Learning that sticks, students who engage

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How Conor and Finn Grennan use ChatGPT to turn lessons into immersive, personalized experiences

Conor Grennan, chief AI architect at NYU’s Stern School of Business and CEO of consulting firm AI Mindset, is leading a global effort to make learning immersive, effective, and memorable through ChatGPT. Drawing on his academic career and extensive training work, Grennan partners with his 16-year-old son, Finn, to show how conversational agents can personalize instruction without adding burden to teachers. Together, they showcase classroom-ready approaches that turn abstract topics into lived experiences while preserving high standards of learning. One classroom moment shows how this works in practice. When 16-year-old Finn Grennan was studying German immigration into New York in the mid-1800s, he didn’t just read about it, he lived it. Using ChatGPT, Finn asked the model to become “Heinrich,” a fictional immigrant from Düsseldorf. Together, they stepped off the boat into bustling Manhattan, weaving through horse-drawn carriages, navigating the Lower East Side, and searching for work in the meatpacking district. Every detail came alive: the sights, the smells, the street life. “It never occurred to me that people could embed themselves in history like that,” says Finn’s father. “It’s just a crazy and amazing thing.” Grennan had given Finn access to ChatGPT to explore how it might help him learn. Instead of memorizing facts from a textbook, Finn experienced history like a scene from a movie, and remembered it like one, too. That moment opened Grennan’s eyes to the bigger picture of how AI would impact education. “For the first time in thousands of years, we have an opportunity to change how our young people learn,” Grennan says. “We can create sticky, story-rich learning environments. Because this technology brings things to life.” Finn’s experiment was just the beginning. Together, father and son began exploring how AI could reimagine education. They brainstormed with one teacher about turning cell biology into a Marvel movie, casting the cell’s parts as superheroes and villains. They reimagined Hamlet as a conversation in a Brooklyn coffee shop, with the prince himself explaining his troubled hesitations over a cappuccino. Each time, the approach was the same: use AI to create immersive, personalized scenarios that make complex material pop. Grennan sees huge promise in tailoring traditional material to be relevant to individual students. “We still teach from the front of the room, one teacher for 25 students, hoping it works for everyone,” Grennan says. “Education couldn’t be personalized before because it wasn’t practical. It would put a huge strain on the teacher. But if you could [personalize education], my guess is the students would learn better.”

Learning that sticks, students who engage

How Conor and Finn Grennan use ChatGPT to turn lessons into immersive, personalized experiences

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