Takeaways from EDUCAUSE 2025

Illustration created with ChatGPT

by Cheryl Colan, Teaching & eLearning Support (TeLS)

Attending EDUCAUSE 2025 was a whirlwind of innovation, connection, and inspiration. From reimagining instructional design with AI to exploring current and future educational technologies, the conference offered a hopeful vision for how higher education can evolve while keeping students, educators, and staff at the heart of the transformation. Despite my write-up below, probably the real best part was connecting with the YC colleagues who attended with me as presenters. Here are my conference takeaways:

Idea: the AI Orchestrator

I don't usually enjoy product demonstrations (unless I have a big budget!), but I'm glad I attended Google’s demonstration of Gemini Enterprise, a platform that provides a single entry point to multiple AI systems and tools. Inside Gemini’s agent gallery, organizations and users can create their own AI agents that automate tasks or solve specific problems.

New to me was the concept of an “AI orchestrator”, an AI agent that acts like the conductor of an orchestra. It understands what other agents can do (the “instruments”) and coordinates them to act in harmony to achieve a goal.

Imagine, for example, an orchestrator that connects:

a content-specific agent trained on a course’s subject matter,
an agent that writes multiple choice questions that assess at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, and
an agent that formats those questions into quiz file ready to import to Canvas.

Together, this ensemble could become a powerful assessment design tool.

Other combinations are equally intriguing—like pairing topic agents (Math, History, Biology, Chemistry) with Teaching & Learning agents (Curriculum, Observations, Grading) to build new interdisciplinary experiences, or faculty helpers. You could even mix agents like Earth Imagery + Population Dynamics + Weather & Climate to generate new learning activities or simulations.

Curious to experiment? You can explore Google's data science agent hands-on. You can also read Creating the AI-Literate Campus: Advancing Skills for Faculty and Students (PDF) from Google Cloud. You'll see some of the demonstration I watched in Use Gemini Enterprise to Orchestrate Multiple AI Agents (video, 12:01, auto-generated captions available.

I left inspired by the potential but also aware that I still have more to learn about actually building and deploying these specialized knowledge agents and orchestrating AI agents, whether through Gemini or other tools.

What’s Coming from Panopto

Panopto previewed features that bring AI into video learning. Their new Human-Centere d AI Search will allow users to search across videos, slides, and transcripts for concepts, not just keywords. Potentially a step toward deeper content discovery.

They also introduced Elai, an AI video creation studio that converts lesson notes, scripts, or slide decks into engaging videos. You can even generate an AI avatar of yourself to narrate your lesson in multiple languages, so a student can select the language they prefer. With built-in templates, animation, and music tools, Elai may soon make it easier than ever to create engaging instructional videos.

Echo360 and a Steak Dinner

While I wasn’t familiar with Echo360, I did attend their Accessibility Champions dinner, which turned out to be a relaxed, no-sales evening with good conversation and even better food. One of my tablemates mentioned that his campus had replaced ExamSoft with EchoExam in their Nursing program. The reason? It supports NCLEX-style questions, includes comparable features, and costs less. That could be worth watching for programs exploring alternative study and assessment platforms.

Fun Ideas from Sessions

Some of the sessions I attended shared ideas for fun, hands-on opportunities to explore technology in creative ways:

Tech Tasting: Try out emerging AI and EdTech tools in short, focused bites.
AI Easy Bake: Bring your "half baked" idea and collaborate with an experienced AI user to find ways to bring it to life as a generative AI chat bot or agentic AI task performer
Speed Dating with Learning Technologies: Meet a new tool or technique every few minutes—fast-paced, fun, and informative.
AI Idea Book: A collaborative collection of ways faculty are using AI for teaching, research, and reflection.
AI Literacy & Ethics Digital Badges: The campus that presented this idea said that their students want to go beyond a single introductory course; they’re eager for ways to demonstrate deeper, ethical understanding of AI.
AI Use Buckets: Moving past “ban” or “allow,” this framework invites discussion of how to use AI—whether to Brainstorm, Draft, Summarize, Research, or Create in ways that align with learning goals.

One standout presentation came from Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing, which shared its process for developing Future-FLO, a chatbot designed to evaluate and provide feedback on health equity content in courses. Built with Claude 3.7 to help faculty self-evaluate, Future-FLO analyzes PowerPoint lecture slides to summarize, score, and provide feedback using a rubric grounded in health equity concepts and social determinants of health. The project underscored how meaningful chatbot development takes time, validation, and interdisciplinary teamwork, but can lead to transparent, replicable insights for improving curriculum design. Vanderbilt University Nursing faculty found the output to be a great starting point for reflection on improving their courses with regard to health equity competencies. Check out Vanderbilt's research.

Keynote Highlight: Dr. Joy Buolamwini

The absolute highlight of the week for me was hearing Dr. Joy Buolamwini, author of Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines. By coincidence, I had just started reading her book, only to realize the day before my flight that she was the opening keynote speaker.

Dr. Buolamwini, who calls herself a poet of code, delivered a moving talk about the ethical use of AI and the urgent need to avoid embedding historical bias into the technologies that shape our future. She's created an Algorithmic Justice League you can join to help combine art and research to help communicate the social implications of AI.

My only regret? Not being able to have her sign my book. Also, book club, anyone?

Other Nuggets

Phew! My mobile web browser can now breathe a sigh of relief after storing these tidbits of goodness during the trip back to the Verde Valley.

University of New South Wales shared a showcase of immersive VR/XR projects that may inspire uses of our new Immersive Theatre in the CLI.
Faculty from Penn State's College of Arts and Architecture shared Immersive Engagement Studio: Designing Peer-to-Peer Collaboration in Remote Asynchronous Courses, taking gallery walks to a whole new level in VR.
University of California, Los Angeles' Library shared quick, practical research and writing tutorials created collaboratively by their students
Eric Simon, Associate Director, Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Florida International University led a community collaboration session on Pedagogy in the Age of AI. Check out the resulting Padlet full of thoughts about Faculty Challenges, Creative Solutions, and Collective Wisdom.
Kate Bengston, a Learning Designer for Moodle, shared 3 Accessibility Checklists for different approaches to checking the accessibility of digital content: Top to Bottom, Major to Minor, and Standards-Based

Final Thoughts

EDUCAUSE 2025 left me both inspired and challenged to keep learning, to keep experimenting, and to keep centering humanity in every conversation about technology. Whether it’s orchestrating AI agents, designing accessible video learning, or simply gathering over dinner to share ideas, the heart of innovation in education remains the same: people helping people learn.

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