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
Online: Trending Now
Insights on AI and the future of higher education from UPCEA Senior Fellow, Ray Schroeder.
Augmenting Reality in Learning Online
Online: Trending Now #134 Augmented Reality is emerging as a powerful tool in distance online learning. It is common that Virtual Reality (VR) is confused with Augmented Reality (AR). They are often conflated because some technologies apply to both. Augmented reality, by definition includes the “real world” around the user. Virtual reality is entirely virtual.…
The Digital Student Assistant
Online: Trending Now #133 The potential digital student assistant is on the near horizon, and it promises alter practices and pedagogies in a big way. All the parts are there; almost certainly some developers are in product testing for a digital student assistant. By assistant, I don’t mean the “Jill Watson” AI graduate assistant that…
VR and AR Online
Online: Trending Now #132 One of the challenges we face in teaching online is bringing “reality” into our classes. The potential of virtual reality and augmented reality in online courses is enormous. Especially in online learning, these technologies promise to enable us to bring the laboratory, geography, cultures, and communities to reality for those who are…
Curated Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education News Posts
Sign up for daily updates
- Opinion: Moving Beyond AI Policies in Higher Education - Quimby Kaizer and Saravanan Subbaraya, Gov TechEvery spring, college and university leaders watch another graduating class walk across the stage. It is a moment worth celebrating. Students worked hard. Faculty did their best to educate them. Families made sacrifices. And yet, for many presidents, provosts and chief academic officers standing at the podium this month, a central question remains: Are we […]
- University of Maine System to launch shared AI tool to accelerate student, institutional success - Bangor Daily NewsThe University of Maine System is leading the nation in preparing students for the modern workforce and improving organizational effectiveness with the investment and responsible integration of a shared AI tool. Maine’s largest educational and research enterprise and one of the state’s biggest employers has awarded its first System-wide enterprise artificial intelligence platform contract to […]
- Dreaming: Better memory for a more helpful ChatGPT - OpenAIToday we’re beginning to roll out a more capable and scalable system for synthesizing memory, developed to tackle the staleness, correctness, and scalability challenges that we observe when memory is applied to the hundreds of millions of users and multi-year time horizons in ChatGPT. Memory is what helps ChatGPT learn your preferences, projects, and constraints, […]
- The board’s role in managing emerging AI risks - McKinseyDuring 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 […]
- AI isn’t eliminating gender gaps. It’s reorganizing them - Richard J. Smith, Ed.D., and Madeline Weiler, University BusinessIn the higher education workforce, women are overrepresented in office and clerical staff positions. They often occupy student-facing roles such as academic advising, which are relationship-focused positions with limited advancement opportunities. Not only are women far more likely to experience job displacement as administrative tasks are automated, but they are also less likely to hold […]