Campus Technology Insider Podcast January 2025
Listen: AI in Education: Moving from Trust-Building to Innovation
Rhea Kelly 00:00
Hello and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast. I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
What's the state of artificial intelligence in education for 2025? It's all over the place, according to Ryan Lufkin, VP of global academic strategy at Instructure. While innovative adopters are experimenting with ways to help students engage with AI tools, others may be stuck in the idea of AI as an avenue for plagiarism and cheating. And while it's important to build trust in the technology, perhaps it's time for educators and students alike to put the power of AI to work. We talked with Lufkin about building AI literacy, international AI adoption, personalizing the academic experience, and more. Here's our chat.
Hi Ryan. Welcome to the podcast.
Ryan Lufkin 01:02
Hey, thanks for having me.
Rhea Kelly 01:04
So I thought we could just start by telling me about yourself. Tell me about your background and your role at Instructure.
Ryan Lufkin 01:10
Yeah. So my name is Ryan Lufkin. I'm the vice president of global academic strategy here at Instructure, the makers of Canvas. I always like to call that out, because Canvas tends to be a household name, even if Instructure isn't. So I've been in this role for about two years, and, but I've been in ed tech for, gee it's actually 25 years now. So in, back in '99, I worked for a tech startup called Campus Pipeline, doing the first HTML portal for higher ed that was customizable and personalizable, to help bring some of the student data to life and really engage students. And that kind of kicked off my career. I spent the vast majority of it here in ed tech, and both on the administrative technology side, the SIS and things like that, and then on the LMS side, now at Instructure for the last almost seven years. So I live and breathe ed tech. It's what I get excited about. And I think, as we talk about some of the some of the different trends that are impacting education, hopefully you can understand I, it's something I'm passionate about,
Rhea Kelly 02:14
For sure. I love that, going back to the early days of portals.
Ryan Lufkin 02:18
I know, that, when that was truly, you know, an HTML portal was truly, you know, groundbreaking.
Rhea Kelly 02:25
Yeah. So we're here to talk about AI, and I imagine that is a big part of your life right now, or, you know, it's just one of the biggest trends in ed tech, I think. So I thought I'd ask a tough question, kind of too huge of a question. But how do you like characterize the current state of AI in higher education?
Ryan Lufkin 02:44
I mean, it is, it's interesting because I think it's all over the place, really, and I tend to look at it through the experience of my kids. I'm lucky enough to have a 20-year-old who's a sophomore in college, and I have a 14-year-old who's an eighth grader, and so I look at how their schools are talking to them about AI, and they're very, very different. For my daughter they're, she's given much more guidance in how to use it, how to use AI as part of the tool. AI literacy is actually part of the curriculum, and really understanding that it's a tool that we're going to be using well into the future for, you know, moving forward, and so how do they enable using it? And for my son, it's much more viewed as a cheating tool they should not use, and it's, they're not being given a lot of guidance on how to use the tool at all. And that's creating a chasm, really. And I think globally it's, you know, I'm fortunate enough in my role to be able to travel across the globe, and we see that kind of inconsistency all over the world. You know, you've got those very innovative adopters who are trying to figure out how to use it in the classroom, how to really help students engage with the tools. And then you have a lot of people that are still stuck in the idea that it's a, it's a cheating tool, it has no, no basis in education and, and frankly, a fear about it replacing educators or replacing jobs in the future, I think, is kind of inhibiting that. So, inconsistent across the globe, but I think gaining momentum.