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To integrate generative AI across the curriculum, higher education institutions must find meaningful connections between students’ day-to-day academic work, their learning outcomes, and the growing demand for AI literacy everywhere.
In our March 5 Digital Literacy Café session, we brought together leaders from higher education and industry to reflect on the skills and learning experiences students need in order to face the future classroom and an uncertain future of work.
How AI will influence the next three to five years in higher education
Dr. Megan Workmon, Arizona State University’s Director or Learning Experience Design for Enterprise Technology, kicked off the discussion by saying that she and her team are thinking about AI in terms of finding new ways to frame problems, contextualize solutions, and generate new possibilities. She said she believes that:
AI is becoming instrumental in helping us with “creative foraging,” or navigating vast landscapes of information and recombining it in unexpected ways.
Institutions need to innovate with AI in a principled way, prioritizing critical empathy and ethical imagination.
Collaboration is a superpower in this new landscape, as interdisciplinary, multimodal teams blend human, machine, and community intelligence.
We need to teach resiliency and systemic thinking in the “ambiguous, shapeshifting spaces” that AI creates.
Next, Dr. Bob Caron, Specialist Leader in Higher Education at Deloitte, noted that one-third of skillsets in today’s jobs have changed in the last three years. He and his team at Deloitte are thinking about three skills domains that universities need to focus on to prepare students for career success:
Technical skills. Students must know how to use tools like AI to accelerate the value they bring to the workplace.
Human skills. Higher education institutions need to ensure that students can navigate ambiguity, think critically and socially, and synthesize varying perspectives.
Ethical skills. Students must understand the impacts of the decisions they make and the tools they use, including in the areas of privacy, security, and intellectual property challenges.
Dr. Magdalena Barrera, Vice Provost for Faculty Success at San José State University, followed up by explaining that her team’s vision is to contribute to a digital future that has humanity at its center. They’re focused on four key areas:
Ethical reasoning and responsible use of AI. Students must be able to critically assess AI’s societal impact in terms of bias, privacy, transparency, and more.
Digital communication and content creation. Students should learn skills like digital storytelling, media literacy, and the responsible use of AI-generated content so they can evaluate, curate, and communicate complex information in their future careers.
Human and AI collaboration. Students must be able to work alongside AI tools to solve problems efficiently and still use their judgment.
Adaptability and lifelong learning. As AI technologies continue to evolve, institutions need to help students embrace upskilling, micro-learning, and interdisciplinary thinking.
Challenges, changes, and early successes
The panelists also shared their perspectives on the challenges of upskilling faculty and students, as well as some promising initiatives they’ve pioneered:
Caron noted that higher education struggles with change, so institutions need to help faculty enhance classroom learning and partner with industry to design relevant curricula.
Barrera said that students want guidance on using AI in more thoughtful and impactful ways. To that end, SJSU has partnered with Adobe to design innovative teaching practices that involve digital assignments, storytelling, and equitable assessment.
Workmon said that ASU has created an AI foundations course that 3,500 faculty and staff have taken so far, hosted over 200 AI workshops each semester, created an AI community of practice, and worked on integrating AI into writing programs.
Over the last year, Workmon has seen a shift from fear to fluency when it comes to AI.
“Students have moved from asking ‘What can AI do for me?’ to asking ‘What is AI doing to society, whose perspectives are missing, and how do I use this responsibly?’,” she said. “For me as an educator, that just fills my heart with joy — having students being the driving force and asking really tough questions.”
Watch the webinar recording to hear more about how institutions are connecting AI literacy with academic and career outcomes, and join us on April 9 at our final Digital Literacy Café webinar of the school year to continue the conversation.
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