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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- Gratitude Practice Designer - TAAFTThis prompt turns AI into a Gratitude Practice Designer who creates customized gratitude exercises that actually stick. Unlike generic advice to “keep a gratitude journal,” this system designs practices tailored to your personality, schedule, and what feels authentic rather than forced. The designer addresses gratitude fatigue and helps you develop practices that create genuine shifts […]
- The AI Machine With 50 Million Brains - There's An AI For That, YouTubeWhy single companies could deploy 50 million AI agents by late 2026. How these agents communicate 100x faster than humans by skipping language entirely. The wage collapse math: when digital workers can be copied infinitely, labor costs trend toward electricity prices. Why removing entry-level tasks breaks the ladder humans need to become experts. The Reddit […]
- Micro Credentials Ireland: National MicroCreds Initiative Celebrates Leadership in Flexible Learning - University of Limerick, IrelandIreland’s position as a leader in flexible learning and lifelong learning was celebrated at the MicroCreds Capstone Event in Dublin on 12 February, marking the impact of a €14.3 million national initiative delivered under the Human Capital Initiative. The MicroCreds project, led by the Irish Universities Association (IUA) in partnership with eight universities, has supported […]
- The College Reality Check - GallupWhile public confidence in higher education has declined sharply in recent years, current students and graduates report far more optimistic experiences. The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes report from Lumina Foundation and Gallup examines this divide, highlighting public skepticism alongside the positive outcomes described by those on campus and beyond. […]
- What’s Ahead In 2026 For The Arts And Humanities In Corporate America - Benjamin Wolff, ForbesBetween the rising unemployment rate, a dramatic increase in corporate AI spending, and Merriam-Webster’s choice of “slop” as its word of the year, what we’re absorbing in these final days of 2025 is giving many Americans anxiety about their careers in 2026. Surprisingly, one of the most maligned groups, arts and humanities graduates, is well […]
- The greatest risk of AI in higher education isn’t cheating – it’s the erosion of learning itself - the ConversationUniversities are adopting AI across many areas of institutional life. Some uses are largely invisible, like systems that help allocate resources, flag “at-risk” students, optimize course scheduling or automate routine administrative decisions. Other uses are more noticeable. Students use AI tools to summarize and study, instructors use them to build assignments and syllabuses and researchers […]
- The Committed Innovator: Keeping up with AI and deploying it as it evolves - Nathaniel Whittmore, McKinseyAdopting AI remains a challenge for most, and the fact that the world of AI is advancing so incredibly rapidly doesn’t help. Nathaniel Whittemore aims to make both adoption and keeping up with change a lot easier. He is the founder and CEO of Superintelligent, the AI enablement platform offering interactive tutorials that provide practical […]
- Sam Altman's Bombshell - Peter H. Diamandis, MoonshotsIn this video, Peter Diamandis discusses a provocative statement by Sam Altman, who suggested that AGI has essentially been achieved in a "spiritual" rather than literal sense. Diamandis highlights that Altman now views AGI as an engineering challenge centered on iterative improvements rather than a research problem requiring a single massive breakthrough. The video suggests […]
- Tuskegee University to Launch Online Global Campus - The Journal of Blacks in Higher EducationTuskegee University, a historically Black educational institution in Alabama, recently announced the launch of the Tuskegee University Global Campus (TUGC), an online learning platform designed to expand access to an HBCU education for students who face barriers to a traditional on-campus experience, such as adult learners and students with limited financial resources. Launching in Fall […]
- Students receive settlement payouts from remote learning lawsuit, $4 million distributed across 56,000 class members - Mary Andolina, The Daily U WashingtonA select number of students have begun to receive settlement payouts from the $4 million settlement lawsuit in which the plaintiffs argued students should not have been required to pay full tuition prices during the period of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Payments were scheduled to be sent out Jan. 30 to settlement class […]
- Is AI Inescapable in Higher Education? - Maddie Rodriguez, the SpectatorArtificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly becoming a day-to-day norm. Nearly 90% of college students use AI for academic purposes. A third of them use it daily, and another 24% use AI several times a week. According to the 2025 AI in Education Trends Report, AI is being used as a learning partner, but what does […]
- Students question the value of higher education amid AI - Naomi Martin, the IthicanIthaca College’s statement on AI use includes the desire to prepare students for an AI-driven future and workforce, which is already here. Large companies like Pinterest and Amazon have made moves to pivot toward AI resources, with Pinterest laying off under 15% of its workers and Amazon cutting 14,000 corporate jobs. The influence that AI […]
- Here are 3 ways to mine AI for insights, and do it safely - Alcino Donadel, University Business“We try to educate all of our staff to ensure that whatever they’re using is approved and screened by our central IT teams so that we know that it’s guarded and protected,” says Pablo Ortiz, provost of Barry. College administrators interviewed by University Business revealed how they use AI without compromising their data, integrity or […]
- Professional Development Planner - TAAFTThis prompt turns AI into a Professional Development Planner who helps you create strategic skill-building and growth plans. The system assesses your current capabilities against your career goals and creates actionable development plans that fit your life circumstances.This planner helps you invest in your growth strategically rather than haphazardly.### **Example User Prompts**1. “I want to […]
- Google adds music-genertion capabilities to the Gemini app - Ivan Mehta, TechCrunchGoogle adds music-generation capabilities to the Gemini app - Ivan Mehta, TechCrunchGoogle announced on Wednesday that it’s adding a music-generation feature to the Gemini app. The company is using DeepMind’s Lyria 3 music-generation model to power the feature, which is still in beta.To use the feature, you’ll describe the song you want to create, and […]
- Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.6 - AnthropicClaude Sonnet 4.6 is our most capable Sonnet model yet. It’s a full upgrade of the model’s skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design. Sonnet 4.6 also features a 1M token context window in beta. For those on our Free and Pro plans, Claude Sonnet 4.6 is now the […]
- Leading With Grounded Confidence - Brené Brown and Adam Grant, Knowledge at WhartonIn her new book Strong Ground, Brené Brown argues that leaders deliver their best work not by projecting certainty, but by staying grounded: engaging with courage, clarity, and compassion even as conditions shift around them. In a series of conversations about the book’s core ideas (listen here and here), Brown and Wharton organizational psychologist Adam […]
- A Guide to Which AI to Use in the Agentic Era - Ethan Mollick, One Useful ThingIf you are just getting started, pick one of the three systems (ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini), pay the $20, and select the advanced model. The advice from my book still holds: invite AI to everything you do. Start using it for real work. Upload a document you’re actually working on. Give the AI a very […]
- The AI Wake-Up Call Everyone Needs Right Now! - Matt Wolfe, YouTubeThe podcast focuses on a viral article by Matt Schumer, which argues that AI development has reached a "COVID-like" inflection point where rapid, exponential growth is about to fundamentally disrupt society. The creator highlights that the newest models, such as GPT-5.3 and Claude 4.6, represent a shift from simple instruction-following to demonstrating genuine judgment and […]
- The Apprentice: Why Higher Ed Is Leaning Into Earn-and-Learn - Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher EdVUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. It’s a management acronym popularized by the U.S. military to describe the changing world after the Cold War. But Minah Woo, vice president of workforce innovation and strategic partnerships at Howard Community College in Maryland, said it accurately describes the current operating environment for higher education. “We are dealing […]
Other Curated News:
News from UPCEA:
All Top 10-ranked institutions are members of UPCEA WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 16, 2020) — UPCEA, the association for college and university leaders in professional, continuing, and online education, is pleased to congratulate the many UPCEA members recognized in the 2020 U.S. News & World Report…
Escaping Gilligan’s Island: Lessons for Higher Education
As an older representative of Generation X, just six months shy of being able to say I am a Boomer, I enjoy watching classic television shows such as I Dream of Jeannie, The Brady Bunch or Gilligan’s Island. Many Millennials and certainly most Gen Z’ers…
Where Competency-Based Education is Headed in 2020 and Beyond
By SmartBrief Editors This post is produced in partnership with UPCEA. Barbara Kopp Miller is at the forefront of competency-based approaches to education. As the Dean of University College in Toledo, Ohio, she leads one of the most progressive CBE programs in the nation. She…
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