Technology and new media

Wave of ‘low-quality’ papers threatening to overwhelm journals and peer reviewers, preventing them from assessing more meaningful research

Academics at UCL’s law school challenge sector’s embrace of technology, claiming students’ over-reliance on ‘shortcuts’ damages skills acquisition

If students don’t make the effort to comprehend, synthesise and relate ideas for themselves, they will miss out on meaningful academic growth, says Zahid Naz

The clever stimulation of popular resentment against the perceived elitism of higher education only leaves the masses to the mercy of oligarchs who have aced the populism game, says Saikat Majumdar

Bots’ tendency to display ‘unwarranted confidence’ and fixate on ‘pink elephants’ particularly risky in medical research, according to new paper

European universities urged to review dependence on Amazon, Google and Microsoft as Trump policies expose vulnerabilities

Universities must also be flexible enough to facilitate continuous course adaptation as technology advances, say Caroline and Lee Clewley

Data indicates more scholars turning to alternative social media site to post about their work after Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

When technology is deployed to augment individuals’ capacities, they retain the power to shape social and political outcomes, says Stephanie Marshall

Rapid pace of change makes keeping course content up to date a real challenge, according to technology expert

Universities let students down if they fail to prepare them for the future workplace, LSE conference hears

‘Problematic’ lack of skills and knowledge over online security prompts move to create shared service

China’s ambition to lead the world in AI is far from unique. Yet its resources, talent and coordination of higher education and industry could just give it the edge, especially as Donald Trump’s policies diminish the US’ allure to top talent. Helen Packer and Futao Huang report 

ScienceDirect innovation allows academics to interrogate articles and compare experiments

Rise of robot-written summaries should push publishers to articulate value and impact of research more clearly, argues Oxford University Press director

AI is here to stay but universities must teach students to use it responsibly, say Duncan Brumby, Anna Cox, Advait Sarkar and Sandy Gould

Universities should prioritise ensuring that assessments are ‘assessing what we mean to assess’ rather than letting conversations be dominated by discussions around cheating

One in four students tell Hepi they use text generated by tools such as ChatGPT in submitted work

Report by former prime minister’s institute also urges new UKRI leadership to oversee urgent changes to overcome ‘patchy’ adoption of AI in research community

Better collaboration needed between industry and universities to develop the sector, says report

Rapidly growing AI tool brushes off questions about Tiananmen Square and spouts Communist Party line on sensitive topics like Taiwan

Tech platform chief is proponent of locally grown AI talent, as Asian superpower focuses on industry-academia collaboration

US university harnesses training hospitals to test and evaluate AI-driven public health solutions 

Global study reveals that academics believe students are not critical enough of material produced by artificial intelligence tools for use in their work

Labour’s wholehearted support for Aria chair Matt Clifford’s artificial intelligence blueprint promises more funding for scholarships and fellowships

Institution-wide policies must affirm the necessity of engaging critically with AI tools in ways that foster human agency, writes Joseph Moxley

Researchers say traditional metrics for academic success and career progression ignore activities such as creating and maintaining a YouTube channel

Technology can offer a very useful helping hand, but there are an array of pitfalls that need careful handling, says John Miles

Disciplinary nuance and optimum word usage are likely to remain beyond chatbots trained on the imperfect existing corpus, says Brian Bloch

Hidden code revealed on university admissions page may have prevented Chinese students from accessing content

Higher ratings for AI-authored abstracts should not obscure the need for engaging prose with a ‘human touch’, says study co-author

Move by 25-campus Universities of Wisconsin System to retain ownership of syllabuses and course materials could see content repurposed, according to faculty members

Impact of AI on education may be overestimated unless used to rethink traditions, says technologist

Eleven universities across four continents are awarded gold in first attempt to measure online learning on a global basis

The choice is to innovate or, potentially, to die. Focusing on customer experience and tech is the best way to avoid the latter, says Eric Skipper

We’re already not as susceptible as we were, but the threat posed by deepfakes has not gone away, say Andrew Chadwick and Nick Jennings

Authors say findings support idea that researchers will increasingly use AI tools to design more effective experiments

Freely available tool performs strongly in trials against human interviewers and traditional online surveys

Academics emphasise importance of transparency and human vetting of journal submissions

Chinese multinational makes inroads in Europe as technology giants compete to get their tools on university curricula

Professor filling first-of-its-kind role says universities need to encourage students to use AI in their studies, or risk them falling behind

Figures reveal dramatic rise in AI-related misconduct at Russell Group universities, with further questions raised by sector’s ‘patchy record-keeping’ and inconsistent approach to detection

New book raises concerns about how increasing digital surveillance on campuses reproduces racial and economic injustices

‘Over-regulation’ feared as actual use of new technologies lags far behind perceptions of university staff

Institutions already years behind private companies in their ability to tackle online threats, university chief of IT warns

Sheffield-born laureate on his hometown’s influence, his PhD struggles and why social media should be taxed like smoking

Some academics put off from using AI because of ‘lack of guidance’ on how to use technology ‘ethically and transparently’

Newcastle vice-chancellor says shared approach needed to prevent ‘bad practices’

Essay mills pivoting to offering low-cost services to avoid plagiarism checks

If AI is to transform education, assessment must be rebooted and developers must make leaps in understanding the learning process, experts say. Rosa Ellis reports

Allowing Big Tech to train AIs on academic output will only exacerbate the threat posed to teaching and research, says Martyn Hammersley

Outgoing Erasmus University Rotterdam president discusses the underappreciated value of the social sciences, managing student protests and the differences between Dutch and German higher education

Chris Rock’s joke about US gun control exemplifies a cognitive sophistication that machines will struggle to match, say Akhil Bhardwaj and Anastasia Sergeeva

Tightening of rules may be weakening the quality of eligible candidates for conversion courses, report says

Google, LinkedIn and X warned that adverts for contract cheating services have ‘proliferated’ despite legislative bans

Embedding digital competency into hiring and advancement decisions would help to foster innovation, report says

Only half of US faculty members surveyed believe AI will enhance the student experience, as many report being left out of decisions on how technology is used

As tech giants spend staggering sums on artificial intelligence, the head of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council explains why it’s vital for academia to engage in this ‘hot’ area of research

Many scholars loathe generative AI but it has immense power to engage the intellectual curiosity of students as long as academics truly embrace it, argues John Kaag

Higher education staff missing opportunity to use generative AI tools to relieve them from routine tasks, Australian survey finds