I am revisiting ideas from the past year on AI topics in Higher Education. The landscape for the tools changes quickly, but can universities and institutions of higher education keep up?
Not every student enters the classroom with equal access.
That’s always been true. Starting in the 1980, there was a gap between schools that had computers and those that did not. Then it became the A/V media gap, then the Internet gap, and on to iPads and smart devices. The gap remained, and some school districts had to do the best they could to catch up. My Ph.D. advisor called it the Matthew Principle. One of my first projects in the 1990s was to figure out a sub $100 computer for students in low-income school districts. The challenges were daunting.
But with AI, the gap could widen, or close, depending on institutional choices.
Here’s the fork in the road:
* Widening the gap: Students with personal devices, tech fluency, and confidence get ahead.
* Closing the gap: Institutions integrate AI openly, provide training, and treat it as a universal resource.
* The new divide: Tomorrow’s gap won’t just be technology or internet access, it will be AI literacy.
Equity isn’t automatic. Without intentional design, the students who most need opportunity will be the last to receive it. It is up to faculty, instructors, administrators, and instructional designers to design this equity into the curricula we are responsible for.
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