Online and Professional Continuing Education News
See below for a listing of curated news articles of the day brought to you by Ray Schroeder, Senior Fellow at UPCEA.
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- AI's Moore's Law: Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long TasksWe propose measuring AI performance in terms of the length of tasks AI agents can complete. We show that this metric has been consistently exponentially increasing over the past 6 years, with a doubling time of around 7 months. Extrapolating this trend predicts that, in under five years, we will see AI agents that can […]
- Adobe previews AI generated PowerPoints from raw customer data with ‘Project Slide Wow’ - Carl Franzen, Venture BeatFor businesses that rely on data-driven decision-making, Project Slide Wow could be a major step forward in simplifying the process of building presentations. If the tool gains traction, it may soon be available as an official Adobe product—potentially transforming how companies use customer data to inform strategy. Until then, CTOs, CIOs, team leads, and analysts […]
- Artificial Intelligence in Medical Education: Transforming Learning and Practice - Aadhitya Sriram, et al; CureusArtificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping medical education by enhancing learning strategies, improving training efficiency, and offering personalized educational experiences. Traditional teaching methods, such as classroom lectures and clinical apprenticeships, face numerous challenges, including information overload, teaching quality variability, and standardisation difficulties. AI presents innovative, data-driven, and adaptive solutions to overcome these limitations, making medical training […]
- Leading Through Complexity: How Online Leaders Can Drive Digital Institutional Transformation - Bethany Simunich, Campus TechnologyAs colleges and universities navigate an era of enrollment declines and financial uncertainty, many are betting big on online education as their path to long-term growth and sustainability. Yet, as nearly 70% of online learning leaders report that their institution is prioritizing the development of online courses for on-campus programs, the path forward is far […]
- Let’s look at AI as a reasoning partner, not a shortcut - Xiangen Hu, Times Higher EdArtificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving from a simple memory retrieval tool into a sophisticated agent, capable of nuanced reasoning. We can see this in advanced models such as DeepSeek’s R1, OpenAI’s Deep Research and xAI’s Grok. These systems no longer act merely as extensions of search engines but serve as interactive partners that can […]
- OpenAI cancels standalone o3 AI model in favour of a ‘unified’ next-gen release - MSNOpenAI has effectively cancelled the release of o3, which was to be its next major standalone AI model, in favour of a “simplified” product offering, CEO Sam Altman announced on Wednesday. “We will release GPT-5 as a system that integrates a lot of our technology, including o3,” he said in a post on X. Altman […]
- AI Ethics in Higher Education: How Schools Are Proceeding - Adam Stone, EdTechHigher education is uniquely positioned to deal with AI’s ethical considerations, partly because AI adoption is already prevalent in academia. At Miami University in Ohio, “there are courses about AI, and there are courses that use AI,” says Vice President for IT Services and CIO David Seidl. As AI use widens, colleges and universities need […]
- Mujo Releases Groundbreaking Textbook on Artificial Intelligence in Marketing for Higher Education - CBS4Mujo, an independent publisher of AI, business & digital marketing curriculum, is proud to announce the release of its latest textbook, Artificial Intelligence Marketing, designed specifically for higher education. This is the first textbook in our Applied AI for Business series. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform the marketing landscape, Artificial Intelligence Marketing provides […]
- Making AI work for workers - McKinsey QuarterlyEmployees are ready for AI. How can their leaders help them unleash new levels of creativity and productivity? Workers are already on board with gen AI, but many leaders aren’t keeping pace. Business leaders who can build on this momentum face a significant opportunity. But not all employees are embracing gen AI equally. Identifying four […]
- Publishers Embrace AI as Research Integrity Tool - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher EdThe academic publishing industry is adopting AI-powered tools to improve the quality of peer-reviewed research and speed up production. The latter goal yields “obvious financial benefit” for publishers, one expert said. But the $19 billion academic publishing industry is increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to speed up production and, advocates say, enhance research quality. Since […]
- Most college students are taking online classes, but they’re paying just as much as in-person students - Jon Marcus, Hechninger ReportAmong the surprising answers is that colleges and universities are charging more for online education to subsidize everything else they do, online managers say. Huge sums are also going into marketing and advertising for it, documents show. Universities and colleges “see online higher education as an opportunity to make money and use it for whatever […]
- AI that can match humans at any task will be here in five to 10 years, Google DeepMind CEO says - Ryan Browne, CNBCGoogle DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said he thinks artificial general intelligence, or AGI, will emerge in the next five or 10 years. AGI broadly relates to AI that is as smart or smarter than humans. “We’re not quite there yet. These systems are very impressive at certain things. But there are other things they can’t […]
- Supporting the Instructional Design Process: Stress-Testing Assignments with AI - Faculty FocusOne of the challenges of course design is that all our work can seem perfectly clear and effective when we are knee-deep in the design process, but everything somehow falls apart when deployed in the wild. From simple misunderstandings to complex misconceptions, these issues typically don’t reveal themselves until we see actual student work—often when […]
- Quantum Supremacy Claimed for Real-World Problem Solving - Berenice Baker, IOT World TodayD-Wave Quantum said that its Advantage2 annealing quantum computer achieved quantum supremacy on a practical, real-world problem. A new peer-reviewed paper published in Science, "Beyond-Classical Computation in Quantum Simulation," said D-Wave's system has outperformed classical supercomputers in simulating quantum dynamics in programmable spin glasses, complex magnetic material simulations with significant business and scientific applications. In […]
- Beyond big models: Why AI needs more than just scale to reach AGI - Sascha Brodsky, IBMWhile today’s AI models can generate fluent text, recognize images and even perform complex problem-solving tasks, they still fall short of human intelligence in key ways. Most surveyed AI researchers believe that deep learning alone isn’t enough to reach AGI. Instead, they argue that AI must integrate structured reasoning and a deeper understanding of cause […]
- Why Online Learning Teams Should Read ‘Co-Intelligence’ - Joshua Kim, Inside Higher EdApplying Ethan Mollick’s four principles to our work designing, developing, teaching and marketing online programs. Given this state of affairs, I’d like to make a modest proposal. From now on, all attendees of any AI higher education–focused conversation, meeting, conference or discussion must first have read Ethan Mollick’s (short) book Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With […]
- Higher ed is at a crossroads — will AI and digital learning lead the way? - Higher Ed DiveOverwhelmingly, the expense of higher education is seen as burdensome, according to 82% of respondents who are moderately to extremely concerned about the overall cost of postsecondary academic experiences. An evaluation of the impacts of today’s learning environment on the perceived value of higher education indicates students are open to change. Institutions looking to drive […]
- OpenAI and Google ask the government to let them train AI on content they don’t own - Emma Roth, the VergeOpenAI and Google are pushing the US government to allow their AI models to train on copyrighted material. Both companies outlined their stances in proposals published this week, with OpenAI arguing that applying fair use protections to AI “is a matter of national security.” The proposals come in response to a request from the White […]
- The state of AI: How organizations are rewiring to capture value - Alex Singla, et al, McKinseyOrganizations are starting to make organizational changes designed to generate future value from gen AI, and large companies are leading the way. The latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI finds that organizations are beginning to take steps that drive bottom-line impact—for example, redesigning workflows as they deploy gen AI and putting senior leaders in critical […]
- Perspectives of Academic Staff on Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Exploring Areas of Relevance (Provisionally accepted) - Dana-Kristin Mah, et al; FrontiersDespite the recent increase in research on artificial intelligence in education (AIED), studies investigating the perspectives of academic staff and the implications for future-oriented teaching at higher education institutions remain scarce. This exploratory study provides initial insight into the perspectives of 112 academic staff by focusing on three aspects considered relevant for sustainable, future-oriented teaching […]
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