ETSU recognized in three categories of 2024 Abound College Awards - Jennifer L. Hill, ETSU

Abound is a college guidance system for degree-seeking adults, and helps students age 24 and up find the best place to earn an undergraduate or graduate degree. In the Finish College Awards, ETSU won in the categories Best Colleges for Adults, Best Online Colleges and Best Colleges for Military and Veterans. “As an institution that puts people first, ETSU provides adult students with the flexibility they need to earn their degree,” said Timothy Lewis, director of New Student and Family Programs at ETSU. “Not only do we provide special services to our adult students, our faculty and staff work to get to know each student as an individual: helping each student succeed and reach their specific goals.”

https://www.etsu.edu/etsu-news/2024/10-october/abound-college-awards.php

How AI Is Reshaping Higher Education - AACSB

Because artificial intelligence will likely become the primary way humans access information, professors must prepare students to use the technology effectively in their lives and careers. Students will especially need to learn skills related to effective prompt engineering, which refers to the ability to craft questions that elicit the most useful answers from AI platforms. The more comfortable that faculty become with using AI, the better they will be at teaching students how to use this skill ethically and effectively in the years to come.

https://www.aacsb.edu/insights/articles/2023/10/how-ai-is-reshaping-higher-education

EDUCAUSE 2024: The Risks and Rewards of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education - EdTech

The world took notice when OpenAI released the high-powered large language model ChatGPT in November 2022. Nearly two years later, at EDUCAUSE 2024 in San Antonio, artificial intelligence was still a hot topic of conversation among higher education’s leading technologists. They mostly agree that AI is a tool that could be beneficial to colleges and universities in a number of ways, but acknowledge that just because an AI solution exists, that doesn’t mean it’s the right solution. Working backward from a problem to identify if AI is the best path forward is a good way to avoid making AI mistakes, and ensuring good data governance before implementing AI is vital to producing accurate outcomes.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/media/video/educause-2024-risks-and-rewards-artificial-intelligence-higher-education

Leveraging AI to Improve Learner Outcomes and Learner Records - UPCEA

The implementation of AI-driven tools in higher education is still in its early phases. It's clear that institutional staff either are still learning how to incorporate the tools into the learning process or are encountering obstacles in optimizing their use. This study revealed that interest in the potential of these technologies is far outpacing adoption. Most respondents are heavily involved in developing learner experiences and tracking outcomes, though nearly half report their institutions have yet to adopt AI-driven tools for these purposes. The research also found that only three percent of institutions have implemented Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs), which provide a complete overview of an individual’s lifelong learning experiences. Download your copy of UPCEA and Instructure's latest research study today.

https://upcea.edu/ai-to-improve-learner-outcomes/

Memorandum on Advancing the United States’ Leadership in Artificial Intelligence; Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Fulfill National Security Objectives; and Fostering the Safety, Security, and Trustworthiness of Artificial Intelligence - the White House

This memorandum fulfills the directive set forth in subsection 4.8 of Executive Order 14110 of October 30, 2023 (Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence).  This memorandum provides further direction on appropriately harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) models and AI-enabled technologies in the United States Government, especially in the context of national security systems (NSS), while protecting human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, and safety in AI-enabled national security activities.  A classified annex to this memorandum addresses additional sensitive national security issues, including countering adversary use of AI that poses risks to United States national security.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/10/24/memorandum-on-advancing-the-united-states-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence-harnessing-artificial-intelligence-to-fulfill-national-security-objectives-and-fostering-the-safety-security/

SynthID: Identifying AI-generated content with SynthID - Google Deep Mind

Being able to identify AI-generated content is critical to promoting trust in information. While not a silver bullet for addressing problems such as misinformation or misattribution, SynthID is a suite of promising technical solutions to this pressing AI safety issue. This toolkit is currently launched in beta and continues to evolve. It’s now being integrated into a growing range of products, helping empower people and organizations to responsibly work with AI-generated content. SynthID uses a variety of deep learning models and algorithms for watermarking and identifying AI-generated content.

https://deepmind.google/technologies/synthid/

1 in 6 Companies Are Hesitant To Hire Recent College Graduates - Intelligent

In August, Intelligent.com surveyed 966 business leaders involved in hiring decisions at their company to explore attitudes toward hiring recent Gen Z college graduates. What we found:

75% of companies report that some or all of the recent college graduates they hired this year were unsatisfactory

6 in 10 companies fired a recent college graduate they hired this year

1 in 6 hiring managers say they are hesitant to hire from this cohort

Hiring managers say recent college grads are unprepared for the workforce, can’t handle the workload, and are unprofessional

1 in 7 companies may refrain from hiring recent college graduates next year

9 in 10 hiring managers say recent college graduates should undergo etiquette training

https://www.intelligent.com/1-in-6-companies-are-hesitant-to-hire-recent-college-graduates/

The art of 21st-century leadership: From succession planning to building a leadership factory - Bob Sternfels, et al; McKinsey

In this article, we explore what it will take to be a leader for this century and how organizations can build a leadership factory that shapes, develops, and mentors the next generation of managers. The organizations that treat leadership development as a core capability and proactively address the needs of both existing and aspiring leaders can raise their overall resilience and substantially improve the odds that they will be able to withstand disruption—whatever it is, and whenever it appears next.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-art-of-21st-century-leadership-from-succession-planning-to-building-a-leadership-factory

Are colleges really facing an enrollment cliff? - Dick Startz, Brookings

A large number of colleges have very low student enrollment and few or no endowment resources, and these are the institutions most at risk now and in the coming years. Additionally, college enrollments in some states are likely to drop drastically over the next few years, putting some colleges in those states at risk. The real story is likely to be program elimination within colleges rather than full college closures. There is significant anecdotal evidence pointing in this direction, but little comprehensive data.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/are-colleges-really-facing-an-enrollment-cliff/

Black women on the academic tightrope: four scholars weigh in - Malika Jeffries-EL, Monica R. McLemore, Ruby Zelzer & Tiara Moore, Nature

Black women have long flagged an insidious issue they have to contend with: misogynoir, a combination of sexism and anti-Black racism that often manifests as a lack of respect and impedes their prospects. The data are clear, the problem is pervasive, including in academia. Here, four scholars discuss their anti-racism work. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03342-0

Harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence in New Jersey: The time is now - written by ChatGPT, edited by Andrew Zwicker, NJ.com

By investing in AI education for all students, from K-12 through higher education, the state will cultivate a workforce prepared to engage with and build on these new technologies. By fostering AI research and development in our four-year universities, New Jersey will create a talent pipeline with the skills and creativity to invent the next generation of problem-solving AI tools and fill high-demand roles across the industry spectrum. Similarly, we must invest in our community colleges, ensuring equitable access to the AI education and training that will be needed to fill jobs that don’t require an advanced degree. Community colleges will also be vital to quickly and nimbly providing opportunities for all workers to obtain new AI skills as they emerge, and to retrain workers whose jobs do disappear.

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2024/10/harnessing-the-potential-of-artificial-intelligence-in-new-jersey-the-time-is-now-opinion.html

NotebookLM - Google Blog

NotebookLM is a tool for understanding, built with Gemini 1.5. When you upload your sources, it instantly becomes an expert, grounding its responses in your material and giving you powerful ways to transform information. And since it’s your notebook, your personal data is never used to train NotebookLM. Millions of people are already using NotebookLM to understand and engage with complex information, and today we’re removing the product’s “Experimental” label and releasing another round of features.

https://blog.google/technology/ai/notebooklm-update-october-2024/

Using Collaborative Learning to Elevate Students' Educational Experiences - Faculty Focus

Collaborative learning is an educational environment where students work together in smaller groups to achieve a common goal. Collaborative learning is analogous to the traditional learning model, in which teachers impact knowledge on students. Bruffee (1999), the most prominent name in collaborate learning, describes collaborative learning as “creates conditions in which students can negotiate the boundaries between the knowledge communities they belong to and the one that the professor belongs to” (p. 144). Collaborative learning and e-learning have been gaining momentum over many decades as research has proven how beneficial it is for students’ development and learning. It has become a focus of significant learning institutions (Gao, 2020; Gutierrez, Sanchez, Castaneda, & Prendas, 2017). 

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/faculty-development/using-collaborative-learning-to-elevate-students-educational-experiences/

Financial pressure grows for colleges, Fitch says - Ben Unglesbee, Higher Ed Dive

Pressure on college finances is intensifying despite modest enrollment growth this fall, slowing inflation and other tailwinds for the sector, according to a recent analysis by Fitch Ratings. In a Friday release, Fitch noted that while most of the colleges it rates have stable financial outlooks, it has increasingly lowered outlooks for colleges in recent quarters — which could portend more credit downgrades ahead. Sectorwide, the ratings agency has a negative outlook for higher education, a now multiyear trend, Fitch senior director Emily Wadhwani noted in a Thursday webinar. “We do expect the sector to yield generally softer operating margins and continue to show some strains on financial flexibility as we head into 2025,” she said.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/financial-pressure-grows-colleges-fitch-enrollment-costs/729791/

Changing of the Guard at ‘Inside Higher Ed’ - Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

I preface the link to this article by Doug Lederman by joining fellow IHE blogger and education writer, speaker, and consultant, John Warner, in thanking Doug Lederman for his vision and leadership in Higher Education.  Doug announced earlier this month his stepping down from the editor position in Inside Higher Ed.  Over the past two decades, Doug served our field deftly through journalistic leadership in our evollution to where we stand today in higher education. He sums up his contributions in this article by writing "After spending the last 35-plus years analyzing and assessing higher ed, I’m looking forward to a next career chapter, where I can try to fix some of the problems I see in this industry I care so much about." So, it is not good-bye, but with optimism for the future that I encourage you to visit the URL below for Doug's  article.

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/10/09/changing-guard-inside-higher-ed

Science Says Being Generous, Thoughtful, and Kind Is a Sign of High Intelligence. Leading Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant Agrees - Jeff Hayden, Inc.

According to a study published in the International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, greater cognitive ability is associated with a higher probability of charitable giving.  A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality found that unconditional altruistic behavior (acting to help someone else at some sort of cost to yourself) is related to general intelligence.  A study published in Social Psychology and Personality Science found that intelligence correlates with personal values; in simple terms (the only terms I understand), the less selfish you are, the smarter you tend to be.

https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/science-says-being-generous-thoughtful-and-kind-is-a-sign-of-high-intelligence-organizational-psychologist-adam-grant-agrees/90985740

Machines of Loving Grace - Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic

In fact I think it is critical to have a genuinely inspiring vision of the future, and not just a plan to fight fires. Many of the implications of powerful AI are adversarial or dangerous, but at the end of it all, there has to be something we’re fighting for, some positive-sum outcome where everyone is better off, something to rally people to rise above their squabbles and confront the challenges ahead. Fear is one kind of motivator, but it’s not enough: we need hope as well. The list of positive applications of powerful AI is extremely long (and includes robotics, manufacturing, energy, and much more), but I’m going to focus on a small number of areas that seem to me to have the greatest potential to directly improve the quality of human life. The five categories I am most excited about are:

Biology and physical health

Neuroscience and mental health

Economic development and poverty

Peace and governance

Work and meaning

https://darioamodei.com/machines-of-loving-grace

Stanford Researchers Use AI to Simulate Clinical Reasoning - Abby Sourwine, GovTech

Researchers at Stanford University are designing Clinical Mind AI to be a customizable chatbot that can function as a virtual patient with which medical students can interact and practice forming diagnoses. A key component of medical education is a skill called clinical reasoning. Thomas Caruso, a professor teaching anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford University, likens clinical reasoning to an episode of the TV show House. “Clinical reasoning is sort of like a House episode, where we reveal a little bit of information about the patient, they give a differential diagnosis. We reveal a little bit more, they hone their differential diagnosis. Then, they get to a point where they're treating this patient for what they presume to be the diagnosis,” Caruso said.

https://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/stanford-researchers-use-ai-to-simulate-clinical-reasoning

Generative AI, the American worker, and the future of work - Molly Kinder, Xavier de Souza Briggs, Mark Muro, and Sifan Liu, Brookings

Existing generative AI technology already has the potential to significantly disrupt a wide range of jobs. We find that more than 30% of all workers could see at least 50% of their occupation’s tasks disrupted by generative AI. Unlike previous automation technologies that primarily affected routine, blue collar work, generative AI is likely to disrupt a different array of “cognitive” and “nonroutine” tasks, especially in middle- to higher-paid professions. 

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/generative-ai-the-american-worker-and-the-future-of-work/ 

Report: A Quarter of Those with Graduate Degrees Say They Regret Going to College - Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed

The report, which focused on college’s value, was based on the results of a survey of 1,000 Americans with a college degree and 1,000 who do not have a degree. Over all, about three-quarters of respondents with a graduate degree say they do not regret attending college, and 59 percent of those with an associate or bachelor’s degree say the same thing. Cost is a different matter, however; across all types of degrees, 59 percent of respondents say their student loan investment was worth the cost. Arts and humanities majors, perhaps surprisingly, were most likely to say their degree was worth the cost, with 68 percent saying so.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/10/11/report-quarter-grads-say-they-regret-going-college

Commentary: AI detectors don't work, so what's the end game for higher education? - Casper Roe and Mike Perkins, Channel News Asia

AI detectors struggle to keep up with quickly changing AI models, and their reliance on standardised measures of what is considered “human” can unfairly disadvantage people who speak English as a second or third language. The potential of falsely accusing students and damaging their future raises serious concerns about the use of AI detectors in academic settings. Furthermore, this approach is counterintuitive in a world where we should be reaping the benefits of AI. You can’t extoll the advantages of using a calculator and then punish students for not doing math in their heads. Educators shouldn’t rush to punish students based on what AI detectors say. Instead, they should think of better ways to assess students.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/ai-detector-university-school-teacher-student-assess-writing-test-4665366