Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the higher education landscape.

Dr. Keng Siau believes that artificial intelligence will “perform various general tasks with consciousness, sentience, and intelligence.” This could imply that higher education is no longer the only route to a professional career.

Collegedegrees traditionally lead led to professional careers; AI may alter that trajectory and provide new forms of learning. AI will, in the end, alter the way colleges approach education.

Consider transformation rather than disruption.

Disruption is a sudden change in a process. The outcome could be better or worse. On the other hand, transformation implies a more deliberate approach, such as a change that evolves into something better.

Change is not easy for anyone, but universities that refuse to change risk falling behind.

Universities now have the opportunity to transform their practices and implement new artificial intelligence technology.

Collaboration and complex data

There is no doubt that AI will significantly impact higher education. Already, AI has taken on some of the more fundamental tasks in academia, such as grading, data analysis, and the search for correlations.

So far, these automated tasks have only been performed within a single university system. There is no reason to believe that AI will continue to function in the ivory tower. AI will connect academia and other industries by performing complex cognitive processes that look for connections between various fields. 

Changing skillsets 

AI will most likely not replace instructional practices in higher education, but it will change the way students learn. I predict a blended learning model that seamlessly integrates AI and professors’ input.

This will alter faculty skill sets, freeing up time for research as AI takes over the more mundane tasks of classroom instruction.

Will artificial intelligence affect higher education? The answer is yes, which is a good thing. As we strive to keep up with AI advancements, the disruption will force us to accelerate our cognitive thinking skills.

Global coverage

With students becoming more interested in personalized learning, AI has the potential to provide more learning opportunities to more students at the same time. These new systems, made possible by adaptive learning, meet students at the end of the learning continuum and guide them forward.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to benefit a larger population of learners. Professors may already have two or three hundred students in a classroom. Still, they cannot reach every learner and meet their individual needs in the same way as AI adaptive learning programs like ALEKS or personalized programs like Udemy. Happy holidays!