AI is being used to monitor students and their work. The most prominent uses of AI in higher education are attached to applications designed to protect or preserve academic integrity through the use of plagiarism-detection software (60%) and proctoring applications (42%) (see figure 1).
The chatbots are coming! A sizable percentage (36%) of respondents reported that chatbots and digital assistants are in use at least somewhat on their campuses, with another 17% reporting that their institutions are in the planning, piloting, and initial stages of use (see figure 2). The use of chatbots in higher education by admissions, student affairs, career services, and other student success and support units is not entirely new, but the pandemic has likely contributed to an increase in their use as they help students get efficient, relevant, and correct answers to their questions without long waits.Footnote10 Chatbots may also liberate staff from repeatedly responding to the same questions and reduce errors by deploying updates immediately and universally.
AI is being used for student success tools such as identifying students who are at-risk academically (22%) and sending early academic warnings (16%); another 14% reported that their institutions are in the stage of planning, piloting, and initial usage of AI for these tasks.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents said that ineffective data management and integration (72%) and insufficient technical expertise (71%) present at least a moderate challenge to AI implementation. Financial concerns (67%) and immature data governance (66%) also pose challenges. Insufficient leadership support (56%) is a foundational challenge that is related to each of the previous listed challenges in this group.
Current use of AI
Chatbots for informational and technical support, HR benefits questions, parking questions, service desk questions, and student tutoring
Research applications, conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and data science research (my italics)
Library services (my italics)
Recruitment of prospective students
Providing individual instructional material pathways, assessment feedback, and adaptive learning software
Proctoring and plagiarism detection
Student engagement support and nudging, monitoring well-being, and predicting likelihood of disengaging the institution
Have any of you implemented a gamification project and lived to tell the tale? Did you publish? I’m looking for papers and case studies to share in a course I’m writing about gamification in higher education. Please share your wisdom, links, posts, papers, presentations, videos, etc and many thanks!
There are a number of reasons for why developer studies tend to show stronger results, according to Wolf, whose full time work is to evaluate educational programs. The first is that a company is unlikely to publish unfavorable results. Wolf speculates that developers are more likely to “brand a failed trial a ‘pilot’ and file it away.”
This isn’t the first study to detect bias in education research. The problem of hiding unfavorable results from publication was documented as far back as 1995. In 2016, one of Wolf’s co-authors, Robert Slavin, wrote about the positive results that researchers get when they devise their own measures to prove that their inventions work.
Online coursework must not be considered an inferior or cheaper option. Getting online right requires a significant investment in course development guided by professional course designers who focus on achieving and assessing learning outcomes. Best practices show that developing a quality online course takes about 10 weeks to build with the faculty member working closely alongside an instructional/course designer, and research has shown that in-person instruction improves after working with instructional designers.
An online lecture requires more lecture preparation, continuous monitoring of student progress, increased use of assessment tools, extensive electronic interaction with the students and online office hoursAdditional instructor and teaching assistant support is also needed, as well as technical support.
The use of AR/VR in educational settings is on the rise, paving the way for new careers and a workforce trained to embrace technology.
If projections stay on track, the global spending on educational AR/VR is expected to rise from $1.8 billion to $12.6 billion over the next four years.
the International Data Corporation (IDC) released a report indicating that the pandemic has fueled an impressive forecast of worldwide expenditures on AR/VR, which are expected to grow from $12 billion in 2020 to $72.8 billion by 2024.
rom completing spinal surgery to training at a high-tech facility, such as the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Davis Global Center, which has AR/VR and holographic technologies among its many offerings.
