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 Agents: Coming Soon to a User Near You - Babak Pahlavan, Spiceworks
    NinjaTech AI’s CEO, Babak Pahlavan, sheds light on this burgeoning phenomenon of AI Agents. Offering a glimpse into the intricacies and implications of reshaping our daily interactions in this tech-driven world. There’s been accelerating publicity lately around “AI agents.” In November 2023, Bill Gates wrote on his blog about how AI agents will completely change […]
  • No One Actually Knows How AI Will Affect Jobs - Will Knight, Wired
    Forget artificial intelligence breaking free of human control and taking over the world. A far more pressing concern is how today’s generative AI tools will transform the labor market. Some experts envisage a world of increased productivity and job satisfaction; others, a landscape of mass unemployment and social upheaval. Someone with a bird's-eye view of […]
  • Meta AI releases OpenEQA to spur ’embodied intelligence’ in artificial agents - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat
    Meta AI researchers today released OpenEQA, a new open-source benchmark dataset that aims to measure an artificial intelligence system’s capacity for “embodied question answering” — developing an understanding of the real world that allows it to answer natural language questions about an environment. The dataset, which Meta is positioning as a key benchmark for the […]
  • Degrees Earned Fall Again, Certificates Rise - Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed
    Fewer people are earning degrees for the second year in a row, but certificates are having a moment, according to a new report.  The latest “Undergraduate Degree Earners” report, released Thursday, showed that almost 100,000 fewer people earned bachelor’s and associate degrees or certificates during the 2022–23 academic year, a 2.8 percent decrease. The number […]
  • Generative AI Update for 2024 - Ray Schroeder and Katherine Kerpan, the European Business Review
    Any update on this technology has to carry the caveat that it is changing day by day and that research and development is, in most cases, months ahead of what is available to the general public. We are now in a period of highly competitive one-upmanship in the features, speed, security, and reliability of GenAI […]
  • Google Announces STUNNING AI Agents | Google Cloud Keynote AI Agents - Wes Roth, YouTube
    It looks like Google is going all in on AI agents the latest Google Cloud next keynote presentation which covers some of the new product developments across Google had one major theme and that is AI agents. AI agents for customer service. AI agents for helping your employees get more stuff done for marketing, for […]
  • Big tech unites around AI workforce training for 100M workers - Lindsey Wilkinson, CIO Dive
    Microsoft, Google, IBM, Intel, SAP and Cisco plan to collectively train nearly 100 million technology workers over the next ten years to mitigate AI’s disruption to the workforce, the companies said Friday in an announcement. The group, which includes Accenture, Eightfold and Indeed, plans to evaluate the impact of AI on 56 information and communication […]
  • GPT-5: 4 New Features We Want to See - Maxwell Timothy, Make Use Of
    OpenAI's GPT-4 is currently the best generative AI tool on the market, but that doesn't mean we're not looking to the future. With OpenAI CEO Sam Altman regularly dropping hints about GPT-5, it seems likely we'll see a new, upgraded AI model before long. [skipping to wish #3] So, if GPT-5 ships with GPT Agents, […]
  • AI Pioneer Shows The Power of AI AGENTS - "The Future Is Agentic" - Matthew Berman, YouTube
    In this video, host Matthew Berman, steps through a short presentation by AI pioneer and co-founder of Coursera, Andrew Ng.  This presentation at Silcon Valley Sequoia explains how and why the use of AI agents working as a team can produce results far superior to the current mode of using GenAI to generate responses, such […]
  • OpenAI board member has a scary prediction for the future of work - Ian Krietzberg, the Street
    Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said that it will take years for people to realize real productivity gains from AI. OpenAI board member Larry Summers said at the Fortune Innovation Forum Thursday the adoption of AI will take longer than expected. Still, he believes the technology has enormous economic implications. He said that eventually, AI […]
  • AI taking on more work doesn't mean it replaces you. Here are 12 reasons to worry less - David Gewirtz, ZD Net
    Today, AI has the potential to destroy some jobs (possibly including my own), but it also has the potential to empower -- and provide deep value to -- workers and employers. We call that disruption, and it's nothing new because disruption is always new. As with nearly all the technology previously created, AI has a […]
  • Advancing Gender Equality in Data, Analytics, and AI - Women in AI, Omdia, AI Business
    “We've made progress, but we still aren't where we want to be,” said Dhawan. “Bias may sometimes emanate from both the top down and the company culture, which is why it's important to support more efforts and dialogues with women. We want men to actively support women as well, so it's not just about women […]
  • Bridging the AI Divide: A Call to Action - Adela de la Torre and James Frazee, Inside Higher Ed
    Leaders must take steps to prevent low-income and first-gen students from falling further behind, Adela de la Torre and James Frazee write. AI literacy has already become a gating qualification for participants across America’s workforce. In one recent survey by Amazon Web Services, a staggering 73 percent of employers report prioritizing hiring talent with AI […]
  • Actionable strategies for integrating AI into the classroom - Elon University
    As generative artificial intelligence (AI) continues its rapid ascent, higher education institutions are pondering strategies for adapting and equipping their students with the skills necessary to thrive in an AI-oriented workforce. Despite the pressing need for AI literacy, a recent BestColleges survey found that just 53% of students say they have been assigned coursework that […]
  • OPINION: Artificial intelligence can be game-changing for students with special needs - Diana Hughes, Hechinger Report
    Much has been made of artificial intelligence’s potential to revolutionize education. AI is making it increasingly possible to break down barriers so that no student is ever left behind. This potential is real, but only if we are ensuring that all learners benefit. Far too many students, especially those with special needs, do not progress […]
  • There are No Shortcuts to Thinking: Promise in the way students are already using AI as a learning tool - Dan Sarofian-Butin, Education Next
    I really thought everyone would cheat. That’s why I was shocked by their responses. “I use it the same way we use it for this class,” one student wrote. isten, therefore, to what another one of my students wrote: “I use ChatGPT as my TA and for it to give me extra help with brainstorming […]
  • How Generative AI Owns Higher Education. Now What? - Steve Andriole, Forbes
    It’s astonishing that most professors, administrators and even donors don’t see the proverbial train barreling down the tracks, perhaps like how climate deniers cannot calculate storms, rainfall, floods, droughts and unbearable summers. Maybe it’s just a repeat of the Luddite phenomenon that surrounds the adoption of all new technology. Who knows, but worse, many universities […]
  • AI’s promise for teaching and learning - Santa J. Onto, Michigan Today
    To help navigate the unprecedented scale and speed of this technology, we established the Generative Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee. This group – comprising faculty, staff, and students across all segments of U-M – is assessing the opportunities and challenges, as well as advising campus leadership and the wider community on how U-M can navigate responsible […]
  • Exploring generative AI at Harvard - Jessica McCann, Harvard Gazette
    The explosion of generative AI technology over the past year and a half is raising big questions about how these tools will impact higher education. Across Harvard, members of the community have been exploring how GenAI will change the ways we teach, learn, research, and work. As part of this effort, the Office of the […]
  • AI training revolution: Upskilling for a new era - HR Executive
    In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the role of HR professionals has expanded beyond traditional functions like recruitment and talent management. With the advent of transformative technologies like generative AI, HR leaders are increasingly tasked with driving innovation and facilitating continuous learning and development within their organizations. Coursera for Business, in collaboration with HRM Asia, […]

News from UPCEA: 

Survey: Emergency Move Online Forced More than Half of Faculty to Learn New Teaching Methods (Campus Technology)

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly all higher education institutions (90 percent) in a recent survey used some form of emergency distance education to complete the Spring 2020 term. And 56 percent of faculty who moved courses online were using teaching methods they…

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Home Sweet Home Is Not Office Sweet Office

As many of us are still adjusting to working from home, we are coming to realize that the accoutrements of our offices are not readily available to us at home. Many of us have been working from home for some weeks now. It is convenient…

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UPCEA Asks Congress for Additional Funding, Online Student Support, Waiver Authority

Today UPCEA has sent a letter to Capitol Hill congressional leadership regarding the need for additional funding, waiver authority, and online student support in future funding calculations. Once on the periphery of institutions of higher education, today our members are front and center as all…

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