Our March collection of articles and announcements to share this month.
Education
Digital Education Council Global AI Faculty Survey 2025 offers insights into how faculty use and perceive AI in higher education, assessing their awareness, readiness for AI integration, and views on institutional AI policies.
How will AI reshape academic employment? The rise of AI in higher education highlights the need for academics to upskill and adapt to new roles and ways of working. Read about how to future-proof your career.
Humanities teaching will have to adapt to AI. Jim Endersby recalls how maths teachers responded to the arrival of cheap pocket calculators in the 1970s and likens it to current fears of AI use by university students
In an AI world, higher education faces innovate-or-perish challenge Australia’s higher education sector faces significant challenges due to technological advancements, particularly AI, requiring urgent innovation to adapt to changing job markets and student needs. Institutions must prioritise investment in technology to remain viable and support future education delivery models.
Evaluating Grammar Checkers, A longitudinal, comparative study A college staff member in the US tested various grammar and spelling checkers, including ChatGPT(free), on 20 common errors, finding most performed poorly (5-50% accuracy). ChatGPT scored 88% in one run but struggled with consistency and sometimes gave poor advice.
AI’s Workforce Impact in Numbers: What FE Leaders Need to Know A study by Anthropic, published on 10th February 2025, moves beyond forecasts to reveal how AI is already embedded in professional workflows.
AI-powered app takes home the trophy at further education ‘Oscars’ City College Plymouth’s Quality of Education app won the Jisc sponsored category for effective use of digital technology at the 2025 Association of Colleges (AoC) Beacon Awards. The app, leverages AI to enhance the quality of education, stood out for its innovative approach and significant impact on further education. This recognition highlights the app’s role in transforming learning experiences and improving educational outcomes through the effective use of digital technology.
Digital Education Council AI Literacy Framework The framework defines five key dimensions of AI literacy, focussing on general AI literacy for all, as well as specialised AI literacy that can be adapted to different disciplines and jurisdictions.
Assessment
But how? And why even? Practical examples of ways assessments have been modified a collection of ideas about practical ways assessments could be modified to either make them more AI ‘robust’ or at least ‘AI aware’ or ‘AI inclusive’
UK universities warned to ‘stress-test’ assessments as 92% of students use AI. Survey of 1,000 students shows ‘explosive increase’ in use of generative AI over past 12 months
Are Scottish students using AI to cheat their way to a degree? More than 600 Scottish students were accused of misusing AI during part of their studies last year – a rise of 121% on 2023 figures.
Accessibility
AI and Accessibility: feature, the future or fad? A blog from Uni of York’s digital accessibility team, around issues of using AI (or any technology) to ‘fix’ a situation or experience instead of making that experience accessible in the first place.
What should I know? Analysing behaviour and feedback from student use of a virtual assistant to share information about disabilities Administrative burden is a recognised cause of inequities for disabled students. Experiences of sharing information about disabilities and arranging adjustments can be demoralising and present barriers to success.
Research
Wiley releases AI guidelines for authors Wiley introduced guidelines at the London Book Fair on using AI responsibly in authorship, advising authors on maintaining authenticity, reliability, and ethical integrity in their manuscripts while using AI tools.
How good are AI Deep Research tools? Comparing 5 products Full guide on Deep Research: Comparing 5 Learning Tools What is Deep Research What does it do Deep Research is a type of AI agent that takes the interaction with an LLM beyond what can be achieved by a single prompt.
AI tool ‘could halve time spent on literature research’ ScienceDirect innovation allows academics to interrogate articles and compare experiments
AI search summaries cannibalise academic publishers’ web traffic Rise of robot-written summaries should push publishers to articulate value and impact of research more clearly, argues Oxford University Press director
Academic publishers warn against AI copyright plans Government’s proposed changes could “undermine not only scholarly publishing but academia more broadly”.
Environment
Power hungry Major US tech companies, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, are investing heavily in renewable energy sources to power advanced AI systems, raising concerns about potential monopolistic control over energy infrastructure
Public attitudes
Survey shows concerns in public attitudes towards AI. Almost three quarters of the UK public say that laws and regulation would increase their comfort with AI, according to the results of a published by the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Alan Turing Institute.
Vendor news
Microsoft Ability Summit 2025: Accessibility in the AI era Microsoft announced new accessibility features including an improvement in Microsoft Teams for Sign Language View, where Teams will soon identify and highlight sign language users as speakers in meetings. Additionally, a recent EY study highlighted that Copilot has helped 76% of neurodiverse employees improve work performance by enhancing communication, memory recall, and focus.
Introducing NextGenAI: A consortium to advance research and education with AI. OpenAI commits $50M in funding and tools to leading institutions. Launching NextGenAI, a first-of-its-kind consortium with 15 leading research institutions dedicated to using AI to accelerate research breakthroughs and transform education.
How Google Tripled AI Chip Carbon Efficiency The study found that innovation in our chip hardware design led to a 3x improvement in the carbon-efficiency of AI workloads over two generations and that decarbonising our electricity-related emissions will drive the biggest carbon reductions for our AI footprint.
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