In March 2024, Ithaka S+R released a tracker of generative AI products for higher education, along with an issue brief detailing our observations on the generative AI product landscape for postsecondary research, teaching, and learning activities. Since then, the list of products on the tracker has more than doubled in length and become more cumbersome for its many users. Today, we are launching a new version of our tracker that we believe will ensure its future value. The GenAI Product Tracker contains updated information about postsecondary research, teaching, and learning products within a more user-friendly interface. 

We will continue to update the tracker as we learn of new developments and welcome public suggestions for new additions. Submissions can be made through this form, which is also linked in the tracker. We are grateful to the many individuals who have contributed to its content by recommending products for the list, and especially to Gary Price of Library Journal’s infoDOCKET. 

We have also refined the scope of the tracker. While our tracker previously sought to include all products that might reasonably be used by instructors, researchers, and students at the postsecondary level, the current version focuses on products that are marketed specifically towards these same users for teaching, learning, and research activities. We are no longer including general purpose AI products (e.g., ChatGPT, image or code generation products for various contexts, etc.) with use cases that can extend significantly beyond higher education in the tracker.

Many dimensions of the updated tracker remain the same. The tracker includes a brief description of each product, key features, data sources, and links to other useful information. The tracker is designed to help users better understand products and guide them toward more in-depth information about them.

To update the tracker, we experimented with using generative AI. For this pilot, we checked AI-generated tracker entries against human-written ones to evaluate the efficacy of this AI-powered solution. Ultimately, most of the content in the tracker was written by us, but in a few cases the entries include AI-generated language that we verified. We are grateful to Hantao Wu, PhD student in Economics at Princeton University, who designed this generative AI-powered pilot during a summer internship and without whom we could not have run this experiment. 

Why Track Generative AI Products for Higher Education?

Evidence suggests that users within higher education are often not well-informed about the generative AI products designed specifically for research, teaching, and learning that our tracker lists. For example, the recent Wiley ExplanAItions study found that only 25 percent of researchers surveyed had tried an AI tool specialized for research, while 80 percent had used a general purpose tool like ChatGPT. Our own past research indicates that instructors and researchers have tended to gravitate more towards ChatGPT rather than higher education-specific tools. 

Ultimately, we hope the tracker will continue to help the higher education community become more informed about the landscape of products for teaching, learning, and research. Whether our readers are users of generative AI or not, the tracker can ideally help us remain aware of how generative AI is changing fundamental aspects of what it means to teach, learn, and do research, as well as reflect on the important questions generative AI’s integration leaves us with when determining the future of higher education.

Additionally, the products researchers, instructors, and students already use are increasingly adding new generative AI-powered features. A better understanding of the product landscape can help users become more conscious about where and how generative AI is actively being integrated into their workflows.

The Evolution of the Generative AI Product Landscape

Since we began tracking generative AI products for higher education, the landscape has significantly evolved. Not only have new products emerged and others merged together, but product features have evolved in accordance with new capabilities in generative AI technology and changing user demands.

In updating the tracker, we have noticed a few trends in how products on the list have evolved. First, platforms or workspaces with multi-faceted capabilities have gained traction. Instead of going to one product for writing assistance, another to discover academic sources, and another to chat with an uploaded PDF document, users can increasingly complete some or all of these tasks with one product. Second, generative AI products for higher education increasingly incorporate agentic AI features. We anticipate that more of such features–which enable the completion of multi-step tasks–will continue to be incorporated into products. 

Looking Forward

In the three years since ChatGPT’s commercial release, and two years from the time we started maintaining the product tracker internally, the product landscape has developed and transformed. Generative AI products, and higher education’s needs in relation to them, will surely continue to evolve, which may lead to new iterations on the scope and content of our tracker in the future.

Ithaka S+R’s GenAI Product Tracker