Some of the most valuable learning opportunities on campus happen in workshops. Whether they happen in a conference room or over Zoom, they create energy, connection, and opportunities for real-time questions. Workshops support learning and engagement across campus throughout the year. What a single session can’t do is reach everyone who needs it or remain available when future learners are ready. When a workshop is worth offering again or making available to an audience that can’t all gather at once, an online, self‑paced version keeps that good work going. Creating an effective online learning experience is more than simply posting a recording.
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.
Monday, August 24, 2026
How to Leverage Tech to Serve Rural Communities - Catherine Han and Heather Marriott, NCOA
The MAC, Inc., Maryland Living Well Center of Excellence (LWCE) is using technology to break down barriers for older adults in Smith Island and across Dorchester, Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester counties. All are regions marked by transportation limitations, health access challenges, and geographic isolation. Yet LWCE has become a beacon of innovation in aging services. LWCE’s State Program Coordinator, Sue Lachenmayr, shared her insights on how to most effectively use technology to provide programming to rural populations.
LSU Launches Free AI Literacy Essentials Course - LSU
Today, LSU launched AI Literacy Essentials, a free online course that provides a general introduction to artificial intelligence (AI) and how to use it effectively, professionally, and ethically. The course is offered through LSU Online’s professional development program and is available now to LSU students, faculty, and staff, and will open to the general public on August 26. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into education, business, healthcare, government, and daily life, the ability to understand and use AI effectively is no longer a competitive advantage. It is rapidly becoming a prerequisite for success in nearly every field. AI Literacy Essentials helps participants develop the knowledge and confidence needed to navigate an AI-driven world, regardless of their background or prior experience.
Friday, August 21, 2026
Would You Trust AI for Ethical Advice? - Christian Terwiesch, Gideon Nave, Lennart Meincke; Knowledge at Wharton
No disrespect to philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, but Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch no longer reads his wildly popular advice column, “The Ethicist.” Terwiesch used to love the long-running column in The New York Times until 2023, when he and two Wharton colleagues conducted an experiment to see whether people could tell the difference between Appiah’s advice or advice spit out by ChatGPT. In a blind study, even experienced professionals — including ethics professors and clergy — could not tell whether the AI-generated advice was more or less useful than the advice provided by Appiah. In fact, random participants preferred the AI-generated advice 59.6% of the time. An additional study found that participants who were initially resistant to taking advice from the chatbot became more accepting as they were shown the high quality of the AI reasoning.
A look at trends in college consolidation since 2016 - Higher Ed Dive Team
We’re tracking major closings, mergers, acquisitions and other consolidation among public and private nonprofit institutions from 2016 to the present. The last few years have been tumultuous for many U.S. colleges. Pressure to lower tuition, stagnating state funding and a shrinking pool of high school graduates has strained many institutions’ bottom lines and questioned their long-term viability. Those pressures have caused some to close. We’ve been tracking consolidation across higher education since the fall of 2018, looking back as far as 2016. Our goal was not to create a death watch but rather to give our readers a tool to show the scope of that activity and any patterns within it. To make those trends easier to detect, we updated our tracker with a map showing closings and significant consolidations by state. In doing that, we also revised our list to omit certain consolidation activity among public institutions in which their footprints remained largely the same. Prior to this update, we removed for-profit colleges from our list; this was due to their differences in scale from private nonprofit and public institutions as well as the sometimes fragmented nature of their closings.
Pace of college closings picks up, with more projected - Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report
Pssst — wanna buy a college campus? There’s a sudden market in abandoned campuses, an outgrowth of the accelerating rate of colleges closing in the face of falling enrollment, rising debt and other problems. More than 440 of the nation’s private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities are now at risk, based on enrollment trends, debt and other measures, according to projections by Huron Consulting Group. That’s a quarter of the total. Among the most endangered: small, rural and religiously affiliated institutions. And how to dispose of the real estate is among the least of the challenges facing shuttering campuses and the students they serve.
Thursday, August 20, 2026
What Canvas learned from a massive cyberattack - Alcino Donadel, University Business
Artificial intelligence has made it easier for cyberattackers to breach college and university systems and steal valuable student and staff data. Canvas, higher education’s most high-profile victim this year, is remodeling its security to prepare for the inevitable next attempt. What experts have learned is that colleges may be sorely underprepared for the next evolution in cybersecurity. “A lot of the conversation around cybersecurity in the next six months is going to be about speed,” says Zach Pendleton, chief architect at Instructure. “Everything that made a good security program a year ago still matters, but the speed at which we’re implementing them doesn’t match the moment.” Instructure, the edtech company behind learning management system Canvas, suffered one of the largest data breaches in the U.S. this year after cybercriminals gained access through a third-party vendor—an increasingly common occurrence in higher ed.
Texas State University, Central Texas College announce expanded co-enrollment partnership serving Central Texas - Jayme Blaschke, Texas State University
Texas State University (TXST) and Central Texas College (CTC) have announced a joint expansion of the TXST Local co-enrollment program, creating new opportunities for students in Central Texas to earn both associate and bachelor’s degrees through a coordinated, affordable pathway while allowing students to remain closer to home. TXST Local is Texas State’s co-enrollment program, currently offered in partnership with Collin College, Dallas College, San Jacinto College, and Sul Ross State University. The program allows students to complete more than half of their degree at partner college tuition rates while earning a TXST bachelor’s degree. Additionally, students can access TXST resources including career services, academic support, athletics events, advising, and partner college resources from day one. The addition of Central Texas College marks the program’s continued expansion across the state.
The Next Competitive Advantage in Online Education - Adam Fein, 2U
Adam Fein, Vice President of Academic Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at 2U, reflects on how online education has become an integral part of institution-wide strategies and why alignment and partnership are increasingly important to its success. Online education has always required many parts of a university to work together: admissions, financial aid, academics, advising, career services, and technology, among others. What’s new is how central it has become to an institution’s long-term strategy. What was once treated as a specialized afterthought is now core to how universities reach learners, build their academic catalog, respond to workforce needs, and ultimately create new revenue streams. You can see that shift in the diversity of what institutions are bringing online. Degree programs are now one component of a broader portfolio that can include certificates, microcredentials, enterprise partnerships, and other forms of learning.
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Focus on the Quantum Future - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
While artificial general intelligence and artificial super intelligence will mark significant improvements in AI algorithms, there is not a single clear definition of either of these terms. Therefore, some experts believe that we have already achieved AGI and that ASI is just a year or two away; others say it will be the middle of the century before either is achieved. So, without minimizing the impact of any of the steps toward general and super intelligence, I think we are better served by focusing on more solidly defined steps in AI advancement. That brings us to what may become a pivotal stage of development in AI, the use of stable quantum computing to accelerate and extend the potential of algorithms.
Loss of International Students Could Cost Economy $3.4B - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed
The United States may have as many as 112,000 fewer international students enrolled in higher education this coming academic year, according to new projections that NAFSA: Association of International Educators and JB International published Tuesday. Based on data from the Institute of International Education, the analysis estimates that about 1,057,000 international students will be enrolled at a college or university during the 2026–27 academic year, compared to an estimated 1,169,000 during the 2025–26 academic year.
Focus on the Quantum Future - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
While artificial general intelligence and artificial super intelligence will mark significant improvements in AI algorithms, there is not a single clear definition of either of these terms. Therefore, some experts believe that we have already achieved AGI and that ASI is just a year or two away; others say it will be the middle of the century before either is achieved. So, without minimizing the impact of any of the steps toward general and super intelligence, I think we are better served by focusing on more solidly defined steps in AI advancement. That brings us to what may become a pivotal stage of development in AI, the use of stable quantum computing to accelerate and extend the potential of algorithms.
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
Universities would prefer not to. - Hollis Robbins, Hollis Robbins Annectdotal
Four years after ChatGPT caught so many by surprise, the primary role of higher education seems to be slowing down the public’s transition to the AI era. For many faculty, this is a win. For those focused on the future, this is the biggest institutional failure since the Victorian Post Office, with its monopoly on telegraph lines, dismissed the telephone because it had plenty of messenger boys. Adoption was slowed so much there were waiting lists for a home phone line into the 1970s.Some facts. More than 90 percent of notable AI models released in 2025 came from industry: GPT-5, Gemini 3, Claude Opus 4.5, Grok 4, Llama 4, DeepSeek-V3.2, Qwen 3, Kimi K2. The infrastructure supporting frontier development is also overwhelmingly from industry. Global AI compute capacity has been growing 3.3x annually since 2022, doubling every seven months, driven by hyperscalers and enormous data-center investments. Some universities are entering the compute space. Ten New York universities spent two years and $340 million to get to about 400 GPUs. In 2024, xAI in Memphis stood up 100,000 GPUs in 122 days. In the past two years a site in Abilene, Texas got to 500,000.2
How to Build an Education Platform That Supports People Through Different Stages of Life - Danny Wesley, Hackernoon
Despite the age difference, people are solving a similar problem: they are trying to move to the next level of what they are capable of. For a school student, that might mean getting into university. For a university student, access to the tools for a first set of professional skills. For an adult, a career change or a step up. The tools change, but the logic itself stays the same. What does the ideal education platform look like ten years from now? I think the boundaries between different digital education products will gradually disappear. People need separate courses or programs less and less as ends in themselves. What they need is a concrete result and a clear path to it. So education platforms will increasingly turn into systems that support people over time. They will help people gain knowledge, master new skills, adapt to changes in the market, and find new opportunities to grow. In my view, that is where the future of education lies.
AI-Enabled Ghost Student Fraud: How IT Leaders Are Fighting Back - Adam Stone, EdTech
Generative artificial intelligence is fueling a surge in ghost student fraud. Learn how layered identity verification, behavioral analytics and AI-driven pattern detection help higher ed IT leaders stop fraud rings before disbursement. First, there was the zombie college scam. Now it’s “ghost students,” bad actors leveraging artificial intelligence to create fake identities and enroll imaginary students to scoop up grants and loans. AI tools now allow synthetic identities to mimic genuine student behavior long enough to collect financial aid disbursements, and traditional enrollment systems are falling short. The schemes are costing the U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in siphoned-off federal financial aid packages
Monday, August 17, 2026
How instructional design shapes higher-order thinking among higher education students in generative artificial intelligence-supported teaching contexts - Yujia Chen & Jinling Wang, Nature
Against the backdrop of the widespread integration of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) into higher education, previous research has yielded divergent findings regarding its relationship with students’ higher-order thinking (HOT). Moving beyond outcome-oriented discussions of technology use itself, this study examines the association between HOT performance, instructional design elements, and cognitive processes in GAI-supported teaching contexts from an instructional design perspective. A multimethod analysis combining structural equation modeling (SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was conducted. The findings indicate that HOT performance cannot be explained by technology use alone. Rather, it is more likely to be associated with cognitive conflict and cognitive elaboration processes shaped by instructional design. Different instructional design elements played differentiated roles in triggering cognitive conflict and supporting cognitive elaboration. The overall influence of disciplinary context on these cognitive processes was limited, although one individual path showed a significant difference. The configurational analysis further showed that high HOT performance did not correspond to a single pathway but was associated with multiple combinations of instructional design elements and cognitive processes, demonstrating configurational multiplicity and asymmetry.
How AI Actually works - Cris Tolomia, Quartz
This piece is not about whether AI is good or bad. It's about what it actually is: how it learns, how it generates output, where its failures come from, and why the problems that afflict these systems are structural rather than incidental. Understanding these things won't make you a machine learning engineer. It will make you a sharper reader of AI coverage, a more careful user of AI tools, and a better judge of claims made by the companies building them. The 15 concepts here cover the full chain — from how models are trained to why they hallucinate, from what "parameters" actually means to why the alignment problem is harder than it looks. Some of these ideas are technical but not complicated. Others are philosophical but grounded in real engineering decisions. All of them matter if you want to engage honestly with the technology reshaping how work gets done, how content is made, and how decisions are reached in medicine, law, finance, and government.
Building expertise in the age of AI: Who trains the next generation? - Bryan Hancock, McKinsey
For decades, organizations have relied on early-career talent to do the routine, lower-risk work that supports the business and to serve as a training ground for future leaders. Think of Peggy Olson’s trajectory on Mad Men, from novice assistant to Don Draper’s protégé to confident copy chief at an advertising agency—a climb that began because routine work kept her in the room where judgment was practiced, and where her own could be noticed. In real life, advances in automation and AI are changing the composition of entry-level work itself. Tasks such as research, documentation, data cleanup, basic coding, and preliminary analysis are being streamlined or absorbed into AI systems. These are precisely the activities through which young employees have traditionally built instincts, developed judgment, and earned the right to take on more. At the same time, fears are growing about the impact of AI on jobs. In the 2025 Women in the Workplace report by McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, entry-level workers, particularly women, reported feeling the most worried of all age groups about how AI use will affect their jobs.
Friday, August 14, 2026
How to make your academic work visible to AI - Darshan Vigneswaran, Times Higher Education
Here is the brutal truth about AI discoverability: it is not replacing citation metrics. It is layering itself on top of them. So, work that is already cited, circulated and sitting inside recognisable debates is likely to become even more visible. The rich get richer, now with a chatbot assistant. If Google Scholar sometimes buries obscure work, AI tools might simply forget it was ever born. This is grim news for anyone who believes good research should glow naturally in the dark. It does not. Visibility is not a moral reward for intellectual virtue. It is a distribution problem.
Lifelong learning in an AI-driven world: assistance, personalization and automation under scrutiny - Gerardo Alfredo Rodríguez, Andres Chiappe, Fabiola Sáez-Delgado, Frontiers in Education
This scoping review examines the growing intersection between lifelong learning (LLL) and artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on whether the promises of assistance, personalization, and automation are aligned with the broader educational, social, and equity-oriented aims of LLL. The review addresses a central concern: although AI is increasingly promoted as a transformative resource for lifelong education, its deployment may not always correspond to the paradigms, geographical contexts, and vulnerability profiles emphasised in LLL literature.
Improving GPT‑5.6 Sol in ChatGPT—and expanding access to GPT‑5.6 Luna for free users - OpenAI
Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. We’re introducing updates to ChatGPT that improve everyday conversations while expanding access for Free users. For Plus and Pro users, we’re updating GPT‑5.6 Sol in Chat to be more reliable with facts and provide more focused answers. A new slider lets you choose how much thought ChatGPT puts into each response. For Free users, we're updating the default model to GPT‑5.6 Luna and expanding access with unlimited text chats. For questions that need more thought, a new Think button lets you access higher reasoning for harder questions.
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