5 interactive workshops explore AI’s impact on higher education
The global gathering kicked off with five interactive workshops focused on real-world applications of agentic AI. The standing room-only workshop “Hands-on with ASU’s CreateAI: Building agentic AI for education” allowed participants to get an interactive demonstration of ASU’s in-house AI toolset CreateAI.
Roger Kohler, director for AI Solutions and Architecture on ASU’s AI Acceleration team, led the conversation on ASU’s CreateAI platform and ASU’s model comparison tool. “We want to make sure that the tools we provide to our community have gone through testing so we know where they're at with ethics and bias and fairness and accuracy,” said Kohler.
A strategy-level overview of the platform and its capabilities – including its evaluation framework for fairness and safety – granular data controls, access to more than 40 models and agentic workflow tools, were all showcased during the one-hour workshop.
And for the first time, CreateAI Builders extended to those outside ASU.
Amaz Taufique, director at the University of Toronto, enjoyed experimenting with CreateAI, and plans to continue to do so. “[CreateAI] is very thoughtfully built,” Taufique said. “Its user-focused and reduces the barrier for entry significantly, while focusing heavily on privacy, security and safety.”
Stephanie Soscia, innovation architect for the University of Maryland, emphasized the fast-paced evolution of AI in higher education. “I fully expect to see a complete transformation of AIs, LLMs and AI tools, and the types of responses they get, in ways that will be more visual, more three-dimensional, and have more color and vibrancy,” Soscia said.
For the AI Acceleration team, the goal of CreateAI is to “put the power in the hands of the builders,” and allow for inclusive innovative production that is accessible to all. “We all as a group have to explore AI and discover how it intersects with higher education,” said Kohler.
Another popular session was “The Agentic AI shift in campus innovation,” AWS and ASU’s AI Cloud Innovation Center shared the foundational infrastructure needed to support agentic AI. Key recommendations included mapping the current process, people and technology; identifying key pain points, building feedback loops, building observability tools and reusable agents.
Additional workshops included CollegeVine, Deloitte, Microsoft and ServiceNow – all of which are sponsors of the event.
Establishing “Foresight in Times of Chaos”
Attendees then turned their attention to a compelling opening keynote by Marina Gorbis, executive director at The Institute of the Future, whose talk, “Foresight in Times of Chaos” set the tone for the global gathering. Drawing from her widely cited work with the same title, she discussed the importance of improvisation and imagination in navigating an era of disruption.
“We look at the future as something strange, it's a stranger.” Gorbis said. “One of the key parts of thinking about the future is really understanding the past.”
Gorbis explained that the future is about building the ability for temporal bandwidth: bridging the past, the present and the future. To expand one’s temporal bandwidth, they need to explore the past, scan for signals of change and remember that we have agency in shaping the future.
“The future doesn't just happen to us,” Gorbis said. “We have some agency in shaping our future … To me, in this period of chaos, I believe that futures become an essential capacity to build an organization.”
She was then joined by Chris Howard, executive vice president and chief operating officer for ASU, speaking about AI’s place and development in higher education. Together, they explored how AI helps us think about agency, governance in AI, the importance of access to AI for all and advice to get that mindset to be more improvisational and imaginative. Gorbis explained that we all have a natural instinct for learning, “it’s something that’s embedded in us.”
The day concluded with a rooftop reception, providing a vibrant space for networking and connection against the Tempe skyline.
As the event moves into its second day, discussions will turn toward student agency, AI fluency and future-ready career pathways — all with a shared goal of redefining the student experience through AI innovation.