Topic: Generative AI
Blog Post
September 25, 2026
It’s Not Just About AI Skills
Much of the AI conversation in higher education focuses on the value of AI literacy and AI-related skills for students’ future prospects in the job market. Far less attention, however, has been paid to how students can communicate what they have learned with potential employers. As part of a recent national survey on the AI skills instructors prioritize and teach in their courses, we asked instructors: who is responsible for preparing students to present AI-related skills to potential…
Past Event
September 27, 2026
AI, the Humanities, and Teaching
At the Clemente Course in the Humanities Annual Retreat, Ithaka S+R’s Claire Baytas will share an overview of what we have been learning about generative AI, higher ed, and teaching and learning in the humanities. The session will include a short presentation followed by group discussion with faculty who teach humanities courses with Clemente Course. The session is scheduled to take place on September 27.
Upcoming Event
November 5, 2026
When AI Answers Instead
Attribution, Access, and Usage in the Next Scholarly Record
Increasingly, scholarly research does not lead to an article or a journal issue. It leads to an answer. That shift creates a practical problem for libraries, publishers, researchers, and infrastructure providers. When an AI tool reads across the scholarly literature and produces a response, the original work may be hard to identify, authorized access may be hard to enforce, and usage may be hard to count. The issue is not whether AI belongs in scholarship, but whether AI-mediated…
Upcoming Event
November 5, 2026
Are Libraries Leading the AI Conversation, or Just Cleaning Up After It?
Higher education keeps treating AI adoption like a complicated technical problem: pick the right tools, write the right policies, train the right people, declare readiness. This session argues it’s actually a complex organizational challenge, one whose effects on trust, role identity, expertise, authority, academic integrity, student agency, and institutional culture can’t be fully predicted in advance, no matter how good the policy. Academic libraries have a strong claim to leadership here. They’ve guided campuses through earlier upheavals, the…
Past Event
September 28, 2026
Incorporating Environmental Perspectives into AI Literacy
Join Ithaka S+R for a conversation about how higher education is thinking about AI’s environmental impacts. We will speak with four panelists—Beth Filar Williams (User Experience Research Librarian, Oregon State University Libraries), Chris Rabe (Program Lead, Universal Climate, MIT Open Learning, and Education Program Director, MIT Climate Project), Eira Tansey (founder and manager of Memory Rising), and Sarah Tribelhorn (Sciences and Sustainability Librarian, San Diego State University)—to explore how the environmental impacts of AI could feature within AI…
Blog Post
August 31, 2026
Ithaka S+R’s Environmental AI Literacy Framework
Inviting Feedback from the Public
As campuses introduce trainings and resources to promote AI literacy, how can they also ensure that students, faculty, and staff understand the environmental impacts of the technology? This question is at the core of the Incorporating Environmental Perspectives into AI Literacy project. Through it, we published a LibGuide which provides resources on the environmental footprint of AI and efforts to mitigate those impacts. To make the LibGuide actionable, we are now introducing the Environmental AI Literacy Framework.
Blog Post
August 26, 2026
Where Instructors Turn To Learn About AI
Acknowledging that some instructors reject AI outright and see no place for it in higher education, there are increasing numbers of faculty members seeking to better understand, utilize, and integrate AI into their own practice as teachers and researchers. While institutional centers for teaching and learning, libraries, and IT offices are all trying to help instructors adopt or adapt to AI, the broad impact of these efforts remains unknown.
Blog Post
August 18, 2026
AI Skills for the Workforce
Where Employers and Instructors Differ
As generative AI becomes ever more pervasive in society, business, and in higher education, there are increasing calls for colleges and universities to ensure that students are AI-ready when they enter the workforce. But organizations have different visions of what AI readiness actually entails. These frameworks include, to some degree, a set of AI-related skills that students need to more successfully enter the world of AI-inflected work. Ambiguity remains, however, around what skills…
Research Report
August 18, 2026
AI Skills for College Graduates
Exploring How Instructors and Employers Prioritize AI Skills Differently
Since the public release of ChatGPT in 2022, both higher education institutions and employers have been keenly focused on how to prepare college students, and ultimately graduates, for the new world of AI-inflected work. But what does it mean to be ready for the AI workplace? We embarked on one of the first major efforts to vet a comprehensive framework of what constitutes AI skills with college and university instructors as well as to understand how instructors prioritize these skills.
Past Event
August 27, 2026
What Can You Expect To Get From Licensing To AI Systems?
In this CHORUS Forum event, on August 27 at 11:00am ET, Todd Toler will join a panel including Todd Ware, Emilie Delquie, and moderator Paul Sanders, for a discussion on licensing to LLMs. The conversation will include what organizations can expect, what liabilities organizations should be aware of, and how responsible use is defined.
Blog Post
July 22, 2026
How AI Is Reshaping the Value of Higher Education
A New Issue Brief
AI touches all of the basic assumptions that underlie how we think about the value of postsecondary education and academic research: what students need to learn, how they learn, how institutions operate, and how universities contribute to the production and dissemination of knowledge. The immediate questions it raises are urgent and real. Students need AI literacy and training on work-relevant AI tools. Faculty need to rethink assignments and assessment. Institutions are trying to understand how AI…
Issue Brief
July 16, 2026
Postsecondary Value in the Age of AI
AI is rapidly changing the conversation about postsecondary value because it changes the production function of postsecondary education and academic research. By “value,” I mean more than the individual return on investment to students, though that matters enormously. Postsecondary value also includes the costs and benefits for institutions, communities and states, the research enterprise, and society more broadly. It includes whether students gain the education and credentials they need to build meaningful lives and careers; whether institutions can deliver that…
Past Event
July 21, 2026
Who Owns AI Literacy?
Building a Whole-Campus Approach
Ruby MacDougall will share a presentation on building a whole-campus approach to AI literacy at the AI Literacy + Learning for Libraries, Archives, and Museums (LAMs) Summit at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The in-person convening is scheduled to take place on July 21-22, 2026.
Past Event
July 30, 2026
From Strategy to Scale
Leading AI Transformation in Online Higher Education
At the Summit for Online Leadership and Administration Conference, Claire Baytas will speak as part of a panel on AI’s impact across the student lifecycle—from enrollment to student success, instructional design, and instructional operations—and strategic choices senior leaders should be making to position their institutions well with regard to AI.
Blog Post
June 11, 2026
AI Literacy: Join the Latest Cohort
Beginning this July, Ithaka S+R will convene a cohort of 15-20 colleges and universities to explore how existing information literacy frameworks can be adapted and revised to reflect the changing realities of an AI-driven information ecosystem. The project will bring together librarians, teaching and learning professionals, and other campus leaders committed to advancing AI literacy as a core learning outcome.
Blog Post
June 9, 2026
Understanding the Environmental Impacts of Artificial Intelligence
Introducing a New LibGuide
Today, we are publishing a LibGuide focused on the Environmental Impacts of AI, as a part of our Incorporating Environmental Perspectives into AI Literacy project, funded by the Mellon Foundation. The LibGuide’s objective is to help users attain a baseline understanding of the varied environmental consequences behind AI technology. The LibGuide’s articles, reports, podcasts, videos, data trackers, and other types of resources address environmental impacts throughout the AI lifecycle.
Past Event
June 12, 2026
From Detecting to Mentoring
Teaching for Trust and Learning in the Age of AI
False accusations of cheating based on unreliable AI-detection tools can erode trust, undermining constructive faculty-student relationships. Caution regarding GenAI’s impact on learning integrity is warranted, but a policing mindset contributes to student anxiety and negates the emotional dimensions of learning. Drawing on student experiences that highlight faculty’s central role in shaping students’ AI-adoption, this presentation for the University of Central Florida’s Teaching and Learning with AI Conference proposes a mentoring mindset as a human-centric approach to academic integrity. Mentoring…
Past Event
June 10, 2026
Much Ado About Authorship
Research Integrity & AI Systems
What counts as authorship when AI assists—or drafts—content? An upcoming NISO webinar will dig into disclosure practices, tools and workflows for detecting machine-generated text and images, handling hallucinations and manipulated content, and editorial policies that safeguard trust while keeping reviews efficient. The webinar will feature panelists Mark McBride and Kari Weaver. Learn more about the session, scheduled for June 10, 2026, at 11:00am.
Blog Post
May 22, 2026
The Research Enterprise in Transition
Insights on AI, Policy, and Open Source Software
The research enterprise is undergoing a period of rapid change, shaped by several converging forces. In our work with researchers, administrators, and senior leaders across the country, we see firsthand how advances in artificial intelligence are changing how research is conducted and supported, even as shifts in federal funding policies introduce new uncertainties. At the same time, increased scrutiny of research with national security implications—and a shifting policy environment influencing what research gets funded and pursued—are raising the stakes for…
Blog Post
May 19, 2026
Welcoming Todd Toler to Ithaka S+R
Advancing Responsible AI in Scholarly Communication
We are pleased to welcome Todd Toler to Ithaka S+R as the inaugural practice lead for a new area of focused work on artificial intelligence in scholarly communication. The new practice area is grounded in a simple but powerful idea: that AI in research and publishing must be “scholar-ready," aligned with expectations for integrity, provenance, rights awareness, and transparency.