It’s a question that Noah Geisel, the micro-credential program manager at the University of Colorado Boulder, asks employers, admissions counselors and all other professionals trying to find the most qualified human among the swaths of faceless applicants—the hay. Currently, too many industry stakeholders are too dependent on the pitchfork, according to Geisel.

“It’s a crummy tool,” he quips. Pitchforks stab chunks of hay and toss it around to search for the needle, adding to the chaos and confounding the seeker. One would be better off using a high-powered magnet to attract the needle to them rather than attempting to cut the hay out of the way.

Digital credentials and the machine-readable devices that can authenticate them, Geisel believes, are precisely that tool.

He joins a budding cohort of higher education professionals, industry leaders and state legislators who recognize its revelatory potential to foster the next chapter of academic equity, workforce access and attractive program offerings in higher ed.

What exactly are digital credentials, and what are they good for?

Micro-credentials, alternative credentials, stackable credentials—the list goes on, creating a jargon soup many leaders are hesitant to touch.

“It is confusing. Academic microcredentials, nonacademic microcredentials. There are still many moving parts,” said one higher education leader, according to EDUCASUE’s QuickPoll survey on micro-credential trends.

What’s important is how digital credentials umbrella all these programs to provide admissions counselors and employers a nuanced, insightful snapshot of an applicant’s specific skillsets. Geisel says it best: A micro-credential is to a digital credential, what a degree is to a diploma. And combining a diploma and digital credentials creates a textured picture.

“Digital credentials can contextualize formal recognition of achievement, skills, competencies and experiences. A diploma just has a name on it. If a diploma is issued with digital credential technology, we can contextualize it to turn it in from this flat piece of paper to this 360-degree, high-definition narrative,” says Geisel. “It takes on a storytelling capacity to better communicate who this person is as a learner and achiever.”

The key to developing a meaningful digital credential is that it communicates a specific value, much like a currency does. If it’s not specific, then it’s frivolous.

“On one hand, it can be so granular as to lose meaningfulness, but on the other end, where you aren’t specific, you can also lose meaning,” says Geisel. “What if we issued a badge on DEI?” Geisel says. “At best, the most reliable signal there is a hiring manager knows you’re interested in it, you know? It’s such a broad thing to have a credential called DEI because it’s lacking in granularity.”

While a DEI credential may be too broad, Geisel adds, one highlighting the specific competencies learned within the DEI curriculum is on the right track. Here’s a good example for one: sustainability planning for business. That’s a credential Geisel is currently issuing at CU Boulder.

For beginners in the digital credential space, the most important aspect to focus on is not its taxonomy. It should be on whether it is effectively communicating something of concrete value and contextualizing the person behind the credential.

Digital credentials’ great potential

Certificates and special non-degree credentials were the only programs to experience positive enrollment rates across every sector of higher education this past spring semester, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Private for-profit and 2-year institutions were the only sectors of higher education to increase enrollment, and it’s a direct result of their impressive non-degree enrollment rates.

In the workforce, a February report found that 95% of employers said a résumé listing micro-credentials benefited the candidate because it demonstrates a willingness for skill development (76%).

“Everybody’s talking about micro-credentials, even those campuses that a year or two ago were saying they weren’t. They’re changing their tune,” says Kristi Wold-McCormick, assistant vice provost and University Registrar at CU Boulder and president-elect of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO). “The ‘why’ is a big question when we talk to different campuses.”

Wold-McCormick finds that institutions are incentivized by their potential to broaden their reach, diversify revenue streams, and competitive pressure from other institutions beginning their programs. Legislatures, too, are driving the movement, as they’re interested in seeing how schools can turn some of these learning opportunities into stackable credentials.

“How can some of these micro-credentials be stacked into certificates, and how can certificates be stacked into degrees?” says Wold-McCormick. “It’s incremental learning, which I think appeals to populations that haven’t historically had a path to traditional education.”

Wold-McCormick and other academic leaders are realizing that micro-credentials can tap a new range of students that have traditionally been boxed out of higher education. While online learning has been the predominant medium for the working class to attain a degree, nearly half have not completed their last program of study. Similarly, Black and Hispanic adults interested in pursuing higher education but are not enrolled are significantly more responsible for caring for a child or family member than white adults.

“They can be used to help get people into higher education streams that traditionally don’t have that access by giving them opportunities to take a course or two in smaller credentials,” says Wold-McCormick. “It can then give them that roadmap on how to use these credentials to inform larger credentials and keep that interest going once they’ve gotten a taste for it.”

Despite the direct interest from students and employers in micro-credentials, most colleges and universities are behind the eight ball. Only 9% of institutions have a mature micro-credential program, according to EDUCAUSE. Another 32% say they have a program that is not yet mature.

Standardizing together

As colleges and universities develop their programs, Wold-McCormick cautions higher education stakeholders of the dangers of developing digital credentials in silos.

“What we don’t want are different types of guidance and standardizations and reports coming out from all these different associations that might not be aligned,” she says. “What we need to do as a higher ed community is get on the same page regarding definitions and standards.”

And as passionate as Geisel is about digital credentials’ ability to open the doors for new student demographics, he urges stakeholders to be intentional, vigilant even, to ensure those voices are in the room developing it as well.

“There’s so much power in deciding what counts because we are also deciding at that moment what doesn’t make the cut,” Geisel says. “When we’re looking around the room and realizing that for all of our talk and intentions and passion for serving learners who do not look like the learners who have historically been served well by our institutions. If we’re not seeing those people represented in the room, I think that’s a huge opportunity for us to pump the brakes.”

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2U recently announced two new degree programs with Cabrini University, extended its contract with Southern Methodist University and signed an agreement with Arcadia University to launch its online Doctor of Education program. Additionally, last year they acquired another popular edtech company edX, which one American business magazine listed as the third-most innovative education company of 2023.

However, 2U has gained notoriety recently for allegedly engaging in deceptive recruitment strategies and contributing to students’ high debt load. Students and the federal government have waged lawsuits and called for stronger oversight of the edtech company. Yet, 2U has managed to fight back on all fronts. Should higher education hold faith in 2U despite its recent spats?

More from UB: Ohio is the latest state to try making college costs, ROI clearer—is it worth it?

Student lawsuits

Online students at the University of Southern California have sued the private Los Angeles school in two separate lawsuits relating to its online programs’ deceptive recruitment, which 2U helps operate. In one case filed late last year, Student Defense and Tycko & Zavareei LLP filed a lawsuit against USC and 2U for luring students to enroll in the Rossier School of Education using manipulated U.S. News data. According to the suit, 2U “assumed responsibility for recruiting these online students and was paid a substantial percentage of tuition.”

Additionally, students sued USC again in a class-action lawsuit last month, alleging the university’s online Master of Social Work (MSW) program misrepresented its program’s quality. Specifically, the university advertised its online and on-campus programs were equal in value; however, students found that its online MSW offerings, provided by 2U, were outdated and inferior in quality.

“They paid an unjustifiably high price for a program that was promised to be the same as the on-campus version when in reality, it was run by a for-profit education company. Students were lied to and now are standing up and fighting back,” said Eileen Connor, president and director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, which is helping to represent the plaintiffs, in a statement, according to USA Today.

While 2U was not named a defendant in the MSW lawsuit, they quickly addressed it, claiming the allegations were “without merit” based on their call recordings and student feedback forms.

Pending federal regulation

Last year, several U.S. Senators voiced their concerns about the dangers of online program managers (OPMs), such as 2U. Aside from engaging in “aggressive marketing and recruitment practices,” the senators were also concerned about OPMs’ ability to burden students with high costs.

“We continue to have concerns about the impact of OPM partnerships on rising student debt loads,” wrote the senators. “OPMs often receive 50% or more of students’ tuition. These agreements may create a disincentive to lower costs.”

A year later, the Department of Education announced that it expanded its definition of third-party services to include OPMs, such as 2U. The department recognized that because the function of OPMs is interlinked with institutions’ Title IV administrative activities, companies like 2U must also comply with TPS requirements as well. Consequently, the edtech company would be forced to report their business dealings and be subjected to tighter regulation, oversight and potential audits.

However, 2U has since sued the Department of Education, claiming it exceeded its authority and did not collect enough input from outside stakeholders to make the decision. Additionally, several higher education leaders have asked the department to rescind the guidance, such as Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, who spoke for more than 80 higher education associations.

The department has since delayed implementing the ruling on OPMs. However, if the department eventually decides to rule against OPMs, 2U can find itself scrambling for a new revenue stream.

“Because revenue sharing with institutions is central to their business model, the Ed Dept’s expanded definition of a third-party service provider could pose significant challenges to 2U’s business model in the future,” said Matt Winn, Tambellini Group’s senior analyst covering academic technology in an email.

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Enabling new forms of interaction between educators and students and more effectively personalizing learning are among the potential benefits of AI, the agency says in its recent report, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations.” But the risks include a range of safety and privacy concerns and algorithmic bias. To mitigate them, the department strongly emphasizes keeping humans in the driver’s seat.

“We envision a technology-enhanced future more like an electric bike and less like robot vacuums,” reads the report. “On an electric bike, the human is fully aware and fully in control, but their burden is less, and their effort is multiplied by a complementary technological enhancement.”

Educators and policymakers should collaborate on the following principles:

1. Emphasize humans-in-the-loop: As students and teachers begin interacting with chatbots to help with coursework and plan personalized instruction, teachers must stay abreast of safety precautions if things begin to fall astray. Keeping other teachers involved in loops is a vital way to remain vigilant. Additionally, teachers must stave off becoming so reliant on AI that it depletes their judgment. AI is known to commit errors and make up “facts,” so teachers must analyze AI prompts to flag errors.
2. Align AI models to a shared vision for education: The educational needs of students should be at the forefront of AI policies. “We especially call upon leaders to avoid romancing the magic of AI or only focusing on promising applications or outcomes, but instead to interrogate with a critical eye how AI-enabled systems and tools function in the educational environment,” the Department of Education says.
3. Design AI using modern learning principles: The first wave of adaptive edtech incorporated important principles such as sequencing instruction and giving students feedback. However, these systems were often deficit-based, focusing on the student’s weakest areas. “We must harness AI’s ability to sense and build upon learner strengths,” the Department of Education asserts.
4. Prioritize strengthening trust: There are concerns that AI will replace—rather than assist—teachers. Educators, students and their families need to be supported as they build trust in edtech. Otherwise, lingering distrust of AI could distract from innovation in tech-enabled teaching and learning.
5. Inform and involve educators: Another concern is that AI will lead to a loss of respect for educators and their skills just as the nation is experiencing teacher shortages and declining interest in the profession. To convince teachers they are valued, they must be involved in designing, developing, testing, improving, adopting, and managing AI-enabled edtech.
6. Focus R&D on addressing context and enhancing trust and safety: Edtech developers should focus design efforts on “the long tail of learning variability” to ensure large populations of students will benefit from AI’s ability to customize learning.
7. Develop education-specific guidelines and guardrails: Data privacy laws should be reviewed and updated in the context of advancing educational technology. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a potential candidate facing reevaluation as new accessibility technologies emerge.

More from UB: Only 7 U.S. universities make THE’s sustainability impact rankings’ top 100 list

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“Are universities of the past still the future?” challenges higher education leaders to consider a scenario where campus-based higher ed never bounces back post-pandemic. As a result, institutions must consider moving past its foundational model of fostering coming-of-age experiences for young adults to a knowledge service whose programs are as fluid as tomorrow’s digital native students.

“The business reinvention that is taking down giants in media, retail and energy is coming for higher education—and it is coming fast,” wrote the report’s authors. “This will threaten the very existence of those universities that cannot adapt to the sector’s new realities.”

The primary drivers of tomorrow’s higher education landscape are demographic shifts due to falling birth rates, geopolitical challenges, changing workplace demands and high student expectations for a quality digital experience. Below are some ways those drivers will manipulate higher education.

More from UB: Can your school benefit from a consortium to keep its scientific research alive?

The student of tomorrow is far from today’s

Higher education will have to adapt to a new cohort of students that are older, busier and digitally native. As a result, the way they interact with students will need to dramatically shift.

Soon, no institution will be able to rely on high school graduates for enrollment, as birth rates continue to drop across the U.S. Demographic shifts were a critical factor in the closings this year of Medaille University, Finlandia University, and Iowa Wesleyan.

Additionally, the advent of companies and services opting for a digital model that prioritizes customer convenience and accessibility, coupled with the higher demand for remote online work, will inevitably reach higher education. “In a world of ‘work from anywhere,’ people also want to ‘learn from anywhere,'” wrote the report’s authors.

As industries adapt to a customer-first model, new challenges arise as students inch their way into the driver’s seat. First, colleges must embrace program personalization models that can compete with private sector programs. The report notes that a significant reason private liberal art institutions are failing is that their programs are broad and are not strongly differentiated from others. Secondly, colleges must focus on student engagement through the gamification of online content and leveraging professors’ abilities to inspire and effect critical thinking.

While the report does concede that there may always be a cohort of students who desire the traditional college experience, higher education must leverage what makes student life so unique while cutting out any redundancies, such as providing course content that is subpar to online content.

“We have a whole generation of young people who are more open to online learning and, given a choice, might opt for different formats,” said Soumitra Dutta, a professor at Cornell University. “They might actually want 60% of the class online and maybe 20% in lectures, then maybe 20% through internships or other kinds of experiences.”

Looking ahead

One potential step colleges can take to build around students’ changing preferences is providing them with government-funded “learning wallets” to customize their academic studies.

Take your first steps toward a new future

To help college leaders embark on this intimidating journey, the report poses several questions to help point you in the right direction.

1. Be clear about your long-term purpose. The future is unclear, so it’s important to define internally what purpose or mission your institution serves. Is it to advance the lifelong well-being of education? To solve global challenges?
2. “Think “future-back” to set your reinvention agenda. Ask, “How will my institution be relevant in one or two decades?” Begin to visualize what the landscape of your institution would look like if the sector consolidates or primarily becomes a digital platform.
3. Build new value with new capabilities. Innovate your learning model based on customer demand.

The post Why higher education must be reinvented to suit the new generation of students appeared first on University Business.

As quickly as artificial intelligence models develop, so, too, their impact across different facets of higher education. It may be dizzying, but here are some of the most prominent ways AI affects your school.

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Admissions

Artificial intelligence is poised to streamline the workload of both the applying student and the receiving admissions officer.

Students today can ask ChatGPT to create a 500-word response to an open prompt that they’d otherwise feel paralyzed to complete themselves. They can direct the bot to write a dramatic story about an adolescent overcoming a significant life event that includes references to a city of the student’s liking. Admissions officers already struggle to detect college applications’ authenticity, and the prevalence of AI language modeling will make plagiarism that much more difficult. While new software aims to combat applications littered with AI, some leaders believe the next step forward is introducing video prompts instead.

However, AI technology might be an antidote to the  increasing workload and turnover rate for admissions officers. Colleges have begun employing technology that can sift through student transcripts and create preliminary assessments on students’ acceptance likelihood. Allowing software such as Student Select or Sia to do the legwork of review helps officers manage their time and compartmentalize their priorities. Colleges to embrace AI software in admissions include Rutgers, Rocky Mountain College and Maryville University.

Cybersecurity

The education industry experienced a 576% increase in phishing attacks in 2022, according to recent Zscaler research. While phishing attempts could once be easily detected by grammatical and spelling mistakes and an awkward tone, communication written by ChatGPT appears more natural, and by extension, easier to trust.

Additionally, hackers are finding ways to leverage ChatGPT’s coding capabilities to hack security systems, tricking the AI into creating malware strains. However, just as bad actors are using the emerging technology maliciously, cybersecurity teams can use AI to test their defenses faster.

Student Exams

Not only can ChatGPT ace the SAT and AP exams, but it’s also stunning scholars in its performance on licensing exams. It passed the Uniform Bar Examination by a “significant margin,” approaching the 90th percentile of test-takers. Additionally, ChatGPT passed three exams associated with the United States Medical Licensing Exam with a 60% accuracy rate. GPT-4, on the other hand, answered medical licensing exam questions with a 90% accuracy rate. “I’m stunned to say: better than many doctors I’ve observed,” said Dr. Isaac Kohane, the test administrator, according to Business Insider.

The accuracy of ChatGPT is prompting professionals to explore how students can use the software to augment their work. The America Medical Association’s medical education innovation unit has begun exploring some foundational AI modules, and it is also collaborating with the National Academy of Medicine to host a workshop on AI in health professions education this spring.

Class curriculum

Allowing ChatGPT to do the legwork of writing preliminary drafts frees up time for professors to judge the content of a student’s work by their content and ideas rather than by their ability to communicate via proper grammar, style and structure.

“I’m changing all of my assignments to involve more high-level concepts and more integrative knowledge,” said Adam Purtee, an assistant professor of computer science, according to the University of Rochester.

It is heightening the level of work students can do, but it’s also streamlining professors’ administrative responsibilities.

“ChatGPT can be used to help professors generate syllabi or to recommend readings that are relevant to a given topic,” said Manav Raj, co-author of the study that discovered college professors’ high exposure to AI language modeling.

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“We know that the future of the workforce is ever-changing, especially now. It’s an exciting time,” says Pamela Fuertes, Dean of the Miguel B. Fernandez Family School of Global Business of Miami Dade College. “We have the programming, the academic curriculum and the access and opportunities.”

The school has received $15 million from various city authorities thanks to Pumariega’s vision to “elevate educational offerings to raise Miami’s talent base” in light of the migration of Silicon Valley investment, says Christina Crespi, executive director of Miami Downtown Development Authority, which donated $1 million. “She quickly approached us about assisting and we thought it was a great moment to put a stake in the ground for the future talent of Miami to be part of this sophisticated technology.”

Miami Dade College is now built with two AI centers, a promising faculty grant program and a slew of cutting-edge certifications and stackable credentials to meet the new demands of a swelling tech industry.

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President’s Innovation Fund

Established last year, the President’s Innovation Fund incentivizes faculty to develop new learning models that leverage AI to improve student learning. The grant program will distribute 10 awards per grant cycle for up to $10,000.

Last week, three faculty members from the School of business were awarded grants for using artificial intelligence to identify sustainable models for water solutions and supply chain management.

“President Pumariega spoke to us and said, ‘Think big.’ This is a special opportunity for students in the classroom and around campus, and how we can help them look to the future,” says Fuertes.

Students get a competitive leg up

Miami Dade College has partnered with PRAI, an AI public relations firm that aims to tool Miami’s students with the latest PR and digital marketing innovation. PRAI will provide students with a certification course program that will virtually upend the industry.

PRAI CEO Valentin Saitarli can’t stress enough the importance of having viable workforce skills upon graduating.

“There are at least 400 schools that offer a public relations major. These students graduate with zero software skills. Now think about this: You have a student who graduated from Miami Dade College in digital marketing and he’s a certified PRAI manager versus a student who spent $60,000 in tuition from Washington University in St. Louis, for example, and has zero software access, connections to reporters, or real-time experience,” says Saitarli. “These students will lack advancement opportunities. We believe this program with Miami Dade College will transform the job market significantly and give students a lot of advantages.”

AI centers

Miami Dade College now has two artificial intelligence centers, the most recent one being built in April in the heart of downtown Miami. From high schoolers and current students to alumni and the broader Miami community, these centers host various programs and opportunities to become familiar with and eventually excel with AI.

Partnering with the Mark Cuban Foundation, Miami Dade College will host underserved high school students to attend an expenses-paid AI boot camp. They will have access to corporate mentor instructors to acclimate the next generation to what AI is and the ethics behind AI systems.

Stackable credential programs are currently being developed in AI awareness and applied AI, which can effectively earn current students—many of whom are also working professionals—a certificate, associate or bachelor’s degree at their own pace.

For the broader community, IBM-partnered continuing education programs in data science, machine learning and AI enterprise solutions are offered.

The post This president has leveraged her city’s tech boom to embrace an AI-centric future appeared first on University Business.

Copyleaks, an AI-based company known for its flagship plagiarism detection platform, found in its March report that student assignments found to have used AI dropped by 15%. Fewer than 10% of college assignments contained AI. When looking at specific types of colleges, the detection of artificial intelligence dropped at each one since February. Community colleges experienced the highest decrease, down 19.2% from February for just a total of 9.7% of assignments being detected to contain AI. Four-year institutions experienced the second-highest drop at 15.7%, down to a total of 9.9% of assignments.

Figures for other college types include:

• Private
  • AI-detected assignments: 7.5%
  • Decreased by 15.7% from February
• Career and Technical
  • AI-detected assignments: 20.7%
  • Decreased by .48% from February

Worldwide, across all college types, AI use also dropped.

Copyleaks began collecting anonymized data from high school and college students worldwide in January. Their multi-language AI Content Detector boasts a 99.2% detection accuracy rate. This figure extends to OpenAI’s recent unveiling of ChatGPT-4 as well.

Students may be submitting fewer assignments with the assistance of ChatGPT and related artificial intelligence tools due to recent innovations from plagiarism detector services that have caught up with the technology, such as Turnitin and Copyleaks’ AI Content Detector.

While student reliance on artificial intelligence tools has decreased this past month, College Rover discovered that 61% of high school students they surveyed who are seeking postsecondary admission are interested in attending a university that has banned the use of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools. Men were particularly partial to this question, with 61% of them responding they’d prefer a university whose stance is strict on the technology.

Students are concerned about the ethical implications of using artificial intelligence, according to a similar report by BestColleges that surveyed college students. Specifically, 51% agreed that using artificial intelligence to accomplish assignments constituted cheating. Moreover, 41% agreed that it is morally wrong, compared to just 27% who disagreed.

Similarly, students may also have grievances over artificial intelligence’s ability to acquire race and gender biases. For example, one high school student found that it may contribute to systemic racism in America.

“I think that with ChatGPT, everything has its benefits and its downsides,” said one student, Ayala, according to USA Today.

More from UB: TikTok tracker: What colleges—or entire states—have banned the popular app?

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How will Language Modelers like ChatGPT Affect Occupations and Industries? found that of the 20 occupations most exposed to AI language modeling capabilities, 14 of them were postsecondary teachers.

The authors—Ed Felten, Manav Raj and Robert Seamans—specified that their definition of “exposure” does not delve into the specific effects of AI on an occupation, which leaves the question of whether these jobs will be augmented—or, as you may fear, substituted—undefined.

“Everyone’s focusing on how students are going to use AI, but there’s not a lot of focus on how it’s going to impact educators, the teachers themselves,” says Joseph Wison, co-founder of Studicata, an online bar exam preparation service. For context, law teachers were the fifth-most exposed occupation to AI.

To create the formula for this study, the authors drew from one of Felten’s earlier models that studied overall occupational exposure to AI. The AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) model linked 10 AI applications – such as reading comprehension, speech recognition and language modeling – to 52 human capabilities defined by a U.S. Department of Labor database. As advances in language modeling capabilities like ChatGPT surged (there’s already a better version), the new formula used in this current study updated the AIOE to only account for AI’s language modeling application.

While only two postsecondary occupations featured in the top 20 on Felten’s original AIOE calculation, postsecondary faculty and staff make up almost 75% of the list when adjusted for language modeling. This doesn’t seem to be a coincidence either. Felten et al. found a 98% correlation with original AIOE scores.

Top 20 occupations after language modeling adjustment, of 774 different occupations

More from UB: Despite high interest, continuing education programs are sputtering

As axiomatic this study proves the impending prevalence of AI in higher education, professors are reluctant to take the leap forward. According to a report from BestColleges, more than half of all college students surveyed reported that “their instructors have not openly discussed the use of AI tools like ChatGPT” (54%) and “that their instructors or schools haven’t specified how to use AI tools ethically or responsibly” (60%). A considerable amount of faculty and staff are actively working against the wave of AI language modeling: 31% reported course materials and honor codes explicitly prohibiting AI tools. This does not bode well with the 9% of school assignments and college essays that Copyleaks flagged for containing AI-generated content across the tens of thousands of U.S. public research universities it looked into in January and February.

Wilson believes it would be a “disservice” to students to resist updating the way we teach the new generation of students if we only focus on the fear of cheating with A.I. tools. He believes Studicata’s online contact with students via Youtube directly contributes to his team “being on the pulse” of strategies to effectively engage students.

“The first step is to communicate with students what is acceptable use and then from there, it’s time to start building a framework. Are we allowing it? What’s okay? What’s not?” he says. “We have to mitigate cheating, but at the same time we have to teach familiarity of these tools because the future is going to be tech-enhanced lawyers.”

Wilson specifies recent development in AI-assisted legal brief drafting software and research platforms as tools many first-year lawyers will encounter.

He also notes how Microsoft and Google’s recent decision to integrate AI tools into Office and Google Suite will make student—and teacher— use of AI inevitable. “If that’s the way your technology is going, you would have to adapt,” says Wilson. “They have to build and articulate these guidelines.”

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GPT-4, is an updated version of the company’s language model, which has been trained using significant amounts of online data to generate detailed responses to user questions and prompts. Though it’s only available via a waitlist, it’s already been incorporated into various third-party products like Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing search engine.

Those lucky enough to be given early access have shared their experiences with it, and their experiments are pretty astounding.

For example, GPT-4 does more than generate impressive essays and answer math questions. In one instance, a user demonstrated how a drawing can be turned into a fully functioning website in minutes. In the video, the program takes a messy notebook drawing and transforms it into a lackluster, yet functioning website.

OpenAI's GPT-4 release is turning heads by turning a messy notebook drawing into a fully-functioning website. This is a game-changer in website building! pic.twitter.com/Szt5R8djre

— The Joker (@Neo19890) March 15, 2023

It also can help students dive into coding with little to no prior knowledge. In another demonstration, one user had it recreate the iconic game Pong in under 60 seconds. All they had to do was follow step-by-step instructions provided by the tool and boom, one of the most iconic games in history was recreated.

I don’t care that it’s not AGI, GPT-4 is an incredible and transformative technology.

I recreated the game of Pong in under 60 seconds.
It was my first try.

Things will never be the same. #gpt4 pic.twitter.com/8YMUK0UQmd

— Pietro Schirano (@skirano) March 14, 2023

As far as test-taking goes, it’s a star student. According to OpenAI’s announcement, “It passes a simulated bar exam with a score around the top 10% of test takers.”

Here are some other exams GPT-4 has taken:

• SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing: Scored 710/800 (93rd percentile)
• Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program: Scored a 75%
• AP US Government: Scored a 5 (88th-100th percentile)

So what does this mean for higher education? Well, if educators approach it the same way they did ChatGPT, we may see a divide between those who believe it should be embraced and those who fear it will promote cheating and academic dishonesty. Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, recently published a blog post describing his experience with GPT-4. Simply put, he thinks it has massive potential to close the digital divide among students.

For example, the organization has implemented a small AI pilot called Khanmigo for students and teachers to serve as a 24/7 tutor. Users can quite literally ask questions they would ask of their in-person tutor and it will generate patient, human-like responses. And for teachers, it serves as a timesaver so they can focus on what’s important—their students.

For example, in this video featured in Khan’s blog post, a user is seen interacting with AI to receive help with a math problem.

However, there’s still plenty of room for growth, according to Khan.

“AI makes mistakes,” he wrote. “Even the newest generation of AI can still make errors in math. AI can still ‘hallucinate,’ which is the term the industry uses for making stuff up. A lot of work needs to be done.”

More from UB: Why AI is about to become an integral part of higher education

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The size of the global edtech market was about $238 billion in 2021, and artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality and the internet of things will be the biggest propellants of growth over the next several years, according to the latest analysis by Research and Markets. Many schools are adding VR and AR to create more interactive learning experiences for students, the report asserts.

Ever-expanding connectivity, bandwidth and speed, surging smartphone penetration, and growing investments by private equity and venture capital firms will also drive edtech demand.

Hardware accounted for approximately 60% of edtech revenue in 2021 while individual learners generated more than $100 billion due, in part, to the spread of smart classes such as the broadcasts that were provided to hundreds of thousands of students by Los Angeles USD and PBS during COVID lockdowns.

Government assistance in developing countries, such as China and India, is also giving the edtech market a boost. China, for example, has 282 million students and 17.32 million teachers in more than 530,000 schools.

Microsoft Corporation is the biggest player, holding an 8.1% share of the edtech and smart classrooms market, followed by Dell Technologies Inc., Oracle Corporation, Apple Inc., SAP SE, Anthology Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., IBM Corporation, Alphabet Inc., and Lenovo, a report by The Business Research Company found.

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Blackboard Inc., Chegg Inc., Edutech, Coursera Inc., edX Inc., Instructure Inc., Udacity Inc., and Think and Learn Private Limited are among the other global heavyweights, Research and Markets noted.

3 edtech market movers

Three key market drivers, trends and challenges are detailed in the market share forecast by Technavio:

• Driver: More and more learners are reading increasingly flexible and adaptable ebooks as instructors distribute texts via the internet. These shifts are supported by e-readers that allow annotations and bookmarks and that provide interactive dictionaries.
• Trend: Increased demand for distance learning that exploded during the early phase of COVID will continue, particularly in the realm of higher ed, where more students and professionals (including teachers) can take online courses from a growing range of colleges and universities.
• Challenge: Open-source learning content is one impediment to edtech market growth. Educational institutions, particularly in more impoverished countries, are offering curriculum either free or at a minimal cost.

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