The Chief Online Learning Officers’ Guidebook is now available for order. As one of the (many) contributors that Jocelyn Widmer and Thomas Cavanagh brought together to participate in the book, I was especially excited to receive my copy in the mail. Reading through the book, I’ve found it fast-paced, informative and sometimes provocative. To help spread the word about the book, I asked if its authors, Jocelyn Widmer and Thomas Cavanagh, would answer my questions. [The book is published in partnership with UPCEA']
Friday, July 4, 2025
How to Reduce Burnout Among Your Millennial Workers - Kit Eaton, Inc.
This means that even if your workplace is supportive of employee mental health, with great health insurance coverage and openness about issues like stress, you may not be able to address all the factors that contribute to burnout. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, though. Gen-Z may be leading a good example, Buck explained to HR Brew: Discussions about mental health are “really pushed by Gen-Z,” she explained—resonating with reports that show this age group is pushing back against some stressful workplace habits like fear-based leadership, or even shunning traditional career norms entirely. If you want to help your Millennial staff reduce burnout, it might be smart to learn from your youngest staff members.
One Provost’s Approach to Building an AI College - University of South Florida, University Business
Given latitude by Mohapatra to find the best model for the new college, the task force began work last spring and ultimately recommended a hub-and-spoke academic structure. The belief was this would eliminate silos and underscore the interdisciplinary nature of AI and cybersecurity, resulting in university-wide collaboration. It would also allow most of the 200-plus faculty currently working in areas that comprise the new college to remain in their home units. The question of governance was more challenging for the task force, which eventually landed on a flat structure that is similar to models currently used in other USF colleges. Flat governance would make it possible to add new programs in areas such as quantum computing and digital twins while promoting collaboration and quicker decision-making. In its recommendations, task force members wrote, “The relationship between AI, cybersecurity and computing reflects a rapidly evolving landscape where traditional departmental boundaries are increasingly blurred. These fields are deeply interconnected, with advancements in one area often propelling developments in others.”
Thursday, July 3, 2025
Using AI tutor in philosophy class leads to deeply human conversation - Lisa Walker, U Minnesota Morris
As part of his 2024-25 University of Minnesota Emerging Technologies Faculty Fellowship, Collier developed an AI tutor. Collier used the custom GPT technology that OpenAI had recently introduced. The tutor is trained on readings from his Ethics and AI course and given particular instructions about how to interact with students in a conversation. The goal of the fellowship is to foster a learning community that experiments with generative AI in their teaching and to promote the effective use and best practices of AI. Fellowship faculty are tasked with identifying an area of AI to explore and implement within a university course. “I felt that [creating this AI tutor] might be a good use case of generative AI tools.” Collier was cautious that his students use AI in a way that strengthens their independent and critical thinking skills. “The … tutor is Socratic in the sense that, like the philosopher Socrates, it only asks probing questions but never answers them.”
MIT researcher explores human-AI interaction to improve online learning environments - Emma Thompson, Ed Tech Innovation Hub
Caitlin Morris, a MAD Fellow and doctoral student at MIT Media Lab, is creating prototype platforms that connect physical behavior with learners’ reflections. These tools are designed to assess how interaction style—whether with humans or AI—affects engagement and sense of agency. “I’m creating tools that can simultaneously track observable behaviors — like physical actions, language cues, and interaction patterns — while capturing learners’ subjective experiences through reflection and interviews,” she says. “This approach helps connect what people do with how they feel about their learning experience.” Her work contributes both to analysis frameworks and to practical tool development, aiming to support educators and designers building more human-centered digital learning environments.
Supporting Students and Faculty in the Online Classroom: Slow Down and Simplify at the End - Jennifer P. Gray & Lisa McNeal, Faculty Focus
Students may feel lonely, and faculty can feel overwhelmed even in well-designed online classes; however, a focus on engagement and well-being educators can support faculty and students via simple, low-tech, and personalized strategies in conjunction with the learning platform. This article will share practical tips to help faculty support their wellbeing and improve student engagement in the online environment, especially at the stressful end of a semester.
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
The next innovation revolution—powered by AI - McKinsey
Innovation has been the driver of the extraordinary progress from which humankind has benefited for a couple of centuries, but it faces a largely hidden threat: Innovation is becoming harder and more expensive. It’s instructive here to take the long view. For most of recorded human history, improvements in human welfare from generation to generation have been limited. Take, for example, GDP per capita as a measure of economic prosperity. For most of human history, roughly until the early 1800s, the measure barely moved to $1,200. But since that time, it has grown by more than 14 times (Exhibit 1).1 Human health has followed a similar trajectory—low for centuries and only significantly improving in recent generations. In 1900, for example, the average life expectancy of a newborn was 32 years. By 2021, this had more than doubled to 71 years.2
Your Employees Hate These Tasks at Work. They Say AI Can Help - Kit Eaton, Inc.
New research commissioned by AI writing tool Grammarly and conducted by Talker Research found nearly half of the workers who responded hate the repetitive office tasks that make up the daily grind. The 44 percent total is no surprise, and you’ve probably had similar thoughts when you have to fill in a travel budget request form for Steve in Accounts—yet again. But it’s the AI era, and workers are increasingly aware that there are tools that can help wipe out this recurring drudgery—and 62 percent of the survey respondents said there are plenty of tasks they’d like to speed up with AI.
Court filings reveal OpenAI and io’s early work on an AI device - Maxwell Zeff, Tech Crunch
The form factor of OpenAI and io’s first hardware device has largely remained a mystery. Altman merely stated in io’s launch video that the startup was working to create a “family” of AI devices with various capabilities, and Ive said io’s first prototype “completely captured” his imagination. Altman had previously told OpenAI’s employees at a meeting that the company’s prototype, when finished, would be able to fit in a pocket or sit on a desk, according to the Wall Street Journal. The OpenAI CEO reportedly said the device would be fully aware of a user’s surroundings and that it would be a “third device” for consumers to use alongside their smartphone and laptop.
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Developing and Evaluating the Fidelity of Virtual Reality-Artificial Intelligence (VR-AI) - April Tan, Michael C. Dorneich, Elena Cotos, Frontiers in Virtual Reality (provisionally accepted)
This study develops and evaluates a Virtual Reality-Artificial Intelligence (VR-AI) learning environment designed to facilitate the socio-rhetorical socialization of graduate students. Academic discourse socialization is crucial, yet traditional classroom instruction often lacks authentic socialization opportunities, limiting students' exposure to their disciplinary communities. To address this gap, this study integrates genre and situated learning theories to create an immersive VR-AI environment that simulates academic conference poster sessions. Learners interact with AI-driven agents acting as expert researchers and mentors, engaging in discussions and receiving real-time feedback on research communication. The study focuses on developing, operationalizing, and evaluating the fidelity of the VR-AI environment across four key dimensions: physical, functional, psychological, and social fidelity.
The Socratic Explainer - Notion
This prompt turns AI into a patient, seasoned learning companion who guides users to their own “aha!” moments through purposeful questions, analogies, and interactive back-and-forth conversation. Rather than simply giving answers, the system begins every topic by surfacing the learner’s starting point, frustrations, and real-life relevance. The conversation is built layer by layer: first probing assumptions with direct yet supportive questions, then using relatable stories, metaphors, and playful thought experiments to break down each core idea. The Socratic Explainer adapts to the learner’s pace, never moves forward if confusion remains, and uses humor or surprises to make every concept sticky and memorable.
Seizing the agentic AI advantage - McKinsey
\At the heart of this paradox is an imbalance between “horizontal” (enterprise-wide) copilots and chatbots—which have scaled quickly but deliver diffuse, hard-to-measure gains—and more transformative “vertical” (function-specific) use cases—about 90 percent of which remain stuck in pilot mode. AI agents offer a way to break out of the gen AI paradox. That’s because agents have the potential to automate complex business processes—combining autonomy, planning, memory, and integration—to shift gen AI from a reactive tool to a proactive, goal-driven virtual collaborator. This shift enables far more than efficiency. Agents supercharge operational agility and create new revenue opportunities.
Monday, June 30, 2025
Chief AI Officer: Higher Ed’s New Leadership Role - Abby Sourwine, Government Technology
Those stepping up to fill education’s new C-suite role say it's more than just understanding IT — it requires communication and skill-building across disciplines and comfort levels, and flexibility to create a road map. As the education sector continues to adapt to artificial intelligence, a new role is quietly emerging: the chief AI officer (CAIO). At institutions like George Mason University, UCLA and the University of Arizona, these leaders are tasked with creating campuswide AI strategy. According to early adopters, the role is still being defined in higher education, taking cues from CAIO duties in industry and government.
Closing the gender gap in engineering for a digital-first future - McKinsey
June 23 celebrated the contributions of women in engineering and brings attention to the ongoing gender gap in STEM fields. “To succeed in this digital-first future, both women and men need to be technologists.” However, write McKinsey’s Kweilin Ellingrud, Lareina Yee, and MarÃa del Mar MartÃnez, “The challenge is especially acute for women, who continue to be underrepresented in STEM.” At European tech companies, for example, women are approaching parity in employment representation overall, but they hold just 22 percent of technical roles, such as developers and data engineers. Bridging this gap is critical—not just for equity, but also to fuel innovation and progress in the digital economy. Explore these insights to better understand the barriers and unlock opportunities to build a more inclusive, future-ready workforce.
$1.5M partnership with AI company will offer USC students, faculty free access - Alexa Jurado, the State
“The campuswide adoption of secure enterprise AI technology puts USC on the leading edge of higher education institutions,” Brice Bible, USC’s vice president for information technology and chief information officer, said in a news release. “This initiative will not only make our students more employable, but it will allow for much greater innovation in the classroom and across research teams in every discipline.” USC officials said that the ability to effectively and ethically use AI tools will give students a “competitive advantage” in today’s job market. The university will offer a new interdisciplinary certificate program in artificial intelligence literacy, consisting of four courses: two required courses about the capabilities and ethical use of AI and two elective courses relating AI to a student’s major.
Sunday, June 29, 2025
"Seriously, What Is 'Superintelligence'? - Uncanny Valley Podcast, Wired
The podcast episode "Seriously, What Is 'Superintelligence'?" from WIRED's Uncanny Valley explores Meta's recent strategic shift in artificial intelligence, focusing on its investment in Scale AI and the creation of a superintelligence AI research lab. The hosts discuss Meta's efforts to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google by aggressively acquiring talent and resources. They analyze what Meta hopes to achieve with this investment and how it positions the company in the escalating AI arms race. A central theme of the episode is the concept of "superintelligence"—what it means, how it differs from current AI capabilities, and why it is both a technical and philosophical milestone. The hosts break down the challenges and implications of developing AI systems that surpass human intelligence, raising questions about safety, ethics, and the societal impact of such advancements. The discussion provides listeners with context on the broader AI landscape and Meta's ambitions, while also demystifying the often-hyped term "superintelligence". [summary provided by Perplexity]
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI can rival someone with a PhD—just weeks after saying it’s ready for entry-level jobs. So what’s left for grads? - Preston Fore, Fortune
Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the technology can already perform the tasks equal to that of an entry-level employee. Now, in a podcast posted just last week, the ChatGPT mastermind went even further—saying AI can even perform tasks typically expected of the smartest grads with a doctorate. “In some sense AIs are like a top competitive programmer in the world now or AIs can get a top score on the world’s hardest math competitions or AIs can do problems that I’d expect an expert PhD in my field to do,” he told the Uncapped podcast (hosted by Sam’s brother, Jack Altman).
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Says ‘We Are Heading Towards a World Where AI Will Just Have Unbelievable Context on Your Life’ - Caleb Naysmith, Barchart
Altman described the feature as a “real surprising level up,” saying, “Now that the computer knows a lot of context on me, and if I ask it a question with only a small number of words, it knows enough about the rest of my life to be pretty confident in what I want it to do. Sometimes in ways I don't even think of. I think we are heading towards a world where, if you want, the AI will just have unbelievable context on your life and give you super, super helpful answers.” The new memory feature allows ChatGPT to retain information from past interactions and build a persistent profile of each user’s preferences, routines, and even personal milestones. This means the AI can provide more tailored, anticipatory responses — streamlining tasks, making recommendations, and even reminding users of important events or deadlines without being prompted.
Saturday, June 28, 2025
How to turn AI into your own research assistant with this free Google tool - Lance Whitney, ZDnet
As the name implies, Learn About is more than just a way to get a quick answer to a question. Instead, it's a teaching tool that invites you to dive more deeply into your chosen topic. With Learn About, you can submit a text prompt, a PDF, or an image file to kick off your query. In response, Google's AI provides details on the topic at hand. What's more, the answer is broken down into visually interesting and informative sections that encourage you to explore the topic. The AI might display an interactive list, explain how or why something works, and show related content. You might also find suggestions and questions to help you dive in even further. Here's how I use Google's Learn About.
The IAIER at NCCU x OpenAI Academy Summit: HBCUs Leading the Future- NC Central University
Hosted by the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research (IAIER) at North Carolina Central University in collaboration with OpenAI Academy, the IAIER x OpenAI Academy Summit: HBCUs Leading the Future is a first-of-its-kind national event convening students, faculty, and professionals from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to explore real-world applications of artificial intelligence. Through hands-on labs, career pathways, and skill-building sessions, the summit showcases emerging leaders and prepares attendees to thrive in a tech-driven economy. By focusing on education, access, and innovation, NCCU and OpenAI are setting the stage for a smarter, more connected future.
Teaching at a Small Private College? Take our Advice - Terri Ward, Jennifer Suriano, and Julie Cuccio-Slichko, Faculty Focus
Here is our message: Take heed if you are a faculty member in educator preparation. We, the authors of this article, shared the same experience of college closure and loss of employment. However, we saw it through three different lenses: Jenni was an early tenure-track Assistant Professor; Julie was an Assistant Professor applying for rank and tenure; and Terri was a long-tenured Associate Professor who had once served as interim dean. Though viewed differently, we agree that tenure, and the pursuit of it, means little if your institution closes.
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