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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- 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 […]
- ‘Unsettling’ adverts are coming to your AI chatbot - Cristina Criddle and Daniel Thomas, Financial ReviewJames Denton-Clark, chief growth officer of Stagwell Europe, says that “early demand is predominantly from large, sophisticated advertisers due to the pilot’s minimum investment requirement in the low six figures”. He adds: “What distinguishes this initiative is not merely another ad format; it marks another serious attempt to monetise AI and agents that can answer, […]
- AI and Course Design: Machines Can Help, but Only Humans Can Teach - Deb Adair and Whitney Kilgore, EDUCAUSE ReviewIt's clear that AI is reshaping higher education. The technology is no longer knocking on the door. It's already inside, and it's rearranging the furniture. In faculty lounges, curriculum committees, and course design meetings, conversations about AI are urgent, often fraught, and almost always unclear. There's excitement, but there's also fatigue, skepticism, and confusion. Colleges […]
- What AI could mean for film and TV production and the industry’s future - McKinseyIndustry leaders are questioning how AI could change what content is made and how it is produced. Our research indicates three potential industry outcomes beyond disrupting the content supply chain. AI is already beginning to be deployed in some areas of the film and TV production process, though the potential magnitude of its long-term impact […]
- The Person in the Machine: Why AI Personhood Rights Are Inevitable (And Arriving Sooner Than You Think) - Thomas Frey, Futurist SpeakerDo AI systems deserve legal personhood? The instinctive answer — from almost everyone — is “absolutely not.” AI isn’t conscious. It doesn’t feel pain. It doesn’t have moral worth. Giving legal rights to a machine sounds like science fiction, or worse, like surrendering human primacy to our own creations. But here’s what most people don’t […]
- A one-in-a-million reunion, a reverse-mentoring match - MastercardA chance meeting at an online training session shows how learning now flows both ways — and why curiosity matters more than seniority. These types of reverse mentoring relationships make sense in a world where new technologies might be second nature for younger people, but difficult to grasp for even seasoned professionals like Tabanera. “Nico’s […]
- Transform Teaching Now: Accommodate Learning In Chaotic Times - Jeni Hebert-Beirne, the FulcrumThe most recent American Psychological Association Stress in America™ survey shows “62% of U.S. adults 18 and over reported societal division as a significant source of stress in their lives.” Seventy-six percent of U.S. adults say the future of the nation is a significant cause of stress. As a public health professor with over a decade of […]
- Worried AI means you won't get a job when you graduate? Here's what the research says - Lukasz Swiatek, The ConversationFor example, international researchers have noted agriculture has been a slow adopter of AI. By contrast, colleagues and I have found AI is being rapidly implemented in media and communications, already affecting jobs from advertising to the entertainment industries. Here we are seeing storyboard illustrators, copywriters and virtual effects artists (among others) increasingly being replaced […]
- The automation curve in agentic commerce - McKinseyThis is the year AI agents stopped being an experiment and became part of how people shop, not in headline-grabbing ways but in everyday moments—helping shoppers make sense of choices, assemble baskets, resolve trade-offs, and move toward action. Yet what looks like small convenience today is an early signal of a much larger shift in […]
- Milwaukee’s 5 higher education leaders team up on AI - Corrinne Hess, Wisconsin Public RadioThe leaders of Milwaukee’s five institutions of higher education are partnering with one of Wisconsin’s largest companies with the goal of making the region a nationally recognized leader for artificial intelligence and data science. During a meeting at Northwestern Mutual’s headquarters downtown, the chancellors and presidents of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marquette University, the Medical […]
- One New Thing: How AI Is Helping College Administrators Offload Work - Alina Tugend, US NewsThe nonprofit Educause does some of the best and most widely distributed research on ed tech in higher education. Its new report on artificial intelligence goes beyond the way students are using the technology to offer an up-to-date snapshot of how and where higher ed as a whole is. “The Impact of AI on Work […]
- See ChatGPT’s hidden bias about your state or city - Geoffrey A. Fowler and Kevin Schaul, Washington PostAsk ChatGPT which state has the laziest people, and the chatbot will politely refuse to say. But researchers at Oxford and the University of Kentucky forced the bot to reveal its hidden biases. They systematically asked the chatbot to choose which of two states had the laziest people, for every combination of states, revealing a […]
- The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Competitiveness—An Exploratory Study on Employees in Logistics Companiesin Egypt - Ehab Edward Mikhail, et al; SCRIP Technology and InvestmentThis dissertation investigates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption on the competitiveness of logistics companies in Egypt, focusing on its role in enhancing operational efficiency, service quality, and customer satisfaction. The findings indicate that AI implementation significantly improves competitiveness by reducing costs, enhancing productivity, and strengthening customer experience; however, most small and medium-sized firms […]
- Aoun urges higher education institutions to embrace AI in Boston Globe op-ed - Lily Cooper, Huntington NewsIn an op-ed published in The Boston Globe Feb. 10 titled “Students are AI natives. Why aren’t their colleges?” Aoun advocated for curricula that incorporate AI, rather than discourage it, and a shift toward experiential learning: two initiatives that Northeastern has already implemented. “Instead of being on the defensive, now is the moment to shake […]
- AI companies are eating higher education: The battle between bots and brains has already begun, and educators can see how it might end - Mattew Connelly, the Business TimesHoping to win recognition as leaders in AI or fearful of being left behind, more and more colleges and universities are eagerly partnering with AI companies, despite decades of evidence showing the need to test education technology, which has often failed to deliver measurable improvements in student learning. AI companies are increasingly exerting outsize influence […]
- Should All College Degrees Come With a Lifetime Professional Ed Contract? - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher EdInformation and knowledge are growing at an accelerating rate. As we usher graduates out of college, much of their knowledge is useless, already out of date. Unfortunately, we graduate students with degrees and certificates that, once upon a time, we believed certified current and continuing expertise in a given field. It lasted a lifetime. That […]
Other Curated News:
News from UPCEA:
Emboldening Student Driven Learning in the Online Environment
By SmartBrief Editors This post is produced in partnership with UPCEA. The world of professional, continuing and online education is in constant flux. Former associate dean of academic affairs at Syracuse University and current University of North Carolina at Greensboro division of online learning…
Why Smart Cities Need Liberal Arts Graduates
As a lover of science fiction, I find myself picking movie genres that depict a future society fighting against the tyranny of unfair rulers protecting what they think is a utopian society. Ultimately, the masses win and freedom reigns. What our future society will look…
The Impact of “At-Scale” and Mega-U Degrees
The landscape of online higher education is changing with the growth of mega-universities and the advent of scores of MOOC-sized at-scale degree programs from prestigious universities. Mid and small sized regional universities are seeing the some of the largest declines in enrollments. In assessing the cause…
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