End of Term T&L

As many of us are approaching the end of the academic term and another calendar year, I would like to share a couple of teaching and learning articles on The Future of Teaching in Higher Ed (Sep 2023); and Top Trends in Higher Ed (Oct 2024). 

The Top Trends article addresses the following items (linked to each section below):

• Diversity in Higher Education Students and Faculty

• Increase in Non-Traditional Students

• Mental Health Awareness

• Embracing Artificial Intelligence for Learning

• Online Learning is More Prevalent

• Virtual Reality for Education

• More Focus on Closing the Skills Gap

• Increased Emphasis on Experiential Learning

• Enrollment of International Students

The Future of Teaching in Higher Ed article highlights the following:

• Skills for Faculty to Develop Now 

  • Instructional design

  • Educational technology

  • Data literacy

  • Cultural competence  

• The Growth of Online Learning

• Preventing AI-Enabled Cheating. Faculty have a few options to deter AI cheating:

  • Detail academic honesty policies and consequences in syllabi. 

  • Adapt assignments and assessments to make AI completion difficult. 

  • Leverage plagiarism detection software to identify misconduct after the fact and as a deterrent. 

  • Use lockdown browsers, webcam proctoring and authentication tools for exams. 

  • Develop new test bank questions, so recycled ones are less susceptible to AI. 

  • Incorporate AI into the curriculum. 

• Leveraging AI to Enhance Teaching 

  • Use AI to grade routine assignments, which frees up faculty time to focus on higher-order instructional tasks.  

  • AI allows for advanced learning personalization based on individual student needs. Analytics tools can help faculty identify gaps in students’ understanding.  

  • AI chatbots are being developed for online and hybrid courses to answer common student questions or provide tutoring support.  

  • AI can power complex simulations, adaptive learning environments, and VR-powered field trips.  

Actions for Higher Education Institutions

• Offer pedagogical training core to faculty onboarding and annual development.

• Develop flexible workload models that account for online and hybrid instruction. 

• Increase useful instructional design support. 

• Create pipelines for continuous upgrades to educational technology infrastructure. 

• Establish clear guidelines, expectations and support for online and hybrid teaching. 

• Develop academic integrity policies and resources to address AI cheating threats, emphasizing deterrence and prevention. 

• Highlight and disseminate successful teaching innovations.

Resources

Joseph Evanick, Director of Institutional Instructional Design, Geisinger College of Health Sciences. (Sep 2023). The Future of Teaching in Higher Ed.

Imed Bouchrika, Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist. (Oct 2024). Top Trends in Higher Ed.