Virginia Tech is providing access to AI tools — such as Gemini for Education and Notebook LM — which their IT Security Office approved for use with high-risk data to help ensure institutional information remains protected. UC Riverside introduced a secure campus AI assistant called The Grove, built on Gemini Enterprise. UC Irvine approved Google Workspace, Google Cloud Platform and Gemini for Education for secure use with select sensitive institutional data and then put those tools to work through ZotGPT, a free AI platform featuring Gemini among its models, available to the entire campus community.
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact - Jeffrey Gottfried et al, Pew Research
About half of U.S. adults now report using AI chatbots, up substantially from the summer of 2024.1 This includes roughly one-in-four who use these tools on daily basis.
Some people are bringing AI into their homes. About a third of Americans say they have a smart speaker, and smaller shares have a doorbell or thermostat with AI features.
But Americans —including younger adults— are deeply skeptical of AI. More adults predict that AI will have a negative rather than positive impact on them and on society. And majorities think AI is advancing too quickly and will put their personal information at risk.
Monday, June 29, 2026
Collective action, collective success: A CEO’s role in transformations - Kurt Strovink, Mathew Lee, Meagan Hill, and Michael BucyMcKinsey - McKinsey
Successful transformations require everyone in the organization to move in the same direction. That can only happen when CEOs directly address collective-action problems. Beyond managing the challenges that organizations face every day, most leaders strive to be transformative—to find new ways to deliver substantial impact and leave the company stronger than they found it. Yet only 30 percent of transformations deliver the value their leaders expect. There are many possible explanations for this statistic, among them unexpected market conditions, tough new competitors, technological disruptions, and a volatile geopolitical landscape. Such external factors are easy to understand. Less appreciated are the internal dynamics in organizations that can thwart even the most ambitious and well-intentioned leaders.
Medical students’ perceptions of learning modalities: development and psychometric validation of the e-learning and face-to-face learning experience questionnaire - Zahra Karimian, et al; Nature
The analysis revealed six primary factors influencing student learning experiences, including Peer Interaction, Teacher-Student Interaction, Examination and Assessment methods, Emotional Comfort, Content Quality, and Assignments. The highest factor loading was observed for peer interaction and collaborative learning.... The findings suggest that effective educational practices must integrate diverse teaching methods and assessment strategies to accommodate various learning styles. Both F2F and online environments offer unique advantages that can be leveraged through a blended approach. The study underscores the importance of creating inclusive and supportive learning environments that prioritize student comfort and engagement, ultimately enhancing educational outcomes.
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Risk, Retention, and the Algorithmic Institution: Artificial Intelligence as a Policy Response to Higher Education in Crisis - McConvey, Kelly;Ghai, Maya;Lee, Rosa;Guha, Shion; Canadian Public Policy, 2026, v. 52
This article examines the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in Ontario’s post-secondary education sector as a response to financial pressures stemming from federal immigration reforms and provincial funding constraints. It highlights how AI technologies—such as predictive analytics and early warning systems—are used for student retention, resource allocation, and program planning, but also raise significant concerns about bias, surveillance, and opacity, particularly affecting marginalized student populations. The analysis underscores the inadequacy of existing Canadian privacy laws and the failure of federal AI legislation (notably the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, AIDA) to provide comprehensive governance, calling instead for sector-specific regulation, human oversight, and equity-centered design inspired by international models like the European Union’s AI Act. The article concludes with policy recommendations for institutional, provincial, and federal levels to ensure AI systems in higher education align with democratic values of fairness, transparency, and accountability while mitigating risks of reinforcing inequities.
Authors, reviewers and editors should not be left to endure AI anxiety alone - Mai Zaki, Times Higher Ed
The arrival of generative artificial intelligence in academic research has produced something more disorienting than a simple ethical dilemma. It has created a situation in which every participant in scholarly publishing is being asked to make judgements that the system itself has not yet learned how to make. Authors are told to be transparent, reviewers to be vigilant, editors to protect integrity. But the result is not a new culture of clarity. It is a culture of suspicion. I experience this problem first as an author. Like many researchers, I do not approach AI as either a miracle or a threat. I approach it as a tool, whose boundaries remain strangely unclear. It can help with phrasing, structure, summaries, coding, translation, visualisation, brainstorming and literature mapping. Yet each of these uses occupies a different ethical position. Asking AI to polish a paragraph is not the same as asking it to generate an argument. Using it to produce a chart is not the same as using it to interpret data. Asking it to suggest possible lines of enquiry is not the same as outsourcing the intellectual work of the article.
Saturday, June 27, 2026
Two Professors, Two Approaches to AI and Assignment Design - Luke Mello, Faculty Focus
All this considered, a question has arisen from teachers of every discipline: how do we develop assignments that facilitate learning with AI constantly present? This question does not have a single correct answer. Different instructors have different opinions on the role AI should play in education due to their discipline or personal teaching philosophy. I interviewed two professors of electrical engineering at my graduate university to get their points of view in the context of STEM classes. They were both professors that taught classes in my electrical and computer engineering undergraduate degree. I knew beforehand that these professors had differing views on the role of AI in their courses. The following interviews seek to show that even in the same disciplines, educators can have different approaches to their course and assignment design when it comes to AI
Opinion: Generating Some AI Clarity for Higher Ed and Beyond - Jim A. Jorstad, GovTech
The pace of development and proliferation of artificial intelligence tools - generative, agentic, physical - can be hard to follow, but IT leaders must do their best to stay apprised of potential innovations and risks. Some might say these are the best of times for artificial intelligence. Others might say these are the worst of times, if they're looking for a clearer understanding of the many forms of AI, its definitions and applications. Many IT professionals engaged in developing AI have a deeper technical understanding. However, there are faculty, staff, administrators and students who don’t have a clear understanding of the technology and how it may transform their education and future lives. Let me try to provide some basic understanding of the current AI terminology and offer some insights into its many applications in a variety of disciplines and situations.
Friday, June 26, 2026
Cal State faculty push to prevent AI tools from replacing them as schools and staff experiment - Mikhail Zinshteyn, Cal Matters
The nation’s largest public four-year university may soon be barred from replacing faculty with generative AI as a bill backed by a union of professors comes nearer to reaching the governor’s desk. Few examples exist of the California State University’s attempting to replace faculty labor with generative AI tools, but the faculty union wants to prevent such efforts from ever getting off the ground. The bill so far has garnered no opposition from lawmakers and may clear the Legislature as soon as Monday. “We do have some cases of the potential replacement of faculty work by AI, and so I personally am very concerned about closing the barn door after the horse has already gotten out,” said Kevin Wehr, a professor of sociology at Sacramento State, which is part of the Cal State system. Wehr leads the bargaining team for the faculty union, the California Faculty Association.
The AI-centric imperative: Navigating the next software frontier - McKinsey
The software industry is entering a new era—and it may yet prove even more disruptive than the software-as-a-service (SaaS) revolution that preceded it. The emergence of gen AI and, more recently, agentic AI is not just another technology wave; it is a foundational shift redefining what software is, who builds it, who uses it, and how companies are organized and operate. Gen AI alone is projected to unlock $4.4 trillion or more in annual value across the global economy, with software companies poised to capture 10 to 15 percent of that total—and agentic AI may well accelerate the speed at which this value is realized. But capturing it is far from guaranteed, and incumbent companies will face heightened competitive intensity and complex new challenges.
Thursday, June 25, 2026
An augmented reality tool for accessible learning - Cindy Lam, Sai Kit Yeung, Kenichiro Takei; Times Higher Education
Combining GenAI with simple augmented reality tools offers a practical way to support accessible, adaptable and interdisciplinary learning. So, how can we make GenAI more intuitive, accessible and relevant across disciplines? One approach is to pair it with simple visual tools. GenAI-powered AquaReality cards offer a low-cost and scalable way to bring abstract concepts to life, while supporting interactive and interdisciplinary learning.
Why did China just junk 12,000 degree courses? They were ‘obsolete’ - Aamaan Alam Khan, the Print (India)
Universities have been prompted to end some courses due to a rise in the number of graduates and low employment opportunities. According to China’s education ministry data, cited by Xinhua, higher education institutions in the country scrapped 12,200 undergraduate degrees between 2021 and 2025, after finding them to be obsolete. These were replaced by 10,200 new courses that are more aligned with the demands of the job market. This move has affected over 30 per cent of the total degree programmes offered in China. Most of the suspended degrees are from the fields of humanities, arts, management, and foreign languages, which are now believed to have become outdated. The SCMP report said that the new programmes have been introduced keeping in mind China’s economic development goals, with nine of them focussed on integrating next-gen AI into the real economy.
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Graduates’ AI fears fueled by universities - Erika Donalds, Washington Times
Commencement ceremonies traditionally inspire hope and excitement about the future — from both the graduates and the older generations sending the younger ones out into the world. Sadly, we saw the opposite this spring as the class of 2026 rejected progress and innovation by booing speakers’ mentions of artificial intelligence. Young Americans entering the most technologically competitive workforce in human history hear “artificial intelligence” and respond with fear and resentment rather than ambition and optimism.
Inside college AI cheating wars: extreme surveillance, false accusations, jarring confusion - Jaweed Kaleem. LA Times
While lock-down browsers and sharing screen videos are common in online exams, mirrors and body movement restrictions are more extreme. But students and experts said it is all a reflection of the chaos, confusion and fear a new technology has wreaked upon the classroom. “It just felt so degrading,” said Ashley, another UCLA sociology student who studied under the same professor, who required students to show their arms and hands. A UCLA junior, she said she faced accusations of plagiarism, incorrect citations and suspiciously short intervals for Google Docs time stamps after she said she drafted assignments in a separate notes app and pasted them in the day they were due. Online message boards are full of student complaints about policies gone too far, such as proctoring software that uses keystroke patterns, eye-movement tracking or facial scans to detect if students are using AI prompts.
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