ASU President Crow explores learning without limits
Innovation, agency and the inalienable right to learn: these are the key themes driving day two of ASU’s Agentic AI and the Student Experience.
ASU President Michael M. Crow delivered the opening keynote speech – addressing access, adaptability and AI across higher education.
“You have a right to learn whatever you want to learn,” Crow said during his opening remarks. “You have a right to learn the way that you want to learn, the right to learn in the way that your intelligence works, your right to learn the way your mind works to achieve these things that you want to achieve.”
As a vocal advocate for the transformative potential of technology, Crow kicked off the day’s events by sharing his vision for the future of higher education: one in which AI empowers learners to drive their own journeys.
“AI is the first tool that allows us to both confront technological threats and change in opportunities,” Crow said. “You don’t succumb to the technological disruption, but create new sociological opportunities from the technological opportunities. We never had anything like that that worked in both directions.”
Related article: The third edition of The AI Journey at ASU is now available. Read now.
AI empowerment among educators was a sticking point in Crow’s discussion, encouraging educational instructors to learn, adapt and innovate technologies to grant students a more personalized and agentic learning experience.
“No two people learn the same way,” Crow said. “What is the most complicated object in the universe? Your brain. I don’t believe you were given that, only to not use it to its maximum potential, maximum creativity, maximum individual self-actualization, and maximum individual learning.”
As the no. 1 school in innovation for the 11th year in a row, Crow used ASU’s teaching and learning realms to call on leaders to explore how agentic AI can help dismantle traditional barriers to education, expanding access at scale.
True to the speech’s theme – learning without limits – Crow’s insights into using accessibility, adaptability and the inalienable right to learn to break down barriers in higher education brought forward the necessary start to the second day of ASU’s Agentic AI and the Student Experience.