J-WEL AI4U Working Group: Insights Report 2025

Universities across the globe are grappling with the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on education and society. Despite universal interest in AI within higher education, the approaches and uses vary widely across institutional contexts, creating diverse pathways for integrating AI in the university. To understand these pathways and how they interact with other aspects of knowledge and society, J-WEL has assembled a member-led working group on AI4U to enable members to learn together, through dedicated space and time to share current AI-related work practices and to generate new ideas for collaboration. AI for Universities (AI4U) is a community of practice (CoP) within the MIT Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL). 

The working group includes representatives from member universities (e.g. faculty, researchers, staff and administrators) with expertise in AI as well as from other academic disciplines with an interest in and a desire to experiment with AI. Member universities represented include:  Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Riga Business School (RBS), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), University of Mpumalanga (UMP), and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Tec). Meetings occur monthly, with additional sessions being held as needed. J-WEL hosts virtual meetings and distributes agendas in advance. Meeting notes and materials are also shared within five days post-meeting. 

The work group defined the purpose of AI4U as two-fold. First, members bring together the global network of J-WEL member campuses through sharing knowledge and practices about AI usage and approaches. Second, their participation aims to enrich current understanding for participants through interrogating such AI-related knowledge and practices in real time across a multi-university network. One foundational aspect of the community is an underlying motivation or sense of urgency to do something in the AI + Education realm. Members contribute what they know and have implemented, thus connecting different perspectives into the learning process. By sharing existing practices and resources, the goal is to spark mutual reflections that can motivate new practices or ideas.

• Participants bring their knowledge and expertise and preunderstanding.
• Then, participants apply their thinking to hypothetical and real-world scenarios, related to university strategies and policies, or to classroom activities and experiments designed to improve teaching or research.

Members meet to decide what knowledge gaps and challenges they want to address. Inviting members to discuss the exploration, adoption, and utilization of AI tools in education has enabled new ideas, experiments, and insights to emerge which can benefit J-WEL members. 

Throughout the year, we have been exploring the shifting faculty roles in the AI era. As a group, we spoke with members about the initiatives they are driving to embrace AI technologies at their institutions. We describe these insights in sections below.

Authors: Alvarez Icaza, I.; Alves Franco Brandão,A., Bucio-García, J., Burke, M.K.; Clarisó, R., Fuchs, M., Isotani, S.;Matyila, S.; Mezeriņš, K.; Pompa Mansilla, M., Rivera, C.; Sanchez, M.;Vadillo, G.