Campus Talks by Times Higher Education

We find out how one US institution has led the way in embedding AI across all its majors and what has been learnt in the process

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Many universities are now racing to embed AI literacy across their curricula and equip students with knowledge that may prove critical to future careers. But the University of Florida had embarked on this mission years before large language models exploded into everyone’s consciousness with the arrival of ChatGPT.

In this episode of Campus Talks, we speak to Hans van Oostrom, director of the University of Florida’s AI2 Center, which supports the university’s AI initiatives across teaching and research, including the university-wide Undergraduate Certificate in AI Fundamentals and Applications.

We discuss what ‘AI across the curriculum’ means in practice, how the University of Florida has built AI expertise across all its academic departments, what drives AI resistance and how to balance AI use against the other foundational skills that students need to develop.

For more advice and insight on building AI literacy from higher education experts all over the world, head to our latest spotlight guide: Boosting AI literacy across your institution.

What purpose does, or should, assessment serve? How can educators shift the focus of assessment towards feedback? Who is really driving higher education’s unhelpful obsession with grades? And how does GenAI affect all this?

In this episode of Campus Talks, we explore all these questions and more with David Boud, Deakin distinguished professor at Deakin University and a leading scholar on assessment and feedback. David is the foundation director of Deakin’s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology Sydney.

He has been a pioneer in learning-centred approaches to assessment and is one of the most highly cited academics in the world on teaching, learning and assessment in higher and professional education with dozens of books bearing his name, including The Impact of Feedback in Higher Education (2019) and Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education (2022).

We discuss what constitutes good feedback, strategies for engaging students in the feedback process, how to design assessments that centre feedback and learning and where universities have been going wrong on assessment and grading.

Effective graduate supervision depends on a suite of interpersonal, technical and disciplinary skills, but many scholars enter into this complex, years-long role with only a small toolkit left over from their own journey. When a good supervision experience brings enrichment to supervisor and supervisee, as well as completion cache for both, and poor supervision can be destructive, this is one area of academia that should not be left to chance or assumptions. Especially not when the capabilities required can be learned.

Institutions, as well as students and established scholars, have much to gain when universities develop communities and support structures to ensure that skills such as planning, communication, judgement and cultural awareness are embedded across the university.

To find out more, we speak to Katerina Standish, an advocate for professional development around graduate supervision and author of The Graduate Supervisors Handbook: Practical Strategies for Graduate Pedagogy and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026). Katerina is a professor of global and international studies, interim dean of the Faculty of Indigenous Studies, Social Sciences, and Humanities, and vice-provost academic at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. Having supervised 26 PhD candidates and many master’s students to completion, her postgraduate teaching and supervision background draws on knowledge of Western and Indigenous research frameworks, and she is a certified conflict coach.

This conversation is packed with practical advice about building foundational skills and where established scholars can look to advance their own practice.

And for more advice on research supervision that supports and inspires, check out our latest spotlight guide.

Disabled students make up the biggest minority group in US and UK higher education, accounting for about a fifth of undergraduates in both countries.

While efforts to improve access to higher education for disabled students have contributed to increased enrolment, people with disabilities are still less likely than their counterparts to enter college, to feel at home in higher education settings and to secure a degree. And research suggests that many do not to disclose their disabilities once enrolled within an institution, which limits the support available to them.

So this week, we speak to a US researcher who has dedicated the last decade to studying the experiences of disabled students in higher education and the barriers to full access and inclusion for all.

Katherine Aquino is a social scientist and educational researcher who currently serves as the executive director for research training and development in the School of Graduate Studies at Rutgers University. Her research examines the complexity of disability in the postsecondary setting and her most recent book, The New Accessibility in Higher Education: Disrupting the System for an Inclusive Future, co-authored with Adam Lalor was published by Oxford University Press last year.

Katherine explains why existing efforts to improve access and inclusion have so often fallen short of their ambitions, why a shift in mindset is needed for systemic change to take hold and how individuals have the power to drive big change

For more advice and insight on improving accessibility for all in university teaching, head to our spotlight guide: Make learning accessible to all in higher education.

Learn about the journey from academic researcher to entrepreneur and what it takes to launch a successful spin out company.

Academics are specialists in their disciplines and research areas but very few have any expertise in running a business. So, while their discoveries may hold commercial potential, it is rarely a simple or easy process translating this knowledge into a saleable product or service.

To demystify the process of research commercialisation, on this episode we hear from a US-based biomedical researcher who has launched and grown five spin-out companies over the last 25 years.

Ashutosh Chilkoti is the Alan L. Kaganov Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and the brains behind companies including PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, Sentilus and Insolere Bio.

He runs the Chilkoti research group and has driven a number of initiatives at Duke designed to support entrepreneurship among students and staff.

As well as describing his own varied start-up experiences, he breaks down the process of developing a research finding into a business and offers insight on what investors look for and how institutions can best support their academics efforts in commercialisation.

For anyone interested in commercialisation and enterprise, this conversation offers practical takeaways and useful insights to guide your decision-making.

And for more advice on this process, check out our latest spotlight: A step-by-step guide to commercialising your research.