Short on Time? Essential Links
Daily AI Briefing for Educators
HigherEd AI Daily
Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Good morning, educators.
As we close out 2025, a surprising pattern has emerged in higher education. The rise of AI has not ended classroom teaching. Instead, it has forced us to rediscover what makes education fundamentally human. The apocalypse that was predicted has not arrived. What has arrived instead is clarity.
Today's Focus: The AI Apocalypse That Didn't Materialize
Last spring, the narrative was apocalyptic. AI would destroy reading, writing, and critical thinking in higher education. Students would outsource everything to chatbots. The essay was dead. Universities would crumble under the weight of widespread cheating and intellectual collapse.
Fast forward to today. According to professors across the country, the AI apocalypse that was expected to arrive in full force this fall has not come to pass. The New York Times reports that many humanities professors spent their summer rethinking pedagogy and returned with courses featuring more purposeful approaches to writing, reading, and face-to-face community building. The result? Student engagement is up, not down. The panic is settling.
Worth Considering
What if the real value of this moment is not that we survived the AI threat, but that we finally got clarity about what education is actually for? The panic forced a reckoning. And from that reckoning came intentional design.
Three Pillars of AI-Resistant Teaching That Actually Worked:
First: Return to Pen and Paper Testing
Blue books made a comeback in 2025. Short-answer quizzes that test detailed reading comprehension force students to engage deeply with texts. One Berkeley professor discovered through Nabokov's example that asking students to recall specific details from Anna Karenina is not nitpicky bureaucracy. It is how attentive reading develops texture and depth in thinking. When a student must remember that specific moment in the novel, they are not just consuming content. They are thinking.
Blue books made a comeback in 2025. Short-answer quizzes that test detailed reading comprehension force students to engage deeply with texts. One Berkeley professor discovered through Nabokov's example that asking students to recall specific details from Anna Karenina is not nitpicky bureaucracy. It is how attentive reading develops texture and depth in thinking. When a student must remember that specific moment in the novel, they are not just consuming content. They are thinking.
Second: Teach Process, Not Product
Instead of simply assigning papers and grading the result, effective teachers now scaffold writing into visible steps: noticing patterns, building insights, drafting, revising. When you are involved in the workflow, you can spot the difference between genuine student thinking and AI-generated content. More importantly, students who engage in the process are less likely to outsource it. They have ownership. They have skin in the game.
Instead of simply assigning papers and grading the result, effective teachers now scaffold writing into visible steps: noticing patterns, building insights, drafting, revising. When you are involved in the workflow, you can spot the difference between genuine student thinking and AI-generated content. More importantly, students who engage in the process are less likely to outsource it. They have ownership. They have skin in the game.
Third: Emphasize Classroom Community
Students are paying for something they can only get in person: undistracted time with peers who have all read the same material and are committed to extracting meaning from it. Banning laptops and phones, requiring active participation, and building genuine discussion communities counteracts the isolation that both AI and digital life create. The classroom became precious again precisely because AI made isolation so easy.
Students are paying for something they can only get in person: undistracted time with peers who have all read the same material and are committed to extracting meaning from it. Banning laptops and phones, requiring active participation, and building genuine discussion communities counteracts the isolation that both AI and digital life create. The classroom became precious again precisely because AI made isolation so easy.
These three strategies share one common thread: they all emphasize human presence, human thinking, and human connection as irreplaceable. They do not pretend AI does not exist. They simply insist that its existence makes human work more valuable, not less.
What the Data from 2025 Actually Shows
Over 80 percent of students at elite colleges are using generative AI within two years of ChatGPT's launch. Most students use AI for augmenting learning—explanations, feedback, summarization—rather than pure cheating. AI literacy is now considered essential by over half of global educators. Employers expect it. The AI in higher education market is experiencing explosive growth, particularly in personalized learning and intelligent tutoring systems.
But here is the deeper finding: students who used AI most effectively were also the ones who had strong foundational skills in reading, writing, and critical thinking. AI did not replace these skills. It amplified them. One professor put it this way: Reading is thinking and writing is thinking, and using AI to do your thinking for you is like joining the track team and doing your laps on an electric scooter. You have moved, but you have not trained.
The Real Value Proposition Now Clear
AI's presence has clarified what education is actually for. Students need meta-skills: adaptability, critical evaluation of information, sustained attention, intellectual stamina, and the ability to learn fast. The sudden intrusion of AI into various industries makes it even harder to time the entry-level labor market. This strengthens the argument for a well-rounded education heavy on transferable skills.
The diploma matters less. The thinking matters more. The network matters more. The ability to do your own work in a world that offers endless shortcuts matters more.
Your Turn: Four Questions for Spring Planning
Are your assessments measuring genuine learning or just content delivery? Does your course design emphasize process over product? What happens in your classroom that students cannot get alone at home with their devices? How are you building community that counteracts digital isolation?
What Else Is New
NotebookLM Gets Even Better
Google released podcast generation from course materials. You can now upload your syllabus, lecture notes, or readings and generate AI-powered audio summaries. Unlike generic AI tools, NotebookLM only works with what you upload, ensuring accuracy and relevance to your specific course.
Google released podcast generation from course materials. You can now upload your syllabus, lecture notes, or readings and generate AI-powered audio summaries. Unlike generic AI tools, NotebookLM only works with what you upload, ensuring accuracy and relevance to your specific course.
Spring Semester Starts Now
The time to implement new teaching strategies is before the semester begins. If you experiment with these approaches over the next two weeks, you will be ready when students arrive. Do not try to learn this while managing course delivery.
The time to implement new teaching strategies is before the semester begins. If you experiment with these approaches over the next two weeks, you will be ready when students arrive. Do not try to learn this while managing course delivery.
The Challenge Ahead
This approach has real limitations. Students determined not to do their own work can still get away with it. Scalability remains an issue. Individualized attention works with 30 students but becomes impractical at larger scales. Wearable AI technology—invisible earpieces, smart glasses—could encroach even on face-to-face classrooms.
But the fundamental insight stands: when we assemble in classrooms to practice thinking together, we are doing something that matters more now than ever. We are teaching students to do their own work in a world that offers endless shortcuts. We are building communities in an age of digital isolation. We are insisting that thinking is hard and that is the whole point.
A Final Reflection for Today
The tech-obsessed moment may have finally pushed educators to identify the value of their disciplines and play to their strengths. AI is not going away. But neither is the fundamental human need to think, connect, and learn together. What if that need is now your competitive advantage?
HigherEd AI Daily
Curated by Dr. Ali Green
Curated by Dr. Ali Green
Tomorrow: We break down specific AI tools that enhance rather than replace teaching. Which ones are worth your time?
Making AI accessible for higher education professionals, one daily insight at a time.