Navigating the AI Turn in Higher Education: Faculty Practices, Institutional Ecologies, and Policy Gaps

• In Event: Examining AI Perspectives and Usage in Postsecondary Teaching

Abstract

This qualitative study investigates how faculty across disciplines and institutional types are integrating AI into teaching, research, and service amid ambiguous policies, uneven support structures, and intensifying expectations. Findings illuminate how faculty negotiate tensions between automation and authenticity, efficiency and epistemic responsibility, innovation and integrity. While AI enables multimodal instruction and expands communicative access, it also exposes unresolved questions about assessment, transparency and responsible use. By situating faculty decision-making within their disciplinary and institutional ecologies, this study contributes to emerging scholarship on AI policy in higher education and advances a framework for context-responsive, justice-oriented implementation in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Authors

• Mojtaba Khajeloo, University of Memphis

• Yu Wu, University of Memphis

• Gina English Tillis, The University of Memphis