A new report from the Digital Education Council, AI for Student Engagement: A Global Review of Emerging Strategies offers a comprehensive review of AI in student engagement drawing on more than 100 case studies.

In doing so it identifies 24 emerging methodologies in six different areas:

  • “Faculty (educator) Interaction: Student relationship with educators, including mentorship, guidance, and feedback.
  • Peer Exchange: Students collaborate, exchange ideas, and construct understanding with one another.
  • Content & Assessment: Students interact with disciplinary knowledge and structured learning activities.
  • Instructional Delivery: Students perceive and respond to the clarity, presence, and style of instructional approaches.
  • Experiential & Applied Learning: Students connect learning to authentic, applied, and immersive contexts.
  • Environment & Inclusivity: Students feel supported through inclusive and accessible environments.”

The report offers examples of the following types of AI use within tertiary education institutions around the world:

  1. Faculty/educator interaction: AI enhanced teaching assistant; AI-customised instructor-like feedback; AI-enhanced faculty feedback; Predictive analytics
  2. Peer exchange: AI-supported asynchronous discussion board; AI-generated prompts for synchronous discussions; AI-moderated breakout rooms
  3. Content and assessment: AI-generated multi-level explanations; AI-created content; AI tutor; AI-supported interactive reading; AI real-time feedback for students; AI-generated memory retention exercises
  4. Instructional delivery: AI-enhanced flipped classroom; Avatar teaching; Adaptive micro-learning; AI real-time instructor coaching
  5. Experiential and applied learning: AI for role-playing; Physical object-based AI simulation; AI-enhanced XR
  6. Environment and inclusivity: AI live captioning, transcription, translation; AI for inclusive content creation; AI learning management assistant.

VDC News is conscious that the above is quite a large list of different methodologies for using AI to support more student engagement in learning. However the report includes a range of one-page case studies for each of the methodologies listed above, and helpfully the case studies include practical step-by-step instructions.

Also reassuring is that the case studies have all been sourced from tertiary institutions across the world who have already tried and implemented these different approaches.