AI-Powered Higher Education

Arizona State University via Coursera

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Certificate Available
Effort

8 weeks, 1 hour a week
Sessions

Self-Paced
Level

Beginner
Subtitles

English

Found in

Overview

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Welcome to AI-Powered Higher Education—a course designed for faculty, student support staff, and academic leaders who are ready to explore how generative AI can meaningfully impact teaching, learning, and the student experience. You’ll explore the potential of AI to support better decisions, improve student engagement, and close feedback loops while also considering its limitations and risks. Whether you're using AI to analyze learning data, enhance your instruction, design equitable assessments, or improve student services, this course will guide you through thoughtful strategies you can apply in your everyday work. You will develop a ready-to-use AI blueprint tailored to a real student experience challenge in your professional context, gain hands-on experience using generative AI tools, and learn ethical and inclusive design practices.

Syllabus

Welcome to AI-Powered Higher Education

Welcome to AI-Powered Higher Education—a course designed for faculty, student support staff, and academic leaders who are ready to explore how generative AI can meaningfully impact teaching, learning, and the student experience. You’ll explore the potential of AI to support better decisions, improve student engagement, and close feedback loops while also considering its limitations and risks. Whether you're using AI to analyze learning data, enhance your instruction, design equitable assessments, or improve student services, this course will guide you through thoughtful strategies you can apply in your everyday work. You will develop a ready-to-use AI blueprint tailored to a real student experience challenge in your professional context, gain hands-on experience using generative AI tools, and learn ethical and inclusive design practices.

Foundations of Generative AI

In this module, we will review what generative AI is and how it works. We will also discuss important ethical concerns and considerations to acknowledge when working with and integrating AI in a higher education context. You’ll also create an account and begin collaborating with ChatGPT, who will act as your thought partner throughout the course. This foundational knowledge will help you develop an effective AI-driven solution for your proposal by providing the groundwork for thinking about ethics, risk assessment and the many use cases for AI.

Identifying Knowledge Gaps and Learning Opportunities with AI

In this module, you’ll explore how generative AI can support data-informed decision-making in higher education. With access to LMS activity, quiz results, discussion comments and other forms of student performance data, faculty and student support professionals are in a strong position to spot trends. However, making sense of this data can be time-consuming and complex. That’s where AI can help. You’ll learn how to use AI tools to detect learning gaps, drop-off points and areas of opportunity by analyzing student performance and engagement data. You’ll also consider the ethical use of student data—especially in the context of privacy laws like FERPA—and reflect on which data sources are most appropriate for your work. By the end of the module, you’ll be able to connect patterns in the data to actionable next steps for improving instruction, programs or student support services.

AI for Teaching and Student Engagement

In this module, you’ll explore how generative AI can act as a creative partner in designing more engaging, inclusive, and responsive learning experiences. Whether you're building a lesson plan, planning a workshop, developing a communication strategy, or supporting student services, AI tools can help you brainstorm ideas, adapt content, and generate materials faster—without sacrificing thoughtfulness. You’ll practice using AI to co-create solutions that align with your student population’s needs, learning modalities, and engagement patterns. You’ll also consider the limits of AI-generated content and how to apply your professional judgment to shape it into something meaningful.

AI and Assessment Integrity

In this module, you’ll explore how AI can support fair, ethical and effective evaluation, whether that’s of student learning, engagement or program outcomes. From grading assignments to delivering tailored student support, every touchpoint we create has the power to shape how students understand success and expectations. You’ll experiment with AI to design or refine strategies for evaluating outcomes and providing feedback, and you'll examine where bias or misalignment can occur. Whether you’re teaching a course, advising students, or supporting programming, this module will help you ask the critical question: Are we measuring what really matters, and are we doing it fairly?

Closing the Student Feedback Loop Using AI

In this module, you’ll explore how to use generative AI to collect, analyze and respond to student feedback—turning insight into action. Whether it’s end-of-course surveys, advising follow-ups or informal check-ins, feedback from learners is one of the most powerful tools for improving the student experience. But collecting feedback isn’t enough. Students need to see that their voices lead to meaningful changes. You’ll experiment with using AI to surface patterns in qualitative feedback, prioritize action areas and design adjustments that reflect student needs and values.

Final Project: AI-Driven Student Experience Blueprint

In this final module, you’ll pull together everything you’ve created, analyzed and reflected on throughout the course to finalize your AI-informed solution. You’ve explored how generative AI can help identify student needs, co-create targeted interventions, evaluate effectiveness and refine through feedback. Now it’s time to integrate those insights into a concise, compelling deliverable. Your completed project will demonstrate not only how you’ve applied AI to a real challenge in higher education—but how you’ve done so ethically, critically, and with the student experience at the center. Whether you’re an educator, advisor, designer or administrator, your final deliverable is a practical, actionable plan you can adapt to your own context or use in the future as your work evolves.

Course Conclusion

This module serves as the conclusion to the AI-Powered Higher Education course. It provides a comprehensive wrap-up of the learning journey, congratulating learners on their achievements and reinforcing the importance of thoughtful, ethical, and creative engagement with AI in higher education. It also outlines the next steps for learners, including completing the course evaluation and claiming their completion badge.