Foreward
Stan Karanasios
Over the last three years, AI has moved from the margins of educational technology to the centre of teaching practice. The question is no longer whether AI belongs in higher education, but how to integrate it with purpose and academic integrity.
I see two major tasks moving forward. First, we must design pedagogies that use AI to improve learning outcomes rather than automate for convenience. The opportunity is clear: with care and sound pedagogy, AI can personalise feedback, democratise access to information, and free educators to focus on mentoring and higher-order interaction and supervision.
Second, we must nurture students’ use so they benefit from this technology. It can help students ask better questions, learn more deeply, and reason transparently. Here there are risks to manage. Emerging research suggests that overreliance on AI can erode recall, analytical ability, and critical thinking. We also know that models can hallucinate, encode bias, and obscure accountability. These are not reasons to avoid AI; rather, they are reasons to teach with it openly, make reasoning explicit, and design for verification, context, and challenge. This is especially important during the exploration and learning phase of implementation.
Despite these opportunities and risks, the mission of higher education is unchanged: to develop knowledgeable graduates with domain expertise, critical thinking, ethical awareness, and the confidence to lead in business, government, and society. In fact, tertiary education matters more than ever, with universities expected to show they produce knowledgeable, work-ready graduates.
This book brings together colleagues who have done the hard work of moving beyond the hyperbole around AI into practice. The work here contributes to our educational mission to cultivate future-ready graduates. Their classrooms are laboratories of curiosity and learning. Readers will find designs to adapt, pitfalls to avoid, and leadership guidance to create coherent courses and programmes. It will be helpful to educators currently implementing, or unsure how to implement, AI and to scholars of teaching and learning seeking evidence of best practice and advances in pedagogy.
