Adapting to the future | Educause
Institutions are balancing capacity issues and rapid technological advancements—including artificial intelligence—while addressing a loss of trust in higher education.
To adapt to the future, technology and data leaders must work strategically to restore trust, prepare for policy updates, and plan for online education growth.
For a true meritocracy, education must not be one-size-fits-all — from edsource.org by Eric Chung
What we can do is stop deciding who is educated, intelligent and successful based on only one type of student. Instead, we should recognize the value of all students, and offer more mainstream career and technical opportunities across K-12 education.
From DSC:
Note the power of CHOICE in this next excerpt:
There is another possibility. Consider Finland, which in the 1970s switched from the German model to one that teaches a combination of academic and technical subjects until age 16, when students choose a track. The vocational path for students interested in highly -skilled trades includes carpentry and culinary arts, but it also offers applied sciences, health care, and social services, which in the United States would require attending traditional academic universities.
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From DSC:
First of all, when you look at the following posting:
What Top Tech Skills Should You Learn for 2025? — from dice.com by Nick Kolakowski
…you will see that they outline which skills you should consider mastering in 2025 if you want to stay on top of the latest career opportunities. They then list more information about the skills, how you apply the skills, and WHERE to get those skills.
I assert that in the future, people will be able to see this information on a 24x7x365 basis.
And that last part (about the WHERE do I develop those skills) will pull from many different institutions, people, companies, etc.
BUT PEOPLE are the key! Oftentimes, we need to — and prefer to — learn with others!
The Edtech Insiders Generative AI Map — from edtechinsiders.substack.com by Ben Kornell, Alex Sarlin, Sarah Morin, and Laurence Holt
A market map and database featuring 60+ use cases for GenAI in education and 300+ GenAI powered education tools.
A Student’s Guide to Writing with ChatGPT— from openai.com
Used thoughtfully, ChatGPT can be a powerful tool to help students develop skills of rigorous thinking and clear writing, assisting them in thinking through ideas, mastering complex concepts, and getting feedback on drafts.
There are also ways to use ChatGPT that are counterproductive to learning—like generating an essay instead of writing it oneself, which deprives students of the opportunity to practice, improve their skills, and grapple with the material.
For students committed to becoming better writers and thinkers, here are some ways to use ChatGPT to engage more deeply with the learning process.
Community Colleges Are Rolling Out AI Programs—With a Boost from Big Tech — from workshift.org by Colleen Connolly
The Big Idea: As employers increasingly seek out applicants with AI skills, community colleges are well-positioned to train up the workforce. Partnerships with tech companies, like the AI Incubator Network, are helping some colleges get the resources and funding they need to overhaul programs and create new AI-focused ones.
Along these lines also see:
Practical AI Training — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
Community colleges get help from Big Tech to prepare students for applied AI roles at smaller companies.
Miami Dade and other two-year colleges try to be nimble by offering training for AI-related jobs while focusing on local employers. Also, Intel’s business struggles while the two-year sector wonders if Republicans will cut funds for semiconductor production.
Can One AI Agent Do Everything? How To Redesign Jobs for AI? HR Expertise And A Big Future for L&D. — from joshbersin.com by Josh Bersin
Here’s the AI summary, which is pretty good.
In this conversation, Josh Bersin discusses the evolving landscape of AI platforms, particularly focusing on Microsoft’s positioning and the challenges of creating a universal AI agent. He delves into the complexities of government efficiency, emphasizing the institutional challenges faced in re-engineering government operations.
The conversation also highlights the automation of work tasks and the need for businesses to decompose job functions for better efficiency.
Bersin stresses the importance of expertise in HR, advocating for a shift towards full stack professionals who possess a broad understanding of various HR functions.
Finally, he addresses the impending disruption in Learning and Development (L&D) due to AI advancements, predicting a significant transformation in how L&D professionals will manage knowledge and skills.
“The Value of Doing Things: What AI Agents Mean for Teachers” — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by guest author Jason Gulya, Professor of English and Applied Media at Berkeley College in New York City
AI Agents make me nervous. Really nervous.
I wish they didn’t.
I wish I could write that the last two years have made me more confident, more self-assured that AI is here to augment workers rather than replace them.
But I can’t.
I wish I could write that I know where schools and colleges will end up. I wish I could say that AI Agents will help us get where we need to be.
But I can’t.
At this point, today, I’m at a loss. I’m not sure where the rise of AI agents will take us, in terms of how we work and learn. I’m in the question-asking part of my journey. I have few answers.
So, let’s talk about where (I think) AI Agents will take education. And who knows? Maybe as I write I’ll come up with something more concrete.
It’s worth a shot, right?
From DSC:
I completely agree with Jason’s following assertion:
A good portion of AI advancement will come down to employee replacement. And AI Agents push companies towards that.
THAT’s where/what the ROI will be for corporations. They will make their investments up in the headcount area, and likely in other areas as well (product design, marketing campaigns, engineering-related items, and more). But how much time it takes to get there is a big question mark.
One last quote here…it’s too good not to include:
Behind these questions lies a more abstract, more philosophical one: what is the relationship between thinking and doing in a world of AI Agents and other kinds of automation?
How Good are Claude, ChatGPT & Gemini at Instructional Design? — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A test of AI’s Instruction Design skills in theory & in practice
By examining models across three AI families—Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini—I’ve started to identify each model’s strengths, limitations, and typical pitfalls.
Spoiler: my findings underscore that until we have specialised, fine-tuned AI copilots for instructional design, we should be cautious about relying on general-purpose models and ensure expert oversight in all ID tasks.
From DSC — I’m going to (have Nick) say this again:
I simply asked my students to use AI to brainstorm their own learning objectives. No restrictions. No predetermined pathways. Just pure exploration. The results? Astonishing.Students began mapping out research directions I’d never considered. They created dialogue spaces with AI that looked more like intellectual partnerships than simple query-response patterns.
The Digital Literacy Quest: Become an AI Hero — from gamma.app
From DSC:
I have not gone through all of these online-based materials, but I like what they are trying to get at:
Expanding access to the Gemini app for teen students in education — from workspaceupdates.googleblog.com
Google Workspace for Education admins can now turn on the Gemini app with added data protection as an additional service for their teen users (ages 13+ or the applicable age in your country) in the following languages and countries. With added data protection, chats are not reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used to improve AI models. The Gemini app will be a core service in the coming weeks for Education Standard and Plus users, including teens,
5 Essential Questions Educators Have About AI — from edsurge.com by Annie Ning
Recently, I spoke with several teachers regarding their primary questions and reflections on using AI in teaching and learning. Their thought-provoking responses challenge us to consider not only what AI can do but what it means for meaningful and equitable learning environments. Keeping in mind these reflections, we can better understand how we move forward toward meaningful AI integration in education.
FrontierMath: A Benchmark for Evaluating Advanced Mathematical Reasoning in AI — from epoch.ai
FrontierMath presents hundreds of unpublished, expert-level mathematics problems that specialists spend days solving. It offers an ongoing measure of AI complex mathematical reasoning progress.
We’re introducing FrontierMath, a benchmark of hundreds of original, expert-crafted mathematics problems designed to evaluate advanced reasoning capabilities in AI systems. These problems span major branches of modern mathematics—from computational number theory to abstract algebraic geometry—and typically require hours or days for expert mathematicians to solve.
Rising demand for AI courses in UK universities shows 453% growth as students adapt to an AI-driven job market — from edtechinnovationhub.com
The demand for artificial intelligence courses in UK universities has surged dramatically over the past five years, with enrollments increasing by 453%, according to a recent study by Currys, a UK tech retailer.
The study, which analyzed UK university admissions data and surveyed current students and recent graduates, reveals how the growing influence of AI is shaping students’ educational choices and career paths.
This growth reflects the broader trend of AI integration across industries, creating new opportunities while transforming traditional roles. With AI’s influence on career prospects rising, students and graduates are increasingly drawn to AI-related courses to stay competitive in a rapidly changing job market.
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:
Kids worldwide face huge educational challenges. Is better leadership a solution? — from hechingerreport.org by Liz Willen
Amid dismal data, educators from around the world gather in Brazil and say they can rise to the challenges
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…
Below are several items from edutopia.org:
Doing the Best You Can With the Time You Have — by Jay Schauer
These strategies can help overwhelmed teachers prioritize tasks and find a balance between perfectionism and efficiency.
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How to Support Teachers’ Emotional Health — by Hedreich Nichols
Emotional well-being plays a major role in teachers’ job satisfaction, and it’s essential that they have effective resources for support.
Teachers cannot be expected to teach SEL effectively without first being intentional about their own emotional health. If we want educators to guide students through emotional regulation, they must have the time, space, and support to do that work themselves. This goes beyond surface-level wellness initiatives—teachers need opportunities to reflect on their emotional triggers, manage their own stresses, and receive genuine support from their schools. Only when teachers are empowered to process their own emotional challenges can they truly foster a healthy social and emotional environment for their students.
In Praise of the Humble Document Camera — by Emily Rankin
Revisiting a simple edtech tool can help you introduce rigor and engage students more deeply in their lessons.
4 Ways to Use a Document Camera in Your Classroom— by Emily Rankin
If a document camera is gathering dust in a classroom, its lack of impact is probably linked to the user, not what the gadget is capable of. Case in point, I wasn’t using mine regularly because I didn’t know the value it could add to my teaching and learning. Here are some of the practices I now know are possible:
Weighing Inquiry-Based Learning and Direct Instruction in Elementary Math — by Vivian Quan
Teachers can ask themselves three key questions in order to choose the most effective instructional approach to a topic.
One factor to consider is the subject. In math, students need opportunities to work on rich tasks and solve problems in ways that make sense to them. However, that doesn’t mean direct instruction is totally absent from math time. The questions below can guide you in deciding whether to use direct instruction, when it would be appropriate, and who else in the classroom you might involve.
Increasing Talk Time in World Language Classes — by Kate Good
Teachers can experiment with a variety of strategies to build and assess students’ ability to converse in the target language.
To capitalize on my students’ (seemingly inexhaustible) desire to chat, I work to increase student talk time in our Spanish immersion classes. I use several strategies to build and assess students’ oral language.
Is Generative AI and ChatGPT healthy for Students? — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer and Nick Potkalitsky
Beyond Text Generation: How AI Ignites Student Discovery and Deep Thinking, according to firsthand experiences of Teachers and AI researchers like Nick Potkalitsky.
After two years of intensive experimentation with AI in education, I am witnessing something amazing unfolding before my eyes. While much of the world fixates on AI’s generative capabilities—its ability to create essays, stories, and code—my students have discovered something far more powerful: exploratory AI, a dynamic partner in investigation and critique that’s transforming how they think.
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They’ve moved beyond the initial fascination with AI-generated content to something far more sophisticated: using AI as an exploratory tool for investigation, interrogation, and intellectual discovery.
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Instead of the much-feared “shutdown” of critical thinking, we’re witnessing something extraordinary: the emergence of what I call “generative thinking”—a dynamic process where students learn to expand, reshape, and evolve their ideas through meaningful exploration with AI tools. Here I consciously reposition the term “generative” as a process of human origination, although one ultimately spurred on by machine input.
A Road Map for Leveraging AI at a Smaller Institution — from er.educause.edu by Dave Weil and Jill Forrester
Smaller institutions and others may not have the staffing and resources needed to explore and take advantage of developments in artificial intelligence (AI) on their campuses. This article provides a roadmap to help institutions with more limited resources advance AI use on their campuses.
The following activities can help smaller institutions better understand AI and lay a solid foundation that will allow them to benefit from it.
Smaller institutions do not need to fear being left behind in the wake of rapid advancements in AI technologies and tools. By thinking intentionally about how AI will impact the institution, becoming familiar with the different types of AI tools, and establishing a strong data and analytics infrastructure, institutions can establish the groundwork for AI success. The five fundamental activities of coordinating, learning, planning and governing, implementing, and reviewing and refining can help smaller institutions make progress on their journey to use AI tools to gain efficiencies and improve students’ experiences and outcomes while keeping true to their institutional missions and values.
Also from Educause, see:
AI school opens – learners are not good or bad but fast and slow — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark
That is what they are doing here. Lesson plans focus on learners rather than the traditional teacher-centric model. Assessing prior strengths and weaknesses, personalising to focus more on weaknesses and less on things known or mastered. It’s adaptive, personalised learning. The idea that everyone should learn at the exactly same pace, within the same timescale is slightly ridiculous, ruled by the need for timetabling a one to many, classroom model.
For the first time in the history of our species we have technology that performs some of the tasks of teaching. We have reached a pivot point where this can be tried and tested. My feeling is that we’ll see a lot more of this, as parents and general teachers can delegate a lot of the exposition and teaching of the subject to the technology. We may just see a breakthrough that transforms education.
Agentic AI Named Top Tech Trend for 2025 — from campustechnology.com by David Ramel
Agentic AI will be the top tech trend for 2025, according to research firm Gartner. The term describes autonomous machine “agents” that move beyond query-and-response generative chatbots to do enterprise-related tasks without human guidance.
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More realistic challenges that the firm has listed elsewhere include:
Also from campustechnology.com, see:
Three items from edcircuit.com:
All or nothing at Educause24 — from onedtech.philhillaa.com by Kevin Kelly
Looking for specific solutions at the conference exhibit hall, with an educator focus
Here are some notable trends:
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Not all AI news is good news. In particular, AI has exacerbated the problem of fraudulent enrollment–i.e., rogue actors who use fake or stolen identities with the intent of stealing financial aid funding with no intention of completing coursework.
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The consequences are very real, including financial aid funding going to criminal enterprises, enrollment estimates getting dramatically skewed, and legitimate students being blocked from registering for classes that appear “full” due to large numbers of fraudulent enrollments.
