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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- 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 […]
- ‘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 […]
Other Curated News:
News from UPCEA:
Jobs, Education and the Learner/Worker
Much is written about strengthening the link between education and employment. Jobs are changing and likely to continue to evolve over the coming decades. Education must evolve, too. How do we make sense of all that is being written and said about the linkage between…
UPCEA & Other Associations Urge HHS Not to Pursue Definition of Sex
Shortly before the November election, word leaked that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was considering developing a definition of “sex” that would, in effect, maintain that an individual’s sex was determined at birth and was unchangeable. In a letter last week, UPCEA, along with…
Giving Thanks for the New Economy
With the holidays near, we need to give thanks for the many opportunities that 2019 should provide to higher education. The next few years (including 2019) bring the promise of a new and exciting economy, one based heavily on automation and efficiencies and fueled by…
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