Few areas of higher education have been as passionately debated as learning assessment in the age of AI. Since the debut and rapid adoption of readily available generative AI chatbots, educators have grappled with how learning assessment would be impacted. By only surveying individuals who are currently doing the hands-on work of learning assessment, we can provide you with information about how the learning assessment landscape is changing in practice, not just in theory. Explore the full Impact of AI on Learning Assessment report: https://library.educause.edu/resources/2026/6/2026-educause-the-impact-of-ai-on-learning-assessment-report
Thursday, June 04, 2026
AI Will Deliver Wisdom - Peter H. Diamandis, Metatrends
I’ve been thinking a lot about wisdom lately. Not intelligence. Not speed. Not raw compute. Wisdom. The thing we used to reserve for grandparents, philosophers, and tribal elders who’d seen enough life to know which paths lead to ruin. Here’s how I define it: wisdom is probabilistic pattern recognition across a vast number of lived experiences. When you go to the village elders and ask, “Which direction should I take?”, they don’t run equations. They draw on decades of watching people make choices and living with the consequences. They say, “If you go this way, based on everything I’ve seen, it won’t end well. Go this other way, and you have a real chance.” That accumulated experience, compressed into judgment, is what we call wisdom.
Wednesday, June 03, 2026
Generative AI use and misuse call for assessment reform in higher education - Igor Chirikov, Ivan Smirnov, and René F. Kizilcec, Science
The debate about the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on higher education is polarized. Some portray GenAI as normalizing cheating at scale (1), whereas others argue that misconduct patterns have changed little (2). These competing narratives underscore the need for reliable data on where GenAI use is concentrated and where misuse is most likely. Existing studies of GenAI adoption and perceptions in higher education provide useful early signals but often rely on small samples and lack measures designed to capture sensitive behaviors such as cheating across fields (3–5). We addressed this gap with survey data from 95,513 students in a representative sample of 20 major public researchintensive universities in the United States and an indirect method for estimating GenAI-assisted cheating across disciplines. We found substantial heterogeneity in GenAI use and misuse across disciplines and student groups. These patterns call for discipline-specific assessment reform, not blanket bans or universal detection regimes.
The largest study of AI use by undergrads is in, revealing disparities in access — and in cheating - Maya L. Kapoor, Berkeley News
The study, conducted in the spring of 2024, used data collected by Berkeley’s Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium, a group of research universities that collaborate on surveying students to improve higher education. About two-thirds of respondents said they used GenAI, and almost 40% used it monthly or even more frequently. What’s more, at least 9% of students who used AI reported using it to cheat. That number varied significantly by academic discipline, with more non-STEM students cheating with AI than STEM students. But the researchers caution that banning GenAI won’t stop cheating and may even harm students when they look for work in industries that expect AI proficiency.
Tuesday, June 02, 2026
How Golden Gate’s big AI bet will energize fundamental changes - Alcino Donadel, University Business
At the height of California’s gold rush, a YMCA night school was founded to train students in gold assaying and assist Chinese immigrants with learning English. It marks the humble beginnings of Golden Gate University—and an enduring tale that inspires President Brent White to capitalize on a new national phenomenon.Golden Gate made three major announcements in April that emphasize the university’s radical embrace of artificial intelligence as a tool and societal force. It founded the School of Psychology to research how AI will transform human behavior. GGU Digital upgrades the university’s distance education platform with personalized, AI-assisted instruction. Lastly, nine new board members were introduced to help expand the university’s global footprint in emerging fields.
College students are booing commencement speakers celebrating AI, but the wave of hate hasn’t stopped them from using it to cheat on their exams - Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune
On one hand, they’ve made their ire toward the technology clear: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was met with hisses during his commencement remarks at the University of Arizona’s graduation ceremony on Sunday when he invoked the inevitability of a future with artificial intelligence. “The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will,” Schmidt said, pausing for a moment as students booed. “The question is whether you will have shaped artificial intelligence.” But the outward disgust toward the AI boom doesn’t tell the full story of the 2026 graduating class’s relationship to AI. The same cohort is also adopting the technology at a rapid clip, with 57% of U.S. college students reporting using the AI tools in their coursework weekly, and 20% using it daily, according to the Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2026 State of Higher Education study published last month. But where some see a contradiction, experts see a peek into the minds of young graduates—the first generation of college students to experience their four-year undergraduate experience with tools like ChatGPT, launched in late 2022, at their fingertips.
Monday, June 01, 2026
Should AI Nudge You or Tell You What to Do? - Stefanos Poulidis, Haosen Ge, Hamsa Bastani, and Osbert Bastani, Knowledge at Wharton
In general, AI guidance can fall into one of two categories: attention signals and action signals. Attention signals flag decisions that are important without offering a recommendation: “This is a critical decision: pay close attention.” Action signals go further and prescribe a specific action: “Here’s what you should do.” But which type of signal actually helps us make better decisions, especially when the AI is reliable and provides highly accurate advice? This question is increasingly relevant, as AI tools become better calibrated and consistently dependable. As this trend continues, we must ask: Are there costs to relying on AI too much, even when its advice is correct? We explored these questions in a study using chess — a setting where AI recommendations are trusted, accuracy is exceptionally high, and decision quality is easy to measure.
Higher education, stop policing AI. Know your students - Robert Mason, Rikard Jalkebro and Ziad Hani, University World News
The solution to AI in higher education is not more software. It is ‘knowing your student’ (KYS). The idea borrows from the banking sector’s ‘Know Your Customer’ regulatory and compliance process used to combat fraud. Banks do not solely rely on a single automated alert to determine suspicious behaviour. They build contextual understanding over time: patterns, histories, habits, inconsistencies and relationships. Universities should do the same. However, Know Your Students should not mean turning universities into compliance departments. It means using sustained teaching, feedback, mentoring and dialogue to understand how students actually learn.
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Here are states’ 3 highest priorities in developing AI policy - Alcino Donadel, University Business
States are defining what AI will look like in practice across K12 and higher education, building policy infrastructure that reflects both the technology’s reach and its risks. A new national overview from the Education Commission of the States spells out how public officials are issuing guidance, installing guardrails and coordinating across sectors to align AI use with school strategy and workforce demand. Arkansas, Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee now require public school districts and postsecondary institutions to adopt formal policies governing acceptable AI use. At the same time, at least 35 states have issued some form of guidance ranging from short advisories to full frameworks. Taken together, these efforts converge on a shared set of priorities that promote human decision-making, student AI literacy, safety and data protection.
If Canvas Goes Down Again, What’s the Contingency Plan? - Lisa Anderson and Mairéad Martin, Inside Higher Ed
Faculty and administrators across the country, shaped by their experience adapting instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, knew what to do last week. Shifting the modality of instruction is not new for us. Instructors quickly improvised alternative assignments, delayed quizzes and exams, populated offline course materials, and adjusted timelines in order to keep learning moving forward. When it came time to notify students of these adjustments, however, a more fundamental issue became apparent. Many instructors came to discover they had no reliable way to contact their students outside the learning management system itself. Some did not know how to access their course rosters outside Canvas. Others teaching large online lectures encountered institutional email delivery limits. Many had no established communication pathways beyond LMS announcements.
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Why Higher Education Needs Humanics - Michael J. Avaltroni, US News
In a world where artificial intelligence now permeates daily life and higher education, it has become essential to weave the human element throughout the delivery of instruction – particularly healthcare education.Enter humanics.The integration of humanics – often described as the study, understanding and development of key human qualities – represents a novel way to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in education, technology and the human component in an AI-driven world. It speaks to the urgent need to build healthcare teams that optimize all the advances in artificial intelligence with the humans in the middle – our students, clinicians and patients. It also speaks to the urgency to redefine higher education itself.
Grade inflation much higher in ‘AI-exposed’ degrees - Jack Groves, Times Higher Education
Drawing on publicly available data from a large research university in Texas, Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, examined the marks awarded to more than 500,000 students between 2018 and 2025. When these grade patterns were compared against syllabus data on the types of writing tasks used for assessment, it revealed the share of A grades in “AI exposed” courses rose by 13 percentage points, or 30 per cent, compared with the 2022 baseline. Overall grade point average rose by 0.12 points for “high-homework” courses in which AI could potentially complete the assessment, says the study, which was published as a working paper by Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education. Grade inflation occurred only in homework-based writing and coding tasks and was not found to the same extent in in-person examination, explains the study, which suggests the computing power of “AI [is] substituting for student effort specifically on the unsupervised assessments where instructors cannot observe the production of submitted work”.
Friday, May 29, 2026
Maine's Public University System on verge of Closing Deal for First System Wide AI Tool - Kristian Moravec, Central Maine
Maine’s public university system plans to award its first contract for an artificial intelligence platform to ChatGPT Edu, an OpenAI chatbot tool for higher education, the system told employees and students in an email Friday. The two-year contract will cost about $1.39 million and serve the system’s estimated 25,200 students and 5,600 employees, likely starting in July, according to Ryan Low, the system’s vice chancellor for finance and strategic AI integration. OpenAI’s winning bid, which was submitted by a vendor, Carasoft, is not yet set in stone.
Can colleges still deliver in the age of AI? One Ivy League school is investing $30 million to improve career outcomes - Jessica Dickler, CNBC
College students are increasingly worried about what an AI-driven jobs apocalypse could mean for their employment prospects. To that end, many colleges and universities are racing to recalibrate.
Even at nation’s most elite schools, the focus is shifting to career readiness. Fears that artificial intelligence will upend students’ future career plans are reverberating across college campuses. “Higher education needs to do better,” said Joseph Catrino, the inaugural director of Dartmouth’s Center for Career Design. “We need to do better for our students — we need to step up and help students be prepared.” The Ivy League college recently raised $30 million in endowed funds to support internship opportunities. Now students can access up to $6,500 during any term to help finance unpaid or underpaid internships. “This allows the student to explore and engage in a field that they normally wouldn’t be able to,” Catrino said.
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