6% of Faculty Feel Supported on AI?! — from automatedteach.com by Graham Clay
Plus, a webinar on building AI tutors this Friday.

The Digital Education Council just released their Global AI Faculty Survey of 1,681 faculty members from 52 institutions across 28 countries, and the findings are eye-opening. (Click here if you missed their analogous survey of students.)

While 86% of faculty see themselves using AI in their future teaching [p. 21], only 6% strongly agree that their institutions have provided sufficient resources to develop their AI literacy [p. 35].

This is a concerning gap between the recognized power of AI and institutional support, and it’s a clear signal about where higher education needs to focus in 2025.

Speaking with faculty about AI around the world, I’ve seen this firsthand. But let’s dig into the survey’s findings.
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Why the gap? Well, one explanation is that faculty lack institutional support.

The survey reveals that…

  • 80% of faculty don’t find their institutional AI guidelines comprehensive [p. 32]
  • 80% say their institutions haven’t made clear how AI can be used in teaching [p. 33]
  • The top barrier to AI adoption, at 40%? “I don’t have time or resources to explore AI” [p. 9]
  • The second-highest barrier, at 38%? “I am not sure how to use AI in my teaching” [p. 9]

From DSC:

I was in a teaching and learning group for 10+ years (and in several edtech-related positions before that). We had a senior staff established there but we were mainly called upon for edtech, instructional technology, learning spaces, or LMS types of tasks and questions. Though we could have brought a lot of value to the pedagogical table, the vast majority of the faculty wanted to talk to other faculty members. Our group’s hard-earned — and expensive — expertise didn’t count. We ourselves were teaching classes..but not enough to be on par with the faculty members (at least in their minds). They didn’t seek us out. Perhaps we should have gone door to door, but we didn’t have the resources to do that. 

Book groups were effective when the T&L group met with faculty members to discuss things. The discussions were productive. And in those groups, we DID have a seat at the pedagogical table.

But I’m not going to jump on the “we don’t have enough support” bandwagon. Faculty members seek out other faculty members. In many cases, if you aren’t faculty, you don’t count. 

So if I were still working and I was in a leadership position, I would sponsor some book study groups with faculty and personnel from teaching and learning centers. Topics for those books could be:

  • What AI is
  • What those techs can offer
  • What the LMS vendors are doing in this regard
  • and ideas on how to use AI in one’s teaching