Professional, Continuing, and Online Education Update by UPCEA
Daily updates of news, research and trends by UPCEA
Click on the URL at the end of posting to visit the relevant article or website mentioned in the post.
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
What Do We Teach Now? - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
How online learning is changing global education - Elizabeth Carter, MSN
Cloning Myself with AI: Four Ways to Multiply Faculty Presence for Graduate and Adult Learners - Sherrie Myers Bartell, Faculty Focus
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
What Comes After an MBA? Why Leaders Are Turning to AI - Boston University Virtual
The Apprenticeship (R)Evolution - Sara Weissman and Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed
Located near the sprawling Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, home to Tesla Gigafactory 1, Truckee Meadows Community College trains Tesla employees in advanced manufacturing skills year-round. And while Tesla itself may be polarizing, the growth of the program is undeniable: In 2023, TMCC trained 85 Tesla apprentices; today, completers number 1,000-plus and growing—quickly. “They choose the courses from our catalog à la carte, and we train their workers five days a week, all day long, in four-week increments,” TMCC president Jeffrey Alexander said of Tesla. Apprentices “come to us, usually 30 to 35 per cohort, and we train them in the basics of automated production, programmable logic control and electromechanical systems, so that they are able to get to work at the gigafactory and really be very capable from day one.”
Terafab: The World’s Next Generation Chip Factory - Thomas Frey, Futurist Speaker
Monday, March 30, 2026
AI could leave many college grads unemployed, says ServiceNow CEO - EdScoop
Bill McDermott, the chief executive of ServiceNow, an American cloud computing firm, told reporters recently that the advancement of artificial intelligence could push the unemployment level of recent college graduates into the almost 40%. McDermott told CNBC that “so much of the work is going to be done by agents,” highlighting the challenge that college graduates will likely face. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York put the unemployment rate of recent college graduates, at the end of last year, at 5.7%, while underemployment for the same group reached 42.5%. Layoffs at large companies, particularly in Big Tech, continue. The fintech firm Block, recently announced it would lay off about 4,000 employees, roughly half of its workforce.
Leading disruption before it leads you - McKinsey
University of Phoenix scholars publish study on academic applications of generative AI tools in higher education - University of Phoenix
- Generative AI tools are increasingly used in academic workflows, including literature review support, research brainstorming, and academic writing assistance.
- AI can improve research efficiency and idea generation, particularly for complex scholarly tasks such as synthesizing large bodies of literature.
- Ethical and academic integrity considerations remain critical, including transparency about AI use and maintaining original scholarly analysis.
- Doctoral education may benefit from AI literacy training, helping researchers understand both the capabilities and limitations of generative AI technologies.
- Institutions may need clearer policies and guidance to support responsible AI adoption in research and teaching.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Survey: How Should Universities Prepare for the AI Era? - Institute for the Future of Education
US universities pivot to AI degrees as campuses race to match the machine age - Times of India Education
Exploring the connections between integrated sustainable curricula, generative AI tools, and perceived climate change capabilities across the global south and north using multi-analytics - Javed Iqbal, et al; Nature
Saturday, March 28, 2026
All Jobs Gone within 18 Months: Microsoft’s AI Chief Terrifying Prediction Explained - AIGrid
Report Outlines Framework for University’s Engagement with AI - Alec Gallimore & Ricardo Henao, Duke Today
How Cal State Became Ground Zero for the Fight over AI in Higher Education - Chris Mills Rodrigo, TechPolicy
Friday, March 27, 2026
Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework - Ryan Burnell & Oran Kelly, the Keyword, Google
Our framework draws on decades of research from psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science to develop a cognitive taxonomy. It identifies 10 key cognitive abilities that we hypothesize will be important for general intelligence in AI systems:
Perception: extracting and processing sensory information from the environment
Generation: producing outputs such as text, speech and actions
Attention: focusing cognitive resources on what matters
Learning: acquiring new knowledge through experience and instruction
Memory: storing and retrieving information over time
Reasoning: drawing valid conclusions through logical inference
Metacognition: knowledge and monitoring of one's own cognitive processes
Executive functions: planning, inhibition and cognitive flexibility
Problem solving: finding effective solutions to domain-specific problems
Social cognition: processing and interpreting social information and responding appropriately in social situations