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  2. EDU T580

From the Ground Up: Designing a University for the Age of AI
EDU T580

Course Information

Description

This is not a typical graduate seminar. It is a design studio embedded inside a live, real-world effort to build a new kind of university, one designed from scratch for the age of AI, organized around human flourishing, and structured to produce graduates who are empathetic, adaptive, and deeply capable for a world in which we will see massive changes in the workforce. 
 
The goals of the new university are to use AI to provide highly personalized and more effective learning at a dramatically lower cost of delivery to eventually serve populations not now well-served by the incumbent system of post-secondary education.
 
Students in this course will work directly with members of the founding team of a new kind of higher education institution, engaging in actual projects that are shaping the institution's design. By the end of the term, each team will have produced substantive work including research, frameworks, prototypes, testing, and recommendations that enters the real development process. The learning is real. The stakes are real. The work matters.
 
By the end of the term, students will have delved into readings, engaged with expert guests, and worked on actual component parts of the new institution’s design under the supervision of key leaders on the founding team. Students will leave with a detailed understanding of what is required to create a new educational organization.
 
Class meets every other Monday from 4:30 to 7:15 PM, beginning September 14. In alternate weeks, the instructor meets with each team individually. The course carries 4 credits.
 

School Graduate School of Education
Credits 4
Cross Reg

Not Available for Cross Registration

Department Education
Course Component Regular Course
Instruction Mode In Person
Subject Education
Grading Basis HGSE Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Learning Goals Understand the ways AI can reshape learning in paradigmatic new ways. Understand the technology required, including agentic AI and its uses, knowledge graphs, context and memory, and more. Understand the ways AI allows us to rethink the business models of universities. Understand the complex interaction of AI and humans and what they can and should look like in the context of education. With all of that understanding, application in a real world setting in which students can experience firsthand the complexities of executing on the possible, while demonstrating their knowledge and skills.
Career Focus

The course is best suited for students who wish to work in post-secondary education and have a deep interest in the ways AI will change education.  Whether interested in reinventing the incumbent models, inventing new models of delivery, or working within the ed-tech sector, students will explore what's possible with AI as we look at every aspect of the student lifecycle from marketing and admissions through learning and student support to career.
Competency N/A
Content N/A
Pedagogy N/A