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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  • Ethical AI in Higher Education - Software Testing News
    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the education sector, unlocking vast potential while introducing complex ethical and regulatory challenges. As higher education institutions harness AI’s capabilities, ensuring its responsible and ethical integration into academic environments is crucial. With the adoption of the EU AI Act, it will be critical for ed-tech companies, educational institutions, and […]
  • Get students on board with AI for marking and feedback - Isabel Fischer, Times Higher Education
    AI can potentially augment feedback and marking, but we need to trial it first. Here is a blueprint for using enhanced feedback generation systems and gaining trust. AI has proven its value in low-stakes formative feedback, where its rapid and personalised responses enhance learning. However, in high-stakes contexts where grades influence futures, autonomous AI marking […]
  • AI: Cheating Matters, but Redrawing Assessment ‘Matters Most’ - Juliette Rowsell, Times Higher Education
    Conversations over students using artificial intelligence to cheat on their exams are masking wider discussions about how to improve assessment, a leading professor has argued. Phillip Dawson, co-director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University in Australia, argued that “validity matters more than cheating,” adding that “cheating and AI […]
  • How University Leaders Can Ethically and Responsibly Implement AI - Bruce Dahlgren, Campus Technology
    For university leaders, the conversation around implementing artificial intelligence (AI) is shifting. With its great potential to unlock transformative innovation in education, it's no longer a question of if, but how, institutions should look to utilize the technology on their campuses. AI is reshaping education, offering personalized learning, efficiency, and accessibility. For students, AI provides […]
  • OpenAI Operator: Use This to Automate 80% of Your Work - the AI Report, YouTube
    This podcast episode discusses OpenAI's Operator, an AI agent capable of autonomously performing tasks on the internet through your browser [01:43]. The hosts explore examples such as drafting emails using Asana project boards [07:08], summarizing calls and sending structured emails [19:15], and training agents to manage schedules [34:09]. They also discuss the pros and cons […]
  • 6 Myths We Got Wrong About AI (And What’s the Reality) - Kolawole Samuel Adebayo, HubSpot
    Over the past decade, I've written extensively about some of the world’s greatest innovations. With these technologies, you know what to expect: an improvement here, a new functionality there. This one got faster, and that other one got cheaper. But when the AI boom began with ChatGPT a few years ago, it was quite unlike […]
  • I was an AI skeptic until these 5 tools changed my mind - Jack Wallen, ZDnet
    It's taken me a while to come around, but I've become a fan of certain AI tools -- when used for specific purposes. I've even found some of those tools to be very helpful throughout my day (so much so that I haven't used Google's search engine in weeks). That, my friends, is refreshing. How […]
  • Introducing GPT-4.5 - OpenAI
    Early testing shows that interacting with GPT‑4.5 feels more natural. Its broader knowledge base, improved ability to follow user intent, and greater “EQ” make it useful for tasks like improving writing, programming, and solving practical problems. We also expect it to hallucinate less. We’re sharing GPT‑4.5 as a research preview to better understand its strengths […]
  • Fewer Jobs, College Options May Push Rural Gen Zers to Move - Andrea Malek Ash, Galllup
    Rural Gen Zers are 19 percentage points less likely than those living in urban areas to strongly agree or agree that they can find a good job where they live, and 16 points less likely to say they can get a college degree. Workforce preparation opportunities are also perceived to be in low supply for […]
  • Dean’s Dilemma: How to Use AI to Advance the College - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
    We have entered an era of greater scrutiny and fewer resources in higher education. How might AI enable deans to become more effective and efficient in administering the college? The challenges are proliferating while funding is deteriorating. Fortunately, the AI options to accomplish more with less funding are expanding. As of the end of February, […]
  • The next wave of AI is here: Autonomous AI agents are amazing—and scary - Tom Barnett, Fast Company
    The relentless hype around AI makes it difficult to separate the signal from the noise. So it’s understandable if you’ve tuned out recent talk about autonomous AI agents. A word of advice: Don’t. The significance of agentic AI may actually exceed the hype.  An Autonomous AI agent can interact with the environment, make decisions, take […]
  • Building leaders from the ground up - McKinsey
    Certain characteristics—including optimism, continuous learning, and stewardship—are especially critical for leaders to thrive in today’s volatile business environment. Here’s how to develop tomorrow’s leaders.https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/building-leaders-from-the-ground-up
  • Gen Z isn’t quiet quitting. They’re rejecting outdated leadership - Jeff Leblanc, Fast Company
    The phrase “quiet quitting” has become a catch-all for blaming Gen Z workers for workplace disengagement. Older generations stereotype them as unmotivated, unwilling to go the extra mile, and too demanding. But here’s the reality: Gen Z isn’t disengaged—they’re just done tolerating bad leadership. My research, including surveys, interviews, and case studies across industries, shows […]
  • 1,000 artists release ‘silent’ album to protest UK copyright sell-out to AI - Ingrid Lunden,
    The U.K. government is pushing forward with plans to attract more AI companies to the region by changing copyright law. The proposed changes would allow developers to train AI models on artists’ content found online — without permission or payment — unless creators proactively “opt out.” Not everyone is marching to the same beat, though. […]
  • Grok 3 appears to have briefly censored unflattering mentions of Trump and Musk - Kyle Wiggers, Tech Crunch
    Over the weekend, users on social media reported that when asked, “Who is the biggest misinformation spreader?” with the “Think” setting enabled, Grok 3 noted in its “chain of thought” that it was explicitly instructed not to mention Donald Trump or Elon Musk. The chain of thought is the “reasoning” process the model uses to […]
  • When AI Thinks It Will Lose, It Sometimes Cheats, Study Finds - Harry Booth, Time
    Complex games like chess and Go have long been used to test AI models’ capabilities. But while IBM’s Deep Blue defeated reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the 1990s by playing by the rules, today’s advanced AI models like OpenAI’s o1-preview are less scrupulous. When sensing defeat in a match against a skilled chess […]
  • A College Degree Isn’t for Everyone - Susan H. Greenberg, Inside Higher Ed
    Kathleen deLaski unpacks her new book, which envisions higher education as a stepladder to skills that learners collect over a lifetime and present to employers. In her eloquent new book, Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won’t Matter (Harvard Education Press), Kathleen deLaski, a former journalist who founded the Education Design Lab […]
  • AI doesn’t shortchange learning. It enhances it - SF Chronicle
    AI doesn’t shortchange learning. It enhances it - SF ChronicleThis spring, one of the first post-ChatGPT cohorts will graduate from business schools. Many students will use artificial intelligence to assist in completing their final assignments. As a graduating Stanford business student, I think that’s a good thing. AI is rapidly reshaping higher education. Recent surveys […]
  • Managing online learning burnout via investigating the role of loneliness during COVID-19 - Hongxia Li & Juan Yang, BMC Psychology
    Learning burnout, which is a negative state of learning and seriously reduces learning engagement, has become more prevalent in online instruction. Especially during the COVID-19, loneliness during the online learning has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers, who have found that it exacerbates the risk of social media addiction and increase rates of […]
  • New chapter by Sass and Martin explores AI’s role in community-based learning - Boise State News
    A new book chapter by Margaret Sass, a faculty member in the School for the Digital Future, and Brian Martin of the university’s eCampus Center examines how artificial intelligence is transforming service-learning and community-based learning. Their chapter, “Revolutionizing Community Engagement and Impact With AI,” is featured as Chapter 12 in Enhancing the Scholarship of Teaching […]

Other Curated News: 

News from UPCEA: 

UPCEA Announces 2024 Association Award Recipients

8 Individuals and 8 Programs Receive Association’s Highest Honors WASHINGTON, February 2, 2024 – UPCEA, the online and professional education association, has announced the recipients of the 2024 Association Awards. The UPCEA Association Awards program includes recognition of both individual and institutional achievement across the…

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The Edge: Missed opportunities in nondegree credentials (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

The untapped possibilities of nondegree credentials Employers have a strong interest in partnering with colleges to design and deliver nondegree programs. Yet more than 45 percent of employers in a recent survey said colleges had never approached them to do so. That’s one finding from a…

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Lifelong Learning with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

What will it mean to higher education when AI systems carry out tasks at an intelligence level that matches or exceeds humans? Recently, both OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made somewhat surprising announcements regarding Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). In an interview…

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