Campus Technology Insider Podcast February 2025
Rhea Kelly 04:00
That's an interesting shift, sort of more enthusiasm and less distrust overall.
Jenay Robert 04:06
Yeah.
Rhea Kelly 04:07
Were there, oh I know that there were some new questions because I noticed some, some new results that I didn't remember from last year. So I'm curious about that process of how you came about, you know, deciding which new questions you needed to add.
Jenay Robert 04:21
Yeah, the biggest change there would be, there's a section devoted to AI use cases, and this is really trying to drill down from that high-level strategic planning view, which I think the 2024 study was very much at that high level, but that came from the community. So like I said, I'm often lurking in these events or having conversations with our members, and we, that was the biggest thing we're hearing from our members, is, yes, the strategy is important, yes, leadership is important, but we really need to know what's happening on the ground. How are people actually using these tools? And so that is a tough process, I'll be honest with you. I want to ask all the questions all the time, but trying to keep the survey to a manageable length, essentially kind of starting off by building in this new section and then making the hard decisions about which questions to cut after that.
Rhea Kelly 05:17
Yeah, that's something I've sensed as well, that there's sort of almost being just tired of being stuck in the strategy stage and needing to, let's just like, do something.
Jenay Robert 05:28
Yeah, we get a lot of questions. I, you know, I was traveling all over the world presenting on those research results from 2024 and one of the big questions I would get consistently was: Okay, so how is this playing out? You know, what are we actually seeing? And while I was able to speak to that sort of colloquially and just out of observations I've had from chatting with members, I didn't have great data to support any of those claims. So I think that's really the direction that we're trying to shift with our research, both in this study and in upcoming AI studies. Of course we're already talking about the next round of AI research, so I think you'll see future Educause AI research really kind of digging into those deeper questions.
Rhea Kelly 06:15
So last year, I remember one of the big findings was the high rate of "I don't know" answers. So I'm curious if that has changed a year later. Like, do we know more about AI?
Jenay Robert 06:26
The answer is a little bit, maybe. So, you know, I went back over looking at the "I don't knows" specifically over the two years, and I'd say there weren't huge shifts. There was nowhere where we saw a massive decrease in those, and in some cases, maybe a slight bump up. But I can point out a couple of areas where I think there's some decline in the "I don't know" responses. So in 2024, 20% of respondents said they didn't know if AI was impacting their institutions' policies. And in 2025 that decreased to 12% of the respondents who said they didn't know. So perhaps a little bit more awareness about how AI is impacting policy. And that's actually a really great shift, because, as we talked about last year on your podcast, and we've been talking about with everybody, it's so important to communicate across the institution how policies are changing, or how policies are perhaps not changing, but still applicable to new use cases that involve AI. So we're really happy to see that shift in the community. Another one was related to folks saying, not being sure if their data, their institution was preparing data to be AI-ready. So that number decreased a little bit. And then also asking about the adequacy of cybersecurity and policy guidelines to address AI-specific risks — this is a really nice statistic that shifted. So in 2024, 40% said they didn't know, and that number dropped to 20% in 2025. Now there's still a lot of work to be done there, because I still think the majority of our respondents think that those policies are not adequate, but at least more of them are sort of in the loop on what's happening at their institutions. And again, I'll just reiterate that the, looking at this "I don't know" as a significant result is so important, because the people who take our surveys are the end users of these tools, and so if they're not sure about the policies or the impacts of those technologies at their institutions, that's, that's an important gap to pay attention to, for leadership to fill people in.