Putting AI into Action for Higher Education
UPCEA is the hands-on partner for leaders who need to translate AI from idea to implementation. We bring together practitioners, publish applied research on artificial intelligence in higher education, and deliver cohort-based learning so members can move from piloting AI tools to measurable results through strategic implementation. While postsecondary leaders gravitate to frameworks, innovators operationalize and pilot new initiatives, like AI.
This hub centralizes our primers, research briefs, training, and member spotlights on AI resources, with an emphasis on marketing and enrollment, learner support, credential innovation, and workforce alignment.
AI Primers & Insights
Short, actionable overviews to get your team aligned—plus starter resources from UPCEA.
Each topic includes a few UPCEA resources so your team can operationalize AI in your online and professional education departments. These AI resources for UPCEA members will grow over time as we add new guides, cases, and tools.
Implementing AI in our work - Enrollment, Student Success, Teaching
AI-Enabled Enrollment & Marketing
AI is rewriting discovery and conversion. Recent UPCEA research shows half of prospective students use AI-powered search weekly, so showing up in AI overviews (and the SEO that feeds them) determines visibility.
Student Success, Advising & Retention
AI is moving from content creation to tutoring and agentic systems, enabling responsive support and mastery-based progress—key for learner success.
Teaching & Learning Design
Generative and embodied AI are reshaping course design, assessment, and feedback loops across online and hybrid modalities.
Leading AI - Governance, Credentials, Institutional Strategy
Governance, Ethics & Operational Readiness
Responsible AI demands policy alignment, cross-functional coordination, and cultural readiness across marketing, enrollment, IT, data privacy, and academic units.
Credential Innovation, Program Design & Workforce Alignment
AI is accelerating employer demand, microcredentials, and stackable pathways—and reshaping learning mobility.
Institutional Strategy & Future-Proofing
AI influences revenue models, online enterprise strategy, and institutional resilience; leaders need a forward-looking view.
- UPCEA Senior Fellow Ray Schroeder's EduAI Advisor GPT
- New book: AI Applications in Online Higher Administration: Strategies for Maximizing Returns and Improving Outcomes
- Focus on the Future
What's Next + Engage More
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Insights on AI and the future of higher education from UPCEA Senior Fellow, Ray Schroeder.
“RAISE US” Is a Rare Positive Development in AI Transformation
Remarkably, in this highly-partisan era of American history, there is a newly-formed, non-partisan association with the stated purpose of “partnering with governors, employers, and training partners to help the American workforce make a successful transition to an AI economy.” This is the first large-scale independent entity formed to address the challenge that is top-of-mind of…
A Course Refresh this Summer
Today’s title carries a double meaning for those of us in higher education. Summers traditionally bring the opportunity to refresh and update the courses we teach, and it also brings the chance to look afresh at the course of our own personal careers. First, as we review our courses, their currency, relevance and value, it…
Tech Future Promotes Continuing Professional Education
Do you recall when continuing professional education was considered outside the mainstream of the higher education hierarchy, often relegated to extension services? 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…
Curated Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education News Posts
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- How centers for teaching and learning can enhance higher education pedagogy - ALAN LESGOLD, CYNTHIA GOLDEN and MICHAEL BRIDGES, University TimesThe real issue is not whether centers that support instructional design are necessary, but rather whether they work as productive partners with disciplinary faculty rather than transactional course-production shops.More importantly, as higher education faces the existential challenge of artificial intelligence, CTLs also must become applied research and development hubs focused on making college teaching and […]
- Stop investigating, start teaching - B. Jean Madernach, Times Higher EducatioinTrying to detect whether a student has misused AI in their work is a wasted effort, from which no one benefits, writes B. Jean Mandernach. She proposes a different approach focused on finding out what students truly understand. The detection mindset asks: did this student use AI? It’s a question about authorship, and it leads […]
- ISTELive 26: Critical Thinking in an AI-Driven Information Ecosystem - Julia Gilban-Cohen, GovTechDuring a session on news literacy at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference Sunday, panelists posed a question to a room full of educators: Has a student ever cited ChatGPT, TikTok or any kind of social media as a legitimate source in a classroom assignment? A slew of hands rose immediately. The […]
- Preparing students for an AI-driven future - Kaitlin Brothers, Missouri S&TDuring the four-week course, a classroom full of Kummer Vanguard Scholars learned how to create AI-powered avatars for marketing and business communication. “The goal of the course was not simply to teach students how to use AI tools, but to help them think critically about how emerging AI technologies can be used to communicate ideas, […]
- They built the world’s most powerful AI. They’re facing a mystery they can’t explain - Nitasha Tiku, Washington PostAnthropic, Google and Meta have hired computer scientists, neuroscientists and philosophers to study what some in the industry think may become a moral crisis. “We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling,” Olah said of Anthropic’s AI systems. “We find evidence of introspection [and] states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease.” […]