Increasingly, artificial intelligence is becoming a competency that rests in the hands of each individual person—an individual capability rather than just, or even primarily, an institutional one. The Human Edge of AI is issue #2 in the 2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10.
AI didn't write this report, but it helped, just as it's helping more and more in other areas of work across higher education as users gain greater confidence and ease with it.
Indeed, a growing number of higher education staff, faculty, and students have access to, and experience with, an ever-expanding array of AI-based tools and capabilities to support their work. Some of these users are moving beyond simply using AI to creating AI tools, leveraging new capabilities such as agentic AI to build and train their own systems.
Increasingly, AI is becoming a competency that rests in the hands of each individual person—an individual capability rather than just, or even primarily, an institutional one. It is essential, then, that staff, faculty, and students be trained to vet and thoughtfully adopt the bring-your-own-AI (BYOAI) tools that are not directly provided or supported by the technology team at their institution.
Perhaps nowhere else on campus is this more essential than in the classroom. AI offers seemingly limitless options for both faculty and students in designing and participating in their courses, engaging in teaching and learning, and demonstrating learning and student success. The 2025 EDUCAUSE AI Landscape Study identified "teaching and learning" as the functional area of the institution most focused on AI adoption, with "faculty training" being the single most common element across institutions' AI-related strategic planning efforts.Footnote1
Whether by choice or not, faculty in particular seem to be on the front lines of AI adoption at their institutions, navigating their own uses of these technologies while also supporting students' uses of them. They are challenged both with creating safe spaces for AI experimentation and assessing its risks and limitations, challenges that require varying levels of education, training, and support from their institution to effectively navigate.
Outside the classroom, opportunities abound for leaders and staff to benefit from AI in the form of more efficient administrative processes and more advanced business analytics and decision-making. Across these use cases, there is immense potential for individuals' use of AI technologies, as well as a persistent risk that those individuals will misunderstand and misuse them. Whether inside or outside the classroom, then, users are most effective, and safest, in developing their AI capabilities when they are guided and supported by their technology teams.
Campus Spotlight: Empowering Faculty and Staff Through Peer-Based Learning at Wake Forest
Wake Forest University has taken a proactive and open-minded approach to encouraging staff, faculty, and students to experiment with AI across a range of use cases inside and outside the classroom. Business students are using AI as a business analytics tool. Writing tutors are using it to help students learn how to analyze and critique their writing. And art professors are using it to brainstorm on art projects and iterate on their art techniques over time. With this wide range of use cases, Wake Forest is amassing a collection of lessons and tips learned through practical application that can be shared with others who want to experiment with these technologies as well.
Wake Forest Director of Technology Accessibility Eudora Struble shared, "Wake Forest encourages campus-wide engagement with GenAI through various forums, including online discussion groups and a monthly live discussion series that provides a space for faculty and staff discussion and idea-sharing. Then, when we have outreach or a connection with somebody in a particular area, we can share those relevant stories and possibilities. For people who are new to AI, it can be really hard to look at all the media and all the possibilities and know where to start. So, I think having real options that other faculty members or staff have tested out and have found useful is a really powerful thing to build on."
Ways to Get Started
Through our panelist interviews and community survey, technology leaders noted some ways institutions might strengthen the human edge of their AI capabilities:
- Balance clear and consistent AI governance and structures with opportunities for safe experimentation. Walled AI sandboxes can give users space for playing and becoming more familiar with these technologies without fear of "breaking" things or exposing the institution to risk. Makerspaces and AI hack-a-thons can be controlled environments for encouraging exploration of new and creative use cases for AI. Harvard University's AI Sandbox, for example, provides campus users with a safe space for exploring potential uses for these technologies.
- Staff, faculty, and students will need ongoing training, though these efforts can be time- and resource-intensive for overworked and understaffed technology teams. Establishing supported but self-sustaining AI communities of practice and identifying AI champions or exemplars across various departments can help redistribute and integrate AI training and awareness throughout the institution without overburdening technology leadership and staff. Resources such as the EDUCAUSE Higher Education Generative AI Readiness Assessment can help institutions identify opportunities for tapping into these resources across their campus.
Note
- Jenay Robert and Mark McCormack, 2025 EDUCAUSE AI Landscape Study: Into the Digital AI Divide, (EDUCAUSE, February 2025). Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.
Shelly Belflower is Director of IT Software Licensing and Contract Management at Weber State University.
Adam Finkelstein is Associate Director of Learning Environments at McGill University.
Jennifer Haas is Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Information Technology Services at Macalester College.
Muhammad Hossain is Director of Instructional Technology at Claflin University.
Frederick Kass is Associate Chief Information Officer for IT Operations at Amherst College.
Eudora Struble is Director of Technology Accessibility at Wake Forest University.
© 2025 EDUCAUSE and the 2025–2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10 Panel. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License.