How KNUST Reduced Faculty Workload by 20+ Hours per Week with PrepAI
PrepAI is more than just a tool because it is a blended learning solution that will transform the way teaching, assessment, and academic productivity works for professors, universities, and students.
Starting with the PrepAI Faculty AI Readiness Programmes at KNUST University Ghana. PrepAI enables faculty to utilize and integrate AI into academic workflows daily for a variety of tasks like automating assessments, grading, preparing for lectures, and engaging students into classes. The end result led to a smarter, data-informed, and future-ready educational ecosystem that allows faculty to focus on innovating, mentoring, and producing powerful learning.
We are empowering professors at KNUST University through AI Readiness Programmes in Ghana.
Quick Snapshot
The Challenges
Across African universities, faculty members face mounting challenges that hinder both academic excellence and institutional growth. However, these particular challenges exists with the KNUST university in Ghana:
1. Automating Assessments
Faculty members at the KNUST university were preparing courses, grading, and assessing students manually which usually takes up 15-25 hours each week. They were also compiling the feedback of the students on the basis of traditional assessments. Therefore, the productivity and innovativeness of the professors and students was lessened, making them feel tired and overburdened. This not only reduced time for research and teaching but also led to increasing unsustainability across departments. This lack of automation led to unnecessary delays in getting results and inconsistencies in evaluation, impacting both faculty efficiency and the overall student experience.
2. Maintaining Academic Workflows
KNUST is one of Ghana’s premier science and technology universities, which places a strong emphasis on research. With the lack of AI in education, faculty members were spending unlimited hours on completing the administrative and academic tasks. Many professors struggled to allocate sufficient time to mentor postgraduate students, or engage in grant-funded projects. Professors need to create quizzes and summarize research papers to review student work, this constant multitasking left little room for what truly mattered: quality teaching, innovation in research, and meaningful student engagement. This imbalance between administrative responsibilities and academic innovation posed a challenge to sustaining KNUST’s reputation as a hub for research and intellectual advancement.
3. Lack of Institutional Modernization
KNUST university was lacking behind because the slow adoption of AI-driven education tools are distancing them from their global peers, who are already leveraging AI to enhance teaching, learning, and assessment outcomes. The absence of centralized and technology-enabled processes made it harder to maintain consistency and progress across departments. This slow adoption of AI in education limits the university’s ability to integrate innovation into everyday academic practices. The manual creation of different assessments like quizzes, MCQ’s, HOTS, and more is not possible which reduces the engagement of the students. Without using AI the professors are unable to understand the students’ learning capacity which increases the gap in modern education.
4. Fatigue and Burnout among Faculty
The teaching responsibilities at KNUST university outweigh the opportunities. The faculty became less motivated or engaged because they had pressure to manage classes, prepare lectures, and grade assignments. This imbalance leads to decreased motivation, lower job satisfaction, and a reduced sense of purpose. Many professors expressed feeling overextended, as their time was divided between managing manual grading, preparing course materials, and meeting academic performance standards.
The Solution
Automating the Assessment Lifecycle
The KNUST university professors have to prepare assessments manually due to which a lot of time was being consumed. After test creation, they have to conduct those tests and have to grade them. This repetitive workload left minimal time for research, innovation, or student engagement. After integrating PrepAI:
- Digital Question Banks: Existing question banks at KNUST were transformed to AI-enabled assessments which eliminated approximately 15–25 hours of weekly manual preparation of examinations. Thus, the entire assessment cycle was reformed.
- Automated Grading: AI-enabled grading rubrics ensured consistency, accuracy and fairness in marking, which allowed educators to generate results and reports in minutes, and offered instant feedback to students.
Enhancing Research Time and Workflows
Time restraints prevented KNUST professors from doing in-depth research or writing papers. Intellectual activity was hindered by administrative and monotonous academic duties. With the help of AI exam generator tools like PrepAI:
- Streamlined Academic Workflow: It alleviated some of the repetitive and manual aspects of course and assessment prep at KNUST university where faculty can generate outlines, draft tests, and create quizzes, which ultimately lowered cognitive load and enabled more productivity.
- More Time for Research and Mentorship: The automation of work tasks allowed faculty to direct their conservation time into research and publication, as well as student mentorship, which strengthens KNUST’s commitment to academic excellence.
Innovation and Research Support
Faculty members spent extensive hours compiling data, conducting literature reviews, and preparing research summaries manually, which delayed research progress and reduced innovation output. After PrepAI implementation:
- Less Time on Administrative Research Work: Faculty utilized to spend many hours in the weeks, organizing and compiling research data manually. With PrepAI, they immediately allocated the saved time to analysis and interpretations rather than administrative research work.
- Higher Quality Research Output: Automation works as an enhancement strategy that helps faculty to focus more on research work that leads to departmental innovation. By integrating AI in education KNUST professors can effectively engage students in learning by generating curriculum-aligned assessments, tests, and other exams.
Administrative Efficiency
KNUST’s educators faced administrative overload managing reports, schedules, and departmental communication, which led to fatigue and reduced productivity. With PrepAI:
- Streamlined Administrative Tasks: Professors at KNUST university automated report generation, scheduling, and routine communications that saved 15-25 hours each week. This shift encouraged faculty to participate in curriculum innovation, and professional development.
- Simplified Documentation Management: Faculty could create summaries and share updates efficiently. Automated workflows allowed faculty to quickly address student queries, submit reports, and manage departmental coordination easily.
If these challenges persisted, the university might risk:
- The faculty at KNUST university had struggled to balance teaching, research, and institutional responsibilities, leading to overwork and fatigue.
- The university had been at risk of losing its competitiveness on the global higher education stage due to outdated workflows.
- Students had experienced less engaging and outdated learning formats, limiting their academic development and satisfaction.
Strategic opportunities to lead in AI-driven innovation and modernization had been missed, delaying the institution’s progress toward becoming a future-ready university
The Implementation
PrepAI created a Faculty AI Readiness Workshop that was bespoke to KNUST’s professors:
Consistent and Fair Grading
- Developed AI-enabled grading rubrics, providing transparency and accuracy in evaluation.
- Facilitated instantaneous results generation and reporting, leading to improved reliability and efficiency.
AI-Enhanced Teaching Support
- Generated lecture outlines, slides, and course materials from existing curricula.
- Reduced cognitive burden for faculty, affording them more time for establishing quality in-class instruction.
Research and Academic Productivity
- Automated drafting of abstracts, literature evaluation summaries, and research notes.
- Fast-tracked academic work-flow to allow faculty to spend more time on publications and report preparation and mentoring students.
Hands-On AI Coaching
- Regarding coaching, each faculty member was given specific AI coaching support.
- As a result of immediate tool application, the coaching models promoted sustainability for faculty and integration into departmental or educational systems.
The Results
The integration of PrepAI at KNUST led to significant improvements in faculty efficiency, engagement, and overall academic output:
20+ Hours Saved Weekly per Faculty Member:
- The AI question generator for professors reduced the time spent on assessment preparation and grading through automation substantially lowering the number of hours faculty were spending on manual work.
- Less time spent in low-value manual work translates to less overall burnout and improved work-life balance.
40 – 60% Faster Assessment Turnaround
- Evaluations and feedback were provided to students much more quickly.
- Students received timely feedback, and evaluation feedback positively impacted learning and, therefore, student outcomes.
93% Faculty Satisfaction
- Hands-on, practical applications of AI immediately impacted faculty’s daily workflows.
- Faculty reported feeling more comfortable using AI tools for teaching and assessment.
Increased Research and Mentorship Focus
- Faculty now could spend 35% of time focused on research and collaborative work.
- Mentoring students was enhanced, and students felt more engaged in their development.
Sustained AI Usage
- 87% of faculty continued using AI tools when the program finished.
AI in education has become a long-term addition to the daily academic workflows, which has allowed both educators and students to improve efficiency.
Why Does This Matter
By empowering educators with AI literacy and practical workflows, PrepAI is helping KNUST compete on a global academic stage. KNUST is not just saving time, it’s also reshaping how knowledge is delivered and measured in the AI era.
Want to empower your faculty next?
Host a PrepAI Faculty AI Readiness Workshop at your university and experience the same transformation