Why Workers Should Evaluate Their Managers - Shing-Yi Wang, Knowledge at Wharton

What happens when workers get a say in evaluating their managers? At one Chinese carmaker, the results speak for themselves: happier teams, better leadership, and a noticeable boost in productivity — without a single downside. Those are key findings of a recent study by Wharton associate professor of business economics and public policy Shing-Yi Wang, and Jing Cai from the University of Maryland. Their research, published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, shows that worker feedback did not just lift morale — it cut turnover by half and made teams run more effectively, a big result in an industry like manufacturing where high turnover is a persistent challenge for companies.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-workers-should-evaluate-their-managers/

What Is Digital Citizenship in 2025? How Is It Taught? - Brian T. Horowitz, Ed Tech

Today, the concept has expanded to encompass how students use digital tools, says Eisha Buch, head of teaching and learning at Common Sense Media. "Digital citizenship is really empowering young people to think critically about their digital lives and participate in safe, healthy and responsible ways,” Buch says. Common Sense Media’s digital citizenship curriculum addresses these topics:

Media balance and well-being

Privacy and safety

Digital footprint and identity

Relationships and communication

Cyberbullying, digital drama and hate speech

News and media literacy

https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2025/02/what-digital-citizenship-2025-how-it-taught-perfcon

Should I Get Microcredentials To Complement My Four-Year Degree In Today’s Job Market? - Maja Zelihic, Forbes

The data supports this evolution. A 2023 report by the Education Design Lab highlights that 70% of employers recognize microcredentials as valuable indicators of specialized skills, while 87% continue to value the foundational knowledge provided by traditional degrees. As micropathways grow in popularity, they are increasingly regarded as complementary to degrees rather than standalone solutions. The conversation is shifting from choosing one path over the other to understanding how they work together to create versatile, future-ready professionals.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/majazelihic/2025/01/27/should-i-get-microcredentials-to-complement-my-four-year-degree-in-todays-job-market/

AI math tutor: ChatGPT can be as effective as human help, study suggests - Eric W. Dolan, PsyPost

A recent study published in PLOS One provides evidence that artificial intelligence can be just as helpful as a human tutor when it comes to learning mathematics. Researchers discovered that students using hints generated by ChatGPT, a popular artificial intelligence chatbot, showed similar learning improvements in algebra and statistics as those receiving guidance from human-authored hints. Educational technology is increasingly looking towards advanced artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to enhance learning experiences. The chatbot’s ability to generate human-like text has sparked interest in its potential for tutoring and providing educational support.

https://www.psypost.org/ai-math-tutor-chatgpt-can-be-as-effective-as-human-help-study-suggests/

6 Ways Technology Transforms Learning Across Generations - Alexa Wang, Flux Magazine

The integration of technology in education has revolutionized how learners of all ages acquire knowledge. From children in preschool to adults seeking continued education, technology provides a multitude of resources that cater to diverse learning styles, making education more engaging and accessible. As we explore how technology transforms learning across generations, it becomes evident that innovations such as online courses, educational apps, and collaborative tools enhance the educational experience while fostering lifelong learning.

https://www.fluxmagazine.com/technology-transforms-learning-across-generations/

Leading Through Disruption: Higher Education Leaders Assess AI’s Impacts on Teaching and Learning - Imagining the Digital Future, Elon University

The spread of artificial intelligence tools in education has disrupted key aspects of teaching and learning on the nation’s campuses and will likely lead to significant changes in classwork, student assignments and even the role of colleges and universities in the country, according to a national survey of higher education leaders. The survey was conducted Nov. 4-Dec. 7, 2024, by the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) and Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center. A total of 337 university presidents, chancellors, provosts, rectors, academic affairs vice presidents, and academic deans responded to questions about generative artificial intelligence tools (GenAI) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and CoPilot. The survey covered the current situation on campuses, the struggles institutional leaders encounter, the changes they anticipate and the sweeping impacts they foresee. The survey results covered in a new report, Leading Through Disruption, were released at the annual AAC&U meeting, held Jan. 22-24, 2024, in Washington, D.C.

https://imaginingthedigitalfuture.org/collaborations/ai_higher_ed_survey_jan2025/

Higher education is warming up to AI, new survey shows - EdScoop

A growing number of educators view artificial intelligence as a strategic priority, according to a paper published Monday by the nonprofit Educause. The group’s 2025 AI Landscape Study includes a survey result showing that 57% of educators polled view “AI as a strategic priority,” up from 49% in last year’s poll. While educational leaders are warming up to AI, Educause researchers wrote that institutions still have more work to do in preparing for AI. Only 22% of survey respondents said their schools had implemented institution-wide AI strategies. Fifty-five percent said AI strategy was being rolled out on an ad-hoc basis in various colleges and departments. The survey also showed that 34% of educators believe executive leaders at their institutions are underestimating the cost of AI, and only 2% said there are new funding sources for AI projects.

https://edscoop.com/higher-education-warming-ai-survey-educause-2025/

Superagency: The transformative potential of AI - McKinsey

There’s a critical difference between AI and AGI [artificial general intelligence]. Although the latest gen AI technologies, including ChatGPT, DALL-E, and others, have been hogging headlines, they are essentially prediction machines—albeit very good ones. In other words, they can predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the answer to a specific prompt because they’ve been trained on huge amounts of data. This is impressive, but it’s not at a human level of performance in terms of creativity, logical reasoning, sensory perception, and other capabilities. By contrast, AGI tools could feature cognitive and emotional abilities—like empathy—indistinguishable from those of a human.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/ai-in-action/superagency-the-transformative-potential-of-ai

Groundbreaking BBC research shows issues with over half the answers from Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistants

New BBC research published today provides a warning around the use of AI assistants to answer questions about news, with factual errors and the misrepresentation of source material affecting AI assistants.

The findings are concerning, and show:

51% of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form

19% of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors – incorrect factual statements, numbers and dates

13% of the quotes sourced from BBC articles were either altered or didn’t actually exist in that article.

https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2025/bbc-research-shows-issues-with-answers-from-artificial-intelligence-assistants

A new operating model for people management: More personal, more tech, more human - McKinsey

The way organizations manage their most important assets—their people—is ready for a fundamental transformation. New technologies, hybrid working practices, multigenerational workforces, heightened geopolitical risks, and other major disruptions are prompting leaders to rethink their methods for attracting, developing, and retaining employees. In the past year alone, for instance, we have seen more and more companies adopt, innovate, and invest in technology—particularly in gen AI—in ways that have spurred more changes to people operations than we have observed in the past decade.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/a-new-operating-model-for-people-management-more-personal-more-tech-more-human

‘Self-inflicted wound’: Widespread alarm as Trump administration slashes NIH funding - Ben Unglesbee, Higher Ed Dive

A coalition of 22 attorneys general filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday seeking to block the National Institutes of Health’s newly announced research funding cuts. NIH announced Friday it would cut roughly $4 billion a year worth of funding for indirect research costs such as administration and facilities — by capping reimbursement for these expenses at 15% for current and new grants. Research institutions have previously negotiated individual indirect cost rates, with an average of 27% to 28%, NIH said. Organizations, universities and researchers quickly raised alarms about the cuts, warning they could hurt important medical research and the economy.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/nih-indirect-cost-rate-cap-funding-cut-ags-lawsuit/739735/

Does OpenAI's Deep Research signal the end of human-only scholarship? - Andrew Maynard, The Future of Being Human

This past Sunday, OpenAI launched Deep Research — an extension of its growing platform of AI tools, and one which the company claims is an “agent that can do work for you independently … at the level of a research analyst.” I got access to the new tool first thing yesterday morning, and immediately put it to work on a project I’ve been meaning to explore for some time: writing a comprehensive framing paper on navigating advanced technology transitions. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but I didn’t anticipate being impressed as much as I was. I’m well aware of the debates and discussions around whether current advances in AI are substantial, or merely smoke and mirrors hype. But even given the questions and limitations here, I find myself beginning to question the value of human-only scholarship in the emerging age of AI. And my experiences with Deep Research have only enhanced this.

https://futureofbeinghuman.com/p/openai-deep-research-ai-scholarship

Interns Impacted by Hiring Freeze Left ‘In Limbo’ - Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed

The hiring freeze appears to have forced federal agencies to cancel numerous internships; most prominently, thousands of legal internships and entry-level positions within the Department of Justice and beyond have been impacted, according to reports on social media and in news outlet like Reuters and Law360. “We’ve most definitely seen impacts of the federal hiring freeze and subsequent actions related to college recruiting and internships. We’re hearing from colleges that there have been internships that have been canceled and we have heard that federal agencies have pulled out of going onto campuses to recruit,” said Shawn VanDerziel, executive director of the National Association of Colleges and Employers, an advocacy group for campus career centers and the businesses that work with them. “I would hope once the dust settles over the coming weeks and months that we will have many more answers and that the trajectory will be more positive.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2025/02/07/hiring-freeze-cancels-internships-federal-agencies

College Presidents’ Survey Finds Alarm Over Trump - Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed

The majority of college presidents surveyed by Inside Higher Ed believe the Trump administration will have a negative impact on the sector. Many are still optimistic. Even before President Donald Trump unleashed a flurry of executive orders involving higher education, college and university presidents expressed serious concerns about his possible impact on the sector and on their own institutions. That’s according to findings released today from Inside Higher Ed’s forthcoming 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents with Hanover Research. More than half of presidents surveyed in December and early January—51 percent—at that point believed Trump’s second administration would have a somewhat or significant negative impact on the regulatory environment for higher education.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2025/02/06/college-presidents-survey-finds-alarm-over-trump

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns: AI will match ‘country of geniuses’ by 2026 - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat

AI will match the collective intelligence of “a country of geniuses” within two years, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned in a sharp critique of this week’s AI Action Summit in Paris. His timeline — targeting 2026 or 2027 — marks one of the most specific predictions yet from a major AI leader about the technology’s advancement toward superintelligence. Amodei labeled the Paris summit a “missed opportunity,” challenging the international community’s leisurely pace toward AI governance. His warning arrives at a pivotal moment, as democratic and authoritarian nations compete for dominance in AI development.

https://venturebeat.com/ai/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-warns-ai-will-match-country-of-geniuses-by-2026/

The Industry Reacts to OpenAI's Deep Research - "Hard Takeoff" - Matthew Berman, YouTube

Matthew Berman responds to the release of OpenAI's "Deep Research." Generalized PhD: Deep Research's performance on STEM benchmarks surpasses that of human PhDs, demonstrating the potential for AI to outperform humans in specialized fields. Economic Impact: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, estimates that Deep Research can already accomplish a single-digit percentage of all economically valuable tasks in the world. Game Changer for Research: Deep Research is being used in various fields, including medicine, to assist with research, publishing, and even patient care. Google's Response: Google employees have expressed surprise and amusement at OpenAI's decision to name their product Deep Research, which is the same name as Google's research product. Overall, the podcast conveys a sense of excitement and urgency about the rapid advancements in AI and the potential impact on society. Berman emphasizes the importance of understanding and adapting to these changes as AI continues to evolve. (summary provided in part by Gemini 2.0)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4hGKsLaKfk

Introducing deep research - Open AI

Deep research is OpenAI's next agent that can do work for you independently—you give it a prompt, and ChatGPT will find, analyze, and synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of a research analyst. Powered by a version of the upcoming OpenAI o3 model that’s optimized for web browsing and data analysis, it leverages reasoning to search, interpret, and analyze massive amounts of text, images, and PDFs on the internet, pivoting as needed in reaction to information it encounters. The ability to synthesize knowledge is a prerequisite for creating new knowledge. For this reason, deep research marks a significant step toward our broader goal of developing AGI, which we have long envisioned as capable of producing novel scientific research.

https://openai.com/index/introducing-deep-research/

Trump Orders Disrupt Academic Research - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed

As the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation review grants and programming for verboten topics—including DEI and “gender ideology”—many researchers aren’t sure if their projects will pass Trump’s nebulous, ideological tests. Many federally funded scientists have either had their grants terminated or can’t access approved funding while the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other science agencies work to comply with President Trump’s recent executive orders. The orders, which researchers say are vague, ban funding for diversity, equity and inclusion; “gender ideology”; and green energy projects, among other issues.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/02/03/how-trumps-executive-orders-are-disrupting

Accreditors brace for Trump’s promised higher ed shakeup - Ben Unglesbee & Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive

On the 2024 campaign trail, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump accused the nation’s faculty of being “obsessed with indoctrinating America’s youth” and declared, “The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left.” His administration’s “secret weapon” in this conflict would be the accreditation system for colleges and universities.  “When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” he said in a July 2023 campaign video. “We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”

https://www.highereddive.com/news/accreditors-trump-immigration-dei-ed-department-chea-conference/738961/

DeepSeek’s Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot - Matt Burgess, Wired

Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022, hackers and security researchers have tried to find holes in large language models (LLMs) to get around their guardrails and trick them into spewing out hate speech, bomb-making instructions, propaganda, and other harmful content. In response, OpenAI and other generative AI developers have refined their system defenses to make it more difficult to carry out these attacks. But as the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek rockets to prominence with its new, cheaper R1 reasoning model, its safety protections appear to be far behind those of its established competitors. Today, security researchers from Cisco and the University of Pennsylvania are publishing findings showing that, when tested with 50 malicious prompts designed to elicit toxic content, DeepSeek’s model did not detect or block a single one. In other words, the researchers say they were shocked to achieve a “100 percent attack success rate.”

https://www.wired.com/story/deepseeks-ai-jailbreak-prompt-injection-attacks/

University of Phoenix College of Doctoral Studies Releases White Paper on Retention and Success in Online Learning Communities - Business Wire

 University of Phoenix College of Doctoral Studies has released a new white paper, “Cultivating Supportive Learning Communities to Increase Retention and Success in Online Programs,” by Joy Hicks, Ed.D., a member of the University’s Center for Educational and Instructional Technology Research (CEITR). In the paper, Hicks offers a literature-based overview of methods for fostering supportive online learning communities that enhance student retention and success in online programs. “What we see is that a sense of belonging in online learning communities is a necessity to enhance the overall experience for students,” Hicks states. “This can be achieved by building a collaborative and stimulating learning environment through active learning and dynamic elements such as networking, study groups, discussion boards, group chats, and student-created blogs for ideas and thoughtful sharing. Making learning relevant, enjoyable, and engaging improves understanding and also builds resilience.”

https://www.standard-journal.com/ap/business/article_a69735bb-622a-5287-9ca2-14a7399b5745.html