This post is the first in a five-part series, expanding on our recent post, Collaborative Intelligence: Transformation of Planning and the Roles of Planners in Higher Education.
The series explores the opportunity to collaborate with Generative AI to build new resources, transform planning dynamics, enhance outcomes, redefine roles, and reshape organizational culture. These five topics describe the big changes that will come from the deployment and leveraging of CI.
Collaborative Intelligence: The Future of Higher Education
Today, higher education institutions and professionals are actively experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI). This phase involves discovering the best ways to integrate GenAI with human intelligence (HI) to create Collaborative Intelligence (CI), a powerful combination of AI and HI (AI+HI=CI). The goal is to address complex challenges and innovate solutions that redefine the roles of institutions and planners.
In this blog series, we focus on five key factors that will be different when CI shapes planning in higher education, distinguishing between AI and GenAI. AI: Focuses on analyzing and interpreting data. GenAI: Generates new content based on analyzed data. Together, these technologies, when combined with human expertise, create CI that can address significant problems facing higher education.
The Five Essential Resources for CI
Transformation in this space demands sustaining innovations that extend existing practices and disruptive innovations that overhaul how institutions operate. Higher education must acquire and build five critical resources to move from experimentation to transformative results.
1. Transform Data and AI Infrastructures
Currently, teams leverage off-the-shelf AI and GenAI tools to boost literacy, performance, and productivity. Moving forward, institutions must invest in robust data and analytics infrastructure to enable transformative outcomes, such as personalized teaching and learning experiences that dramatically enhance student success. Key steps include:
Expanding predictive analytics.
Scaling successful pilot projects.
Using virtualization environments to plan and deploy CI-driven solutions.
2. Deploy Virtualization Environments
Virtualization enables continuous, scalable engagement through tools like Zoom, Miro, and embedded GenAI. These platforms facilitate collaborative decision-making, planning, and refinement of solutions. Benefits include:
Curating and analyzing interactions during decision-making.
Reducing costs and improving planning outcomes.
Encouraging widespread participation from faculty, staff, students, and external stakeholders.
3. Build AI Literacy and Develop Talent
Establishing institutional AI literacy is crucial to addressing future challenges. This involves:
Offering AI training through platforms like Coursera.
Engaging in pilot projects and collaborative efforts with advanced partners.
Hiring experienced AI professionals where necessary.
4. Launch and Scale AI Pilot Projects
Pilot projects serve as proof-of-concept initiatives to demonstrate AI’s transformative potential. They also help:
Promote broad AI literacy.
Explore the evolving roles of faculty, staff, and students in an AI-driven era.
Scale successful solutions for institution-wide impact.
5. Seek and Learn From Partners
To drive disruptive innovation, institutions should collaborate with recognized leaders within and outside higher education who are transforming industries through AI. These partnerships enable:
Cross-institutional collaboration.
Ecosystem mapping to improve value propositions and outcomes.
Conclusion
This series will delve deeper into the evolving ecosystems and the shifting roles of planners in higher education. Stay tuned for insights on navigating these transformations and driving value.
Full Blog Series:
Blog 4: Coming January 2025
Blog 5: Coming February 2025
Additional Resources
Barr Seitz, Lari Hamalainen, Jorge Amar, Nicolai Von Bismarck, “The Promise and the Reality of gen AI Agents in the Enterprise,” McKinsey & Company. May 17, 2024.
Lareina Vee, Michael Choi, and Roger Roberts, “Why Agents are the Next Frontier of Generative AI, McKinsey, 7/31/2024.
Donald Norris, "Collaborative Intelligence Will Power the Transformation of Planning and the Roles of Planners in Higher Education," November 6, 2024.
Donald Norris, "Christensen Was Right: Transformations and Revolutions Must Be Disruptive Not Sustaining," July 1, 2024.
Donald Norris, Tim Gilmour, Linda Baer, Colleen Carmean, and Rob Brodnick, “Virtualization and AI Are Revolutionizing Planning Now and, in the Future," SCUP 2023, July 30, 2023.
Donald Norris, Rob Brodnick, "Case Study, Massachusetts School of Pharmacy."
Comments