AI is one of the fastest-adopted technologies in recent history. Over the last two years, it shot to the forefront of mainstream consciousness, changing buyer behaviors, consumption trends, ways of working and business tech strategies across almost every industry.
While AI is prominently shaping the future of many industries, its use in higher-education tells a much different story.
We spoke with Michael Hale, Chief Learning Officer at VitalSource, a leading education technology solutions and digital course materials provider, to explore the challenges of implementing AI in higher-education and the role VitalSource’s learning science team plays in helping institutions take advantage of the technology. The learning science team is also significantly shaping VitalSource’s tech strategy and industry differentiation.
Q. While the use of AI in education has accelerated rapidly over the last few years, many in the industry remain unsure of how to prioritize new technology. What are some of the biggest challenges when talking with higher-education institutions about adopting AI, and how have you addressed them?
A: Oftentimes, the conversation around AI in higher-ed focuses on whether students should use the technology or not. The reality is that they’re already using it, but they’re often using it without any guidance on how it can best support their learning journey.
Like any tool, AI is an easy technology to use poorly or in ways that are counterproductive. Many people think of it as a tool that “knows” things instead of a tool that processes
data. General AI chat-like tools - which are often what students use – are the front-end from Large Language Models (LLMs) and process data from a vast number of sources, providing insights that may or may not align with the courses they’re enrolled in or the concepts they’re trying to understand.
Faculty and administration should embrace the use of AI both for students and for themselves, and focus the conversation on which tools best support the student’s learning journey along with the faculty’s needs. Institutions should be the ones to proactively provide principles and guidelines on how to best use these tools in a way that still aligns with their mission and learning principles.
Q. Beyond student success, what strategic priorities can institutions and their staff look to AI to help solve?
A: If I was an instructor today, I would use AI as a tool to help me build new courses and to align learning objectives with lesson plans.
AI helps accelerate development - not replace the thinking behind it. It’s a great tool to start your research or to help narrow in your thinking across a broad topic, and it can help quickly create a list of next steps and even provide some assistance along the way. It can help save a lot of time that traditionally goes into planning and development, but the overall process still needs to be human-led and human focused.
Q. Upcoming generations are increasingly asking questions about the ROI of higher education. How can AI tools and digital course materials help improve the perception of the value of higher-ed among incoming students?
A: VitalSource understands that most learners will go on to work in industries beyond education, so our focus isn't only on the learning objectives of course materials, but also the skills that are needed to succeed.
By using AI in the classroom, students become familiar with the nuances of prompting, sourcing research from AI and identifying opportunities for greater efficiency, which are high-value skills that they will use in their everyday lives long after they graduate. We want to arm them with both the foundational knowledge and the skills that will help them advance throughout their career.
Q. AI-powered solutions are plentiful. How does VitalSource differentiate its AI technology from free solutions like ChatGPT?
A: VitalSource has a team of learning scientists that helped us build our AI enhanced learning features to be aligned with the well-founded learning principles that we know can lead to improvements in student success.
For example, research on the doer effect - the principle that students who engage with more practice have higher learning gains than those who simply read text or watch a video - was integral to our AI development. As a result, we have now published research that demonstrates a causal relationship between student engagement with our initial AI-created assessment feature, Bookshelf CoachMe, and increased success in the course. In short, when students answer formative questions throughout their course materials, they perform better on the course assessments.
Unlike general AI tools like ChatGPT, our AI tools deliver responses and assessments that are aligned directly to the course materials the instructor has selected. This helps both students and faculty remain focused on the material at hand and the course work they’ve developed.
Q. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the higher-ed industry right now. What are institutions most focused on this year? And how can they utilize their partners and solutions to best navigate the changes the industry is experiencing?
A: I don’t think there’s a single industry that isn’t navigating immense amounts of change right now, and because of that, people’s attention is getting pulled in many different directions.
The best way any organization can navigate the uncertainty is to figure out what they can control and what will have the most impact on their business, and then create a plan to address that specifically.
Change can often make organizations look for short-term partners that can help them navigate whatever is right in front of them, but we have found that where you’ll find the best partners is when you identify one with an aligned mission and vision that can take you years into the future.
Q. Looking ahead, what is a prediction you have on how AI will further shape higher-education over the next 1-5 years?
A: The adoption of AI in higher-ed is not going to be as quick as we see in other industries and will likely split our audiences into various sub-groups.
Overall, I believe we’ll start to see a lot more talk of skills development and workforce preparedness, especially as other industries continue to change around us. Schools that are highly connected to the workforce - such as community colleges or trade schools - will adopt AI tools quickly, driven by the needs of their learners whereas larger, 4-year institutions will fold more of their own tradition and prestige into the AI adoption process.