Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents was conducted by Hanover Research. The survey asked presidents from 298 public and private, largely nonprofit two- and four-year institutions timely questions on the following issues:
General financial and economic confidence, plus mergers and acquisitions
Politics, policy and the 2024 election’s impact on higher education
Public perceptions of higher ed and the value of a degree
Campus speech
Race on campus
Artificial intelligence
Environmental sustainability goals
Campus health and wellness, including student mental health
Management, governance and the hardest part about being a president
We introduce AI co-scientist, a multi-agent AI system built with Gemini 2.0 as a virtual scientific collaborator to help scientists generate novel hypotheses and research proposals, and to accelerate the clock speed of scientific and biomedical discoveries.
There is a speed limit. GenAI technology continues to advance at incredible speed. However, most organizations are moving at the speed of organizations, not at the speed of technology. No matter how quickly the technology advances—or how hard the companies producing GenAI technology push—organizational change in an enterprise can only happen so fast.
Barriers are evolving. Significant barriers to scaling and value creation are still widespread across key areas. And, over the past year regulatory uncertainty and risk management have risen in organizations’ lists of concerns to address. Also, levels of trust in GenAI are still moderate for the majority of organizations. Even so, with increased customization and accuracy of models—combined with a focus on better governance— adoption of GenAI is becoming more established.
Some uses are outpacing others. Application of GenAI is further along in some business areas than in others in terms of integration, return on investment (ROI) and expectations. The IT function is most mature; cybersecurity, operations, marketing and customer service are also showing strong adoption and results. Organizations reporting higher ROI for their most scaled initiatives are broadly further along in their GenAI journeys.
The legal industry is experiencing swift changes, with technology becoming an ever more crucial factor in its evolution. As law firms respond to shifting client demands and regulatory changes, the pace of change is accelerating. Embracing legal tech is no longer just an advantage; it’s a necessity.
According to a Forbes report, 66% of legal leaders acknowledge this trend and intend to boost their investments in legal tech moving forward. From artificial intelligence streamlining workflows to cloud computing enabling globalized legal services, the legal landscape is undergoing a digital revolution.
In this article, we’ll explore five key legal tech trends that will define how law firms operate in 2025.
A new study from the Blickstein Group reveals some distributing trends for law firms that represent businesses, particularly large ones. The Study is entitled Legal Service Delivery in the Age of AI. The Study was done jointly by FTI Technologies, a consulting group, and Blickstein. It looks at law department legal operations.
The Findings
GenAI Use by Legal Ops Personnel
The responses reflect a bullish view of what GenAI can do in the legal marketplace but also demonstrate GenAi has a ways to go:
Almost 80% of the respondents think that GenAI will become an “essential part of the legal profession.
81% believe GenAi will drive improved efficiencies
Despite this belief, only some 30% have plans to purchase GenAI tools. For 81%, the primary reason for obtaining and using GenAI tools is the efficiencies these tools bring.
52% say their GenAI strategy is not as sophisticated as they would like or nonexistent.
The biggest barrier to the use of GenAI among the legal ops professions is cost and security concerns and the lack of skilled personnel available to them.
Voting has now closed and your votes have been tallied to pick the 15 legal tech startups that will get to participate as finalists in the ninth-annual Startup Alley at ABA TECHSHOW 2025, taking place April 2-5 in Chicago.
These 15 finalists will face off in an opening-night pitch competition that is the opening event of TECHSHOW, with the conference’s attendees voting at the conclusion of the pitches to pick the top winners.
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has brought a new wave of opportunities to the legal profession, opening doors to greater efficiency and innovation. Its rapid development has also raised questions about its integration within the legal industry. As legal professionals are presented with more options for adopting new technologies, they now face the important task of understanding how GenAI can be seamlessly — and ethically — incorporated into their daily operations.
The court reporting industry is evolving rapidly, propelled by technological advancements and the increasing demand for efficiency in the legal sector. For 2025, trends such as artificial intelligence (AI), real-time transcription technologies, and data-driven tools are reshaping how legal professionals work. Here’s an overview of these emerging trends and five reasons law firms should embrace these advancements.
The following AI capabilities will start rolling out to Google Workspace Business customers today and to Enterprise customers later this month:
Get AI assistance in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet, Chat, Vids, and more: Do your best work faster with AI embedded in the tools you use every day.Gemini streamlines your communications by helping you summarize, draft, and find information in your emails, chats, and files. It can be a thought partner and source of inspiration, helping you create professional documents, slides, spreadsheets, and videos from scratch. Gemini can even improve your meetings by taking notes, enhancing your audio and video, and catching you up on the conversation if you join late.
Chat with Gemini Advanced, Google’s next-gen AI: Kickstart learning, brainstorming, and planning with the Gemini app on your laptop or mobile device. Gemini Advanced can help you tackle complex projects including coding, research, and data analysis and lets you build Gems, your team of AI experts to help with repeatable or specialized tasks.
Unlock the power of NotebookLM Plus: We’re bringing the revolutionary AI research assistant to every employee, to help them make sense of complex topics. Upload sources to get instant insights and Audio Overviews, then share customized notebooks with the team to accelerate their learning and onboarding.
Google’s Gemini AI is stepping up its game in Google Workspace, bringing powerful new capabilities to your favorite tools like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets:
AI-Powered Summaries: Get concise, AI-generated summaries of long emails and documents so you can focus on what matters most.
Smart Reply: Gemini now offers context-aware email replies that feel more natural and tailored to your style.
Slides and images generation: Gemini in Slides can help you generate new images, summarize your slides, write and rewrite content, and refer to existing Drive files and/or emails.
Automated Data Insights: In Google Sheets, Gemini helps create a task tracker, conference agenda, spot trends, suggest formulas, and even build charts with simple prompts.
Intelligent Drafting: Google Docs now gets a creativity boost, helping you draft reports, proposals, or blog posts with AI suggestions and outlines.
Meeting Assistance: Say goodbye to the awkward AI attendees to help you take notes, now Gemini can natively do that for you – no interruption, no avatar, and no extra attendee. Meet can now also automatically generate captions to lower the language barrier.
Eveyln (from FlexOS) also mentions that CoPilot is getting enhancements too:
It’s exactly what we predicted: stand-alone AI apps like note-takers and image generators have had their moment, but as the tech giants step in, they’re bringing these features directly into their ecosystems, making them harder to ignore.
The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.
The initial equity funders in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility. Masayoshi Son will be the chairman.
Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners. The buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas, and we are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements.
Adobe is launching new generative AI tools that can automate labor-intensive production tasks like editing large batches of images and translating video presentations. The most notable is “Firefly Bulk Create,” an app that allows users to quickly resize up to 10,000 images or replace all of their backgrounds in a single click instead of tediously editing each picture individually.
This November 2024 guidebook offers higher education practitioners actionable strategies for building and sustaining partnerships that both meet regional needs and support students, families, and communities. This work was based on the design and delivery of dual enrollment pathways as part of the Lab’s Designers in Residence 2.0: Accelerating Pathways project.
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The practices and case studies shared here are informed by higher education leaders across six community colleges as part of the Lab’s Designers in Residence program.
We have organized the guidebook based on core elements of a strong partnerships strategy, alongside how to establish a strong foundation and sustain and maintain the partnerships you’ve built. Through our research, we’ve identified four key elements of strong partnerships:
+ Communication and collaboration
+ Shared vision
+ Adaptive and responsive
+ Action-oriented
You will find guiding questions, tools, and case studies within each of the four elements. .
Now is the time for visionary leadership in education.The era of artificial intelligence is reshaping the demands on education systems. Rigid policies, outdated curricula, and reliance on obsolete metrics are failing students. A recent survey from Resume Genius found that graduates lack skills in communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. Consequently, there is a growing trend in companies hiring candidates based on skills instead of traditional education or work experience. This underscores the urgent need for educational leaders to prioritize adaptability and innovation in their systems. Educational leaders must embrace a transformative approach to keep pace.
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[Heretical leaders] bring courage, empathy, and strategic thinking to reimagine education’s potential. Here are their defining characteristics:
Visionary Thinking: They identify bold, innovative paths to progress.
Courage to Act: These leaders take calculated risks to overcome resistance and inertia.
Relentless Curiosity: They challenge assumptions and seek better alternatives.
Empathy for Stakeholders: Understanding the personal impact of change allows them to lead with compassion.
Strategic Disruption: Their deliberate actions ensure systemic improvements.
These qualities enable Heretical leaders to reframe challenges as opportunities and drive meaningful change.
From DSC: Readers of this blog will recognize that I believe visionary leadership is extremely important — in all areas of our society, but especially within our learning ecosystems. Vision trumps data, at least in my mind. There are times when data can be used to support a vision, but having a powerful vision is more lasting and impactful than relying on data to drive the organization.
So while I’d vote for a different term other than “heretical leaders,” I get what Dan is saying and I agree with him. Such leaders are going against the grain. They are swimming upstream. They are espousing perspectives that others often don’t buy into (at least initially or for some time).
Such were the leaders who introduced online learning into the K-16 educational systems back in the late ’90s and into the next two+ decades. The growth of online-based learning continues and has helped educate millions of people. Those leaders and the people who worked for such endeavors were going against the grain.
We haven’t seen the end point of online-based learning. I think it will become even more powerful and impactful when AI is used to determine which jobs are opening up, and which skills are needed for those jobs, and then provide a listing of sources of where one can obtain that knowledge and develop those skills. People will be key in this vision. But so will AI and personalized learning. It will be a collaborative effort.
By the way, I am NOT advocating for using AI to outsource our thinking. Also, having basic facts and background knowledge in a domain is critically important, especially to use AI effectively. But we should be teaching students about AI (as we learn more about it ourselves). We should be working collaboratively with our students to understand how best to use AI. It’s their futures at stake.
At the end of 2024 and start of 2025, we’ve witnessed some fascinating developments in the world of AI and education, from from India’s emergence as a leader in AI education and Nvidia’s plans to build an AI school in Indonesia to Stanford’s Tutor CoPilot improving outcomes for underserved students.
Other highlights include Carnegie Learning partnering with AI for Education to train K-12 teachers, early adopters of AI sharing lessons about implementation challenges, and AI super users reshaping workplace practices through enhanced productivity and creativity.
India emerges as Global Leader in AI Education: Bosch Tech Compass 2025 — from medianews4u.com 57% Indians receive employer-provided AI training, surpassing Germany, and other European nations
Bengaluru: India is emerging as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) education, with over 50% of its population actively self-educating in AI-related skills, according to Bosch’s fourth annual Tech Compass Survey. The report highlights India’s readiness to embrace AI in work, education, and daily life, positioning the nation as a frontrunner in the AI revolution.
AI for Education reviewed the ElevenLabs AI Voice Tool through an educator lens, digging into the new autonomous voice agent functionality that facilitates interactive user engagement. We showcase the creation of a customized vocabulary bot, which defines words at a 9th-grade level and includes options for uploading supplementary material. The demo includes real-time testing of the bot’s capabilities in defining terms and quizzing users.
The discussion also explored the AI tool’s potential for aiding language learners and neurodivergent individuals, and Mandy presented a phone conversation coach bot to help her 13-year-old son, highlighting the tool’s ability to provide patient, repetitive practice opportunities.
While acknowledging the technology’s potential, particularly in accessibility and language learning, we also want to emphasize the importance of supervised use and privacy considerations. Right now the tool is currently free, this likely won’t always remain the case, so we encourage everyone to explore and test it out now as it continues to develop.
Why Combine Them? Faster Onboarding: Start broad with Deep Research, then refine and clarify concepts through Learn About. Finally, use NotebookLM to synthesize everything into a cohesive understanding.
Deeper Clarity: Unsure about a concept uncovered by Deep Research? Head to Learn About for a primer. Want to revisit key points later? Store them in NotebookLM and generate quick summaries on demand.
Adaptive Exploration: Create a feedback loop. Let new terms or angles from Learn About guide more targeted Deep Research queries. Then, compile all findings in NotebookLM for future reference. .
There are several challenges to making policy that make institutions hesitant to or delay their ability to produce it. Policy (as opposed to guidance) is much more likely to include a mixture of IT, HR, and legal services. This means each of those entities has to wrap their heads around GenAI—not just for their areas but for the other relevant areas such as teaching & learning, research, and student support. This process can definitely extend the time it takes to figure out the right policy.
That’s naturally true with every policy. It does not often come fast enough and is often more reactive than proactive.
Still, in my conversations and observations, the delay derives from three additional intersecting elements that feel like they all need to be in lockstep in order to actually take advantage of whatever possibilities GenAI has to offer.
Which Tool(s) To Use
Training, Support, & Guidance, Oh My!
Strategy: Setting a Direction…
Prophecies of the Flood — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick What to make of the statements of the AI labs?
What concerns me most isn’t whether the labs are right about this timeline – it’s that we’re not adequately preparing for what even current levels of AI can do, let alone the chance that they might be correct. While AI researchers are focused on alignment, ensuring AI systems act ethically and responsibly, far fewer voices are trying to envision and articulate what a world awash in artificial intelligence might actually look like. This isn’t just about the technology itself; it’s about how we choose to shape and deploy it. These aren’t questions that AI developers alone can or should answer. They’re questions that demand attention from organizational leaders who will need to navigate this transition, from employees whose work lives may transform, and from stakeholders whose futures may depend on these decisions. The flood of intelligence that may be coming isn’t inherently good or bad – but how we prepare for it, how we adapt to it, and most importantly, how we choose to use it, will determine whether it becomes a force for progress or disruption. The time to start having these conversations isn’t after the water starts rising – it’s now.
Introducing the 2025 Wonder Media Calendar for tweens, teens, and their families/households.Designed by Sue Ellen Christian and her students in her Global Media Literacy class (in the fall 2024 semester at Western Michigan University), the calendar’s purpose is to help people create a new year filled with skills and smart decisions about their media use. This calendar is part of the ongoing Wonder Media Library.comproject that includes videos, lesson plans, games, songs and more. The website is funded by a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, in partnership with Western Michigan University and the Library of Michigan.
Today we’re excited to launch our next era of models built for this new agentic era: introducing Gemini 2.0, our most capable model yet. With new advances in multimodality — like native image and audio output — and native tool use, it will enable us to build new AI agents that bring us closer to our vision of a universal assistant.
We’re getting 2.0 into the hands of developers and trusted testers today. And we’re working quickly to get it into our products, leading with Gemini and Search. Starting today our Gemini 2.0 Flash experimental model will be available to all Gemini users. We’re also launching a new feature called Deep Research, which uses advanced reasoning and long context capabilities to act as a research assistant, exploring complex topics and compiling reports on your behalf. It’s available in Gemini Advanced today.
Over the last year, we have been investing in developing more agentic models, meaning they can understand more about the world around you, think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf, with your supervision.
Today, we’re sharing the latest updates to Gemini, your AI assistant, including Deep Research — our new agentic feature in Gemini Advanced — and access to try Gemini 2.0 Flash, our latest experimental model.
Deep Research uses AI to explore complex topics on your behalf and provide you with findings in a comprehensive, easy-to-read report, and is a first look at how Gemini is getting even better at tackling complex tasks to save you time.1
Google Unveils A.I. Agent That Can Use Websites on Its Own — from nytimes.com by Cade Metz and Nico Grant (NOTE: This is a GIFTED article for/to you.)
The experimental tool can browse spreadsheets, shopping sites and other services, before taking action on behalf of the computer user.
Google on Wednesday unveiled a prototype of this technology, which artificial intelligence researchers call an A.I. agent.
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Google’s new prototype, called Mariner, is based on Gemini 2.0, which the company also unveiled on Wednesday. Gemini is the core technology that underpins many of the company’s A.I. products and research experiments. Versions of the system will power the company’s chatbot of the same name and A.I. Overviews, a Google search tool that directly answers user questions.
Google Gemini 2.0 — a major upgrade to the core workings of Google’s AI that the company launched Wednesday — is designed to help generative AI move from answering users’ questions to taking action on its own…
… The big picture: Hassabis said building AI systems that can take action on their own has been DeepMind’s focus since its early days teaching computers to play games such as chess and Go.
“We were always working towards agent-based systems,” Hassabis said. “From the beginning, they were able to plan and then carry out actions and achieve objectives.”
Hassabis said AI systems that can act as semi-autonomous agents also represent an important intermediate step on the path toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) — AI that can match or surpass human capabilities.
“If we think about the path to AGI, then obviously you need a system that can reason, break down problems and carry out actions in the world,” he said.
The same paradigm applies to AI systems. AI assistants function as reactive tools, completing tasks like answering queries or managing workflows upon request. Think of chatbots or scheduling tools. AI agents, however, work autonomously to achieve set objectives, making decisions and executing tasks dynamically, adapting as new information becomes available.
Together, AI assistants and agents can enhance productivity and innovation in business environments. While assistants handle routine tasks, agents can drive strategic initiatives and problem-solving. This powerful combination has the potential to elevate organizations, making processes more efficient and professionals more effective.
Meet NVIDIA – The Engine of AI. From gaming to data science, self-driving cars to climate change, we’re tackling the world’s greatest challenges and transforming everyday life. The Microsoft and NVIDIA partnership enables Startups, ISVs, and Partners global access to the latest NVIDIA GPUs on-demand and comprehensive developer solutions to build, deploy and scale AI-enabled products and services.
The swift progress of artificial intelligence (AI) has simplified the creation and deployment of AI agents with the help of new tools and platforms. However, deploying these systems beneath the surface comes with hidden challenges, particularly concerning ethics, fairness and the potential for bias.
The history of AI agents highlights the growing need for expertise to fully realize their benefits while effectively minimizing risks.
When it comes to classroom edtech use, digital tools have a drastically different impact when they are used actively instead of passively–a critical difference examined in the 2023-2024 Speak Up Research by Project Tomorrow.
Students also outlined their ideal active learning technologies:
In-house legal teams are changing from a traditional support function to becoming proactive business enablers. New tools are helping legal departments enhance efficiency, improve compliance, and to deliver greater strategic value.
Here’s a look at seven emerging trends that will shape legal tech in 2025 and insights on how in-house teams can capitalise on these innovations.
1. AI Solutions… 2. Regulatory Intelligence Platforms… … 7. Self-Service Legal Tools and Knowledge Management As the demand on in-house legal teams continues to grow, self-service tools are becoming indispensable for managing routine legal tasks. In 2025, these tools are expected to evolve further, enabling employees across the organisation to handle straightforward legal processes independently. Whether it’s accessing pre-approved templates, completing standard agreements, or finding answers to common legal queries, self-service platforms reduce the dependency on legal teams for everyday tasks.
Advanced self-service tools go beyond templates, incorporating intuitive workflows, approval pathways, and built-in guidance to ensure compliance with legal and organisational policies. By empowering business users to manage low-risk matters on their own, these tools free up legal teams to focus on complex and high-value work.
New Partnership Offers Online Tutoring in Michigan Schools — from govtech.com via GSV The online education nonprofit Michigan Virtual has partnered with Stride Tutoring to offer remote academic support for students in 700 school districts as part of a statewide push to reverse pandemic learning loss.
Online education provider Michigan Virtual is working with a Virginia-based online tutoring company to increase access to personalized academic support for Michigan students, according to a news release last month. The partnership is in line with a statewide push to reverse pandemic learning loss through high-impact tutoring.
Speaking of education — but expanding the scope of this posting to a global scale:
While the conversation clearly focused on a continuing worldwide crisis in education, the UNESCO conference I participated in was different. It emphasized a topic of huge importance to improving student outcomes, and coincided with the release of a report detailing how effective leaders can make a big difference in the lives of children.
From DSC: Leadership is important, for sure. But being a leader in education is very difficult these days — there are many different (and high) expectations and agendas being thrown your way from a variety of shareholders. But I do appreciate those leaders who are trying to create effective learning ecosystems out there!
One more for high school students considering going to college…
SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Instructure, the leading learning ecosystem and UPCEA, the online and professional education association, announced the results of a survey on whether institutions are leveraging AI to improve learner outcomes and manage records, along with the specific ways these tools are being utilized. Overall, the study revealed interest in the potential of these technologies is far outpacing adoption. Most respondents are heavily involved in developing learner experiences and tracking outcomes, though nearly half report their institutions have yet to adopt AI-driven tools for these purposes. The research also found that only three percent of institutions have implemented Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs), which provide a complete overview of an individual’s lifelong learning experiences.
In the nearly two years since generative artificial intelligence burst into public consciousness, U.S. schools of education have not kept pace with the rapid changes in the field, a new report suggests.
Only a handful of teacher training programs are moving quickly enough to equip new K-12 teachers with a grasp of AI fundamentals — and fewer still are helping future teachers grapple with larger issues of ethics and what students need to know to thrive in an economy dominated by the technology.
The report, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank at Arizona State University, tapped leaders at more than 500 U.S. education schools, asking how their faculty and preservice teachers are learning about AI. Through surveys and interviews, researchers found that just one in four institutions now incorporates training on innovative teaching methods that use AI. Most lack policies on using AI tools, suggesting that they probably won’t be ready to teach future educators about the intricacies of the field anytime soon.
It is bonkers that I can write out all my life goals on a sheet of paper, take a photo of it, and just ask Claude or ChatGPT for help.
I get a complete plan, milestones, KPIs, motivation, and even action support to get there.
As beta testers, we’re shaping the tools of tomorrow. As researchers, we’re pioneering new pedagogical approaches. As ethical guardians, we’re ensuring that AI enhances rather than compromises the educational experience. As curators, we’re guiding students through the wealth of information AI provides. And as learners ourselves, we’re staying at the forefront of educational innovation.
