm of educational leadership.

Students are required to review a bank of documents related to the dilemma (i.e. emails from parents, Facebook posts or policy documents), to watch the film and then to use AI-powered bots to ask direct questions to the characters in the film regarding the situation.

"If you were a principal dealing with two students who got into a fight, the first thing you would do is investigate and get more information," said Forman. "These bots allow students to do that. They can talk to the characters and ask them questions about how they behaved. The bots respond in the same tone and language as they did in the film."

The bots' knowledge bank includes the film script, the emotions portrayed in the films, characters' bios, articles on virtue and character, and the moral framework Forman has personally programmed for each character bot. AI bots may respond to questions timidly, aggressively or passive-aggressively, depending on how Forman programmed them.

"These types of bot interactions are really powerful," Forman said. "I've been trying for years to get students to understand that when faced with a complex decision, you have to know that there are perspectives other than your own. These bots have given them a way to truly understand different perspectives, which is really important to making sound decisions."

Since fall 2024, when the college launched the educational leadership program in asynchronous format paired with a flat fee, affordable tuition structure, enrollment in the program has jumped by 200%, said Forman.

"We're seeing results in the quality of work submissions, the depth of student thought and the numbers in our programs," said Forman. "It's all trending in the right direction."

In fact, the educational leadership programs have served as a pilot for four other COE program areas scheduled to be offered in asynchronous online format and incorporating AI technologies as of this coming fall: teacher licensure (for post-baccalaureate students who only need licensure-required coursework), the gifted education endorsement, the Master of School Counseling and the Doctor of Education.

The AI tools developed by Forman allows these programs to maintain the quality of in-depth, rigorous learning and strong relationships with faculty and fellow students, while also providing the flexibility to work around busy schedules through remote learning without specific meeting time for lectures and discussions, said Cowell.

Video library lauded as innovative use of technology

The MORAL Dilemma Video Library was enacted in courses about a year prior to the AI bots, and it also has received scholarly recognition and praise. The video library has been picked up for use by other universities and has been highlighted at academic conferences, said Forman.

The content was developed through a council of principals and educational leaders who were asked to identify the thorniest and most common problems they face today. The films depict dilemmas such as vendor kickbacks for purchases, teacher nonrenewal or termination, enacting zero tolerance or social media policies and parent/teacher conflicts, among other topics.

The films were created through a partnership with Lipscomb's George Shinn College of Arts & Entertainment (CEA), involving CEA students and coordinated by Melissa Forte, assistant dean of graduate studies, in the film and creative media department.

"Lipscomb University's MORAL Dilemma Video Library equips education leaders with tools to think critically and ethically in challenging real-world situations," said Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, AACTE president and CEO. "This innovative resource exemplifies the thoughtful integration of technology into educator preparation. We congratulate the university and Dr. Forman on this achievement in innovation."