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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  • Coursera Launches Its Short-Form Content With AI Curation - Edited by Adam Harrie, this article was written with the assistance of AI; Trend-Hunter
    Coursera introduced a scrollable short-form content feed that delivers bite-sized educational videos and explainers, featuring AI-driven personalization tailored to users’ interests, learning habits, career goals and previous course activity. The company positioned the feature as an entry point to deeper learning experiences rather than a replacement for full-length courses and certification programs.The feed surfaces content […]
  • What is CourseAI? - Moodle
    CourseAI is a Moodle solutions plugin that turns a topic description or a set of uploaded materials into a fully structured course in under three minutes. Feed it a PDF, a video, an audio file or a simple prompt — and it generates sections, activities, assessments, completion tracking and even illustrations. Educators then review, adjust […]
  • Explaining reported generative AI engagement in higher education: an extended TAM with ethical compatibility and reliance-based trust - Zhenyu Liu, et al: Nature
    The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools into higher education has intensified conversations regarding usefulness, ethical alignment, and responsible engagement. Unlike traditional technology acceptance studies that focus on initial use, this study examines AI use intensity among active university users. Building on an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the model incorporates AI-Alignment Construct, […]
  • Where today's job seekers have the best chance of getting hired - Mark Huffman, Consumer Affairs
    If you're looking for the fastest path to employment, restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues, and tourism-related businesses are leading the way. Leisure and hospitality added roughly 70,000 jobs in May, making it the strongest-performing sector by a wide margin. Employers appear to be ramping up staffing ahead of the summer travel season. Healthcare continues to be […]
  • Online Is a "Safe Space" in War - Robert Ubell, AI Learning Insights Substack
    When remote classes were first tested so many years ago, who would have dreamed they would become a refuge for students and faculty cut off from campus by traumatic conflict? When the U.S. and Israel unexpectedly launched a war with Iran in late February, American colleges with branches in the Middle East took cues from […]
  • 92% of US employers willing to offer higher starting salaries to graduates with micro-credentials - Business Wire
    New Coursera report highlights growing ROI on industry micro-credentials for learners, employees, and employers79% of US employers say micro-credential holders demonstrate improved productivity in their first year85% of US graduates with micro-credentials report securing a role aligned to their field within 12 months“Over the next decade, over 1.2 billion people are due to enter the […]
  • New Federal Guidelines Threaten Almost Half of Graduate Arts Programs - Zachary Small, NY Times
    The Education Department is finalizing guidelines for an earnings test that would punish nearly half of all graduate programs in visual arts, music and performance based on the low income of recent alumni, according to the government’s calculations. The proposed guidelines apply to all university programs, and institutions whose alumni fail to meet them twice […]
  • Higher ed’s next crisis won’t start in the classroom. It will start in the cloud - James L. Norrie, University Business
    Higher education has spent years worrying about enrollment cliffs, declining public trust, political polarization, and, as we enter the AI era, the commoditization of knowledge and the future value of degrees. Those concerns are real and deserve attention. But another crisis is quietly forming beneath the surface of nearly every college and university, and unlike […]
  • The board’s role in managing emerging AI risks - McKinsey
    During a recent panel discussion, McKinsey and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) gathered top chief information security officers (CISOs) and board directors, highlighting four priorities for effective oversight: strengthening governance and accountability, balancing innovation with risk, building real-time risk-management capabilities, and improving AI fluency in the boardroom. Together, these shifts signal that AI […]
  • ‘If we make AI the enemy then surely it must become one’ - Stuart Christie, Times Higher Education
    Chatbots sit on our students’ shoulders, gathering information meticulously, whispering advice in their ears – and yet, it often comes up short. Still, GenAI’s hallucinations allow learners and educators to re-centre their thinking, recasting themselves as optimisers of fallible outputs. GenAI can also be used to challenge the untested assumptions of our own stances and […]
  • A framework for ensuring student AI proficiency - Margaret Ellis, Times Higher Education
    Over the past few semesters, I have structured my teaching around a framework that helps students build that capability: demystify, use and reflect. Many students arrive with strong opinions about AI but only a partial understanding of how these systems work. Some see them as nearly magical tools that can produce answers instantly. Others dismiss […]
  • Reimagining What Higher Education Can Be - Kristen Turner, Drew University
    Students increasingly need skills that extend beyond traditional academic disciplines. They need to learn how to collaborate, solve complex problems, and adapt to new challenges. Drew’s new college is designed to address those realities. Rather than focusing solely on course credits and exams, students develop personalized learning pathways built around inquiry, mentorship, and real-world problem […]
  • Five words and a GenAI prompt to spark deeper online learning - María Robertha Leal Isida and Dania Arriola Arteaga, Times Higher Ed
    We developed the “5E” framework (engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate) to structure our online sessions around five learning stages. We then used GenAI to speed up lesson design and respond to our students’ needs in real time. Not only did this approach increase participation and deepen understanding of complex topics but it also allowed […]
  • Will AI Help Revive the ‘Stale’ OPM Market? - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed
    Over the past few years, OPMs—including Coursera, iDesign and 2U—have adopted AI-powered features designed to enhance support for instructors and students through coaching, content creation, tutoring and curriculum mapping. According to an April analysis, 70 percent of OPMs are now deploying AI for such purposes. But experts are skeptical that the AI boom will have […]
  • Are academics making an (em) dash for AI? - Times Higher Education
    In the four years since its commercial launch, generative artificial intelligence has had a profound impact on personal and professional life. But are academics enthusiasts or sceptics? Five scholars explain how the technology has affected their own practice – for good and bad. Artificial intelligence writing is instantly recognisable, we are told—soulless, dispassionate, and devoid […]
  • Bypassing the Bachelor’s Degree - Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed
    Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School created a pathway for students to earn a master’s degree without a bachelor’s. Officials say the program helps passionate students find their footing and fills much-needed workforce roles in the counseling field. Kevin Doyle, president of Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School, said the institution was inspired to launch the program […]
  • Law Professors Prefer AI Over Peer Answers - Alejandro Salinas, et al; SSRN
    Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly promoted as educational tutors, yet most evaluations focus on domains with a single ground truth. Many disciplines, however, hinge on judgment: reasoning, weighing ambiguity, and reaching defensible conclusions. Law provides a sharp test. We conducted a blinded evaluation of short-answer tutoring in contracts courses with sixteen U.S. law professors. […]
  • How Personalized AI Tutors Can Help Students Learn - Emma Needleman, Knowledge at Wharton
    The researchers built an AI tutoring platform that gives all students access to the same gen AI chatbot and course materials, but varies the sequence in which practice problems are assigned. In a five-month Python course across 10 Taipei high schools, students were randomly assigned to one of two groups: One received a standard sequence […]
  • Tech Future Promotes Continuing Professional Education - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
    It wasn’t that long ago that professional education was the less-respected, fragile forum for night school, weekend programs, extension and applied study at many colleges and universities. More recently housing the nascent online programs of the 1990s, this school or college was last in recognition and stature among the more powerful renowned and acclaimed schools […]
  • Stackable Micro-Credentials: The Revenue Multiplier Enterprises Actually Buy - AI Certs
    Enterprises are moving away from broad, slow degrees and generic upskilling programs. Instead, they are rapidly shifting to modular, skill-specific training. Stackable micro-credentials group together narrow, job-focused skills to create clear, targeted career pathways. This blog shows strategy allows businesses to close immediate talent gaps while increasing internal revenue, creating a highly efficient path to […]

Other Curated News: 

News from UPCEA: 

UPCEA Seeks Full-Time Controller 

UPCEA is currently seeking a full-time Controller for a fully remote position with the association.   The Controller will oversee and manage all aspects of the organization’s accounting functions. This includes ensuring financial accuracy, compliance with relevant regulations, and providing timely financial reports for internal and…

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Uncharted Territory: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Higher Education

Imagine, if you will, a time in the not-too-distant future in which AGI is firmly established in society and higher education faces the pressing need to re-configure and reinvent itself. It is becoming increasingly clear that the advent of AGI is upon us. OpenAI includes…

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The Risk of Being Too Good at Something: Bananas and the Degree

A friend once told me that the everyday banana in the U.S. has such strong qualities, such as taste, appearance, nutritional value, cost, manageable perishability, growth predictability, disease resistance and relative ease of growing, that few other genetic variations are sold worldwide.  This banana strain,…

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