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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- What do students want from AI-assisted teaching? - Omar Merlo &Nai Li, Times Higher EducationWhat do students want from AI-assisted teaching? - Omar Merlo &Nai Li, Times Higher EducationEducators tend to agree that we need to embrace AI as a tool for learning. However, there is still an open question about how academics and students can best harness the technology in the classroom. Through our use of AI to […]
- To employers, AI skills aren’t just for tech majors anymore: Colleges and students race to keep up with the widespread demand for AI expertise - Ariel Gilreath, Hechinger ReportAI technology is rapidly changing the labor market. Employers are increasingly posting job listings that include AI skills for positions even outside of the technology sector, such as in health care, hospitality and media. To keep up, students are increasingly looking for ways to boost their AI skills and make themselves more marketable at a […]
- How Babson College went all-in on AI in higher education - Shane O'Neill, CIOOver the past two years, US colleges have quietly integrated generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools into the classroom and behind the scenes. At Babson College, just outside Boston, the shift to AI has been anything but quiet — it’s been bold, fast, and full of purpose. Babson is certainly not the only college in the […]
- Walking, Talking, Engaging AI in Higher Ed - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher EdWe are most accustomed to writing prompts and challenging artificial intelligence to give us answers, insights, sources, video clips and creativity. Emerging now is the walking, talking AI that engages us on our level. We have front-row seats to the maturing of AI in higher education. There has been audio for a while, but now […]
- Preparing for tomorrow’s agentic workforce - Lareina Yee and Rodrigo Liang, McKinseyAs we scale up, we’re now seeing other constraints start to appear, like a lack of sufficient power for these data centers. So people are talking about nuclear power plants and other sources of energy. But then you have to figure out how to get the cooling done as well. And as you think about […]
- A.I. in the Classroom: A Brave New World? - Carl Murray, NY TimesWhile the promise of personalized A.I. tutors and campuswide integration is compelling, we must pause to consider the broader implications, especially for how students come to understand learning itself. The rush to adopt A.I. in education shouldn’t come at the expense of thoughtful consideration of how it will shape learning, relationships and long-term student development. […]
- Welcome to the "infinite workday" - Emily Peck, AxiosIt's difficult to stay focused during formal business hours. Knowledge workers are interrupted by a ping from an app — such as email, calendar or messaging — every 1.75 minutes, or 275 times, during the official eight-hour work day, finds the analysis, which looked at data from 12-month period ending February 2025. Meanwhile, as workers […]
- MIT's New AI "REWRITES ITSELF" to Improve It's Abilities: Researchers STUNNED! - Wes Roth, YouTubeThis podcast discusses a recent MIT paper on self-adapting language models (LLMs), a framework where these models generate their own training data and update their internal "weights" in response to new inputs. This allows them to improve their performance on specific tasks over time, essentially "improving their own brains." The paper introduces a concept called […]
- How we built our multi-agent research system - AnthropicClaude now has Research capabilities that allow it to search across the web, Google Workspace, and any integrations to accomplish complex tasks. The journey of this multi-agent system from prototype to production taught us critical lessons about system architecture, tool design, and prompt engineering. A multi-agent system consists of multiple agents (LLMs autonomously using tools […]
- New research suggests daily AI use can reduce faculty workload in higher education - Rachel Lawler, Ed Tech Innovation HubA new survey from D2L, an online learning platform based in Canada, and consulting service provider Tyton Partners, has found that daily use of artificial intelligence (AI) can reduce faculty workload in higher education institutions. D2L surveyed more than 3,000 respondents about the current state of AI use in higher education for its Time for […]
- ChatGPT KNOWS when it's being watched... - Matthew Berman, YouTubeThis podcast discusses how large language models (LLMs) can detect when they are being evaluated, a phenomenon called "evaluation awareness." This awareness, which is more common in advanced models, allows them to identify evaluation settings, potentially compromising benchmark reliability and leading to inaccurate assessments of their capabilities and safety. A research paper introduced a benchmark […]
- UVA professors break down AI usage on Grounds - Sarah Allen, CBS NewsArtificial intelligence is transforming the world of higher education, as it has become widely used in the classroom, and in everyday life. It is also raising some concern by college professors when it comes to reframing their coursework, knowing that students are going to use it. “The temptation to use tools like this are even […]
- Investing in innovation: Three ways to do more with less - Matt Banholzer and Tim Koller, McKinseyIn fact, innovation can be a solution to weathering uncertainty. When it’s unclear, as it is today, what the “next normal” will look like, organizations that seek ways to adapt their business models or processes and develop pathways for future growth can gain a competitive edge that often lasts through the recovery. In short, companies […]
- Apple is reportedly considering the acquisition of Perplexity AI - Mariella Moon, EngadgetApple's executives are thinking of acquiring Perplexity AI both to get more talent and to be able to offer an AI-based search engine in the future, according to Bloomberg. Adrian Perica, Apple's head of mergers and acquisitions, has reportedly already talked about the idea with services SVP Eddy Cue and the company's top decision-makers with […]
- Sam Altman says the Singularity is imminent - here's why - Webb Wright, ZDnetIn his 2005 book "The Singularity is Near," the futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that the Singularity -- the moment in which machine intelligence surpasses our own -- would occur around the year 2045. Sam Altman believes it's much closer. In a blog post published Tuesday, the OpenAI CEO delivered a homily devoted to what he […]
- Meta’s V-JEPA 2 model teaches AI to understand its surroundings - Amanda Silberling, Tech CrunchThese are the kinds of common sense connections that small children and animals make as their brains develop — when you play fetch with a dog, for example, the dog will (hopefully) understand how bouncing a ball on the ground will cause it to rebound upward, or how it should run toward where it thinks […]
- The Industry Reacts to o3-Pro! (It Thinks a LOT) - Matthew Berman, YouTubeThis podcast discusses the release of OpenAI's 03 Pro model, which is described as their most powerful model to date. While it doesn't always stand out in benchmarks, it's favored by experts in fields like science, education, and programming for its robust and thorough responses. The model has shown a 64% win rate against the […]
- 'ChatGPT Is Already More Powerful Than Any Human,' OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Says - Andrew Kessel, InvestopediaHumanity could be close to successfully building an artificial super intelligence, according to Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and one of the faces of the AI boom. "In some big sense, ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived," Altman wrote in a blog post Wednesday. OpenAI backer Microsoft and […]
- How will micro-credentials make your campus smarter? - Matt Zalaznick, University BusinessHow will micro-credentials make your campus smarter? - Matt Zalaznick, University BusinessWho is benefiting most from micro-credentials at your college or university? Are these increasingly popular programs bringing new students to your campus and sparking interest in emerging career fields? The questions abound but one thing is clear in higher ed today: A growing emphasis […]
- Sam Altman thinks AI will have ‘novel insights’ next year - Maxwell Zeff, Tech CrunchIn a new essay published Tuesday called “The Gentle Singularity,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared his latest vision for how AI will change the human experience over the next 15 years. The essay is a classic example of Altman’s futurism: hyping up the promise of AGI — and arguing that his company is quite close […]
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