By automating daily tasks, AI innovation can improve learning experiences, maximise efficiencies and reduce costs – but doing so responsibly takes expertise.
Higher education aims to enhance learning experiences, producing well-informed professionals through expert-led instruction with cutting-edge tools.
With declining spending on higher education, AI emerges as a pivotal solution to optimise limited resources. The National Center for Education Statistics reveals a decade-long decrease in spending, from 32 to 27 per cent in public colleges and from 32 to 29 per cent in private colleges.¹
AI streamlines tasks which enable faculty and students to allocate more time to teaching and learning. The shift from 40 to under 30 hours of student study time can be compensated with AI tools, offering personalised learning through analytics, smart content, and AI teaching assistants.¹
Encouraging AI training programs for students and educators becomes essential for institutions to harness AI’s potential safely and effectively as its role in higher education continues to expand.
Implementing AI
When implementing AI in the classroom, the following factors are important:
• Providing equitable access to devices and AI platforms through smarter classrooms, labs, and campuses.
• Offering professional development to faculty on how to use AI to create more efficient workflows, find instructional resources, and implement as a teaching and learning tool.
• Redefining assessments based on the new processes and capabilities offered by AI.
• Initiating programs for student-driven AI learning and innovation.
• Educating students on AI bias, copyright infringement, fact checking, and ethical uses.
• Ensuring ethical use of AI by creating policies to support safe and responsible use.
AI helps maximise efficiency
AI has the ability to streamline workloads for everyone in the institution.
AI tools can help faculty reallocate time from teaching preparation and administrative tasks to research and student contact. These tools can:
• Streamline administrative workflows.
• Automate grading.
• Automate parts of lesson planning and teaching material creation.
• Offer recommendations for course improvements.
• Personalise teaching materials to the needs of the students.
• Spot trends in student performance.
Faculty and students need support to make the most of their AI experience. The infrastructure that makes learning possible at the institution is built and maintained by administrators and IT professionals who face their own challenges with overwhelm and retention. AI tools offer many of the same efficiency benefits to these professionals but on a grander scale.
Find trusted expertise
Fifty per cent of institutions say the lack of a strategy is the biggest obstacle holding them back from adopting AI.²
A trusted partner can help schools empower teachers and administrators to improve learning experiences and maximise efficiencies.
Lenovo is the largest global provider of PC’s in the education sector, who established the Lenovo Responsible AI Committee to decide the principles that AI must support in the organisation.
It supports organisations in comprehending and tackling considerations such as privacy, fair usage, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
To learn more, visit: www.lenovo.com/au/en/services/
Sources
1. U.S. News & World Report, “One Culprit in Rising College Costs: Administrative Expenses,” June 2023
2. Holon IQ, “Artificial Intelligence in Education: 2023 Survey Insights,” February 2023
