Welcome to this Spotlight on AI in Education bulletin. With how fast things are moving, this will help you cut through the noise and catch what’s important. The bulletin highlights on-the-ground practice, institutional perspectives and trends in generative AI use across the sector and beyond. We hope you find this useful.
Image generated by HM using CoPilot. 27th February 2026. Prompt: “Draw a robot and some snowdrops”.
If you have anything you’d like to contribute or see in this bulletin, please email EE@sussex.ac.uk
Event: AI CoP 16th March 2026
Please join us for the fifth meeting of the Teaching with AI Community of Practice. The theme for this meeting is informed by the university’s AI Principle 2 Critical AI Literacy. The Library Teaching team will deliver a session on how students and researchers are supported to use AI in their studies and Professor Gabriella Cagliesi will share updates on the project, Beyond the Chatbot: Making (Class) Room for AI.
Practical Uses of AI in Teaching and Assessment, she introduced at the December meeting.
See the principles here Our principles for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education : About us : University of Sussex.
Monday 16th March 2026
1pm-3pm, Library Teaching Room, The Library, University of Sussex
Image generated by HM using CoPilot. 23rd February 2026. Prompt: “Draw me some bunnies chatting in a field, give them an AI vibe”.
This event is open to all teaching colleagues at the University of Sussex and other interested colleagues.
Please sign up using this Form: Booking for Teaching with AI Community of Practice – 16th March 2026 – Fill in form so we can anticipate attendance.
If you are not a member of the dedicated Team (on Teams), please join up here: www.tinyurl.com/sussex-ai-cop
Read more about our previous AI CoPs on the blog.
Institutional Perspective
From The Library’s Teaching and Learning team, who are supporting students’ AI literacy:
As AI reshapes research practices, the Library’s Teaching and Learning team is developing its expertise to support students’ AI literacy. We provide skills training on how large AI systems can support research and learning, with an emphasis on critical information and digital literacy. Our workshops cover topics such as prompting skills, AI-assisted literature searching, and evaluating outputs. Aligning with UNESCO’s human-centred approach, we emphasise that AI should support, not replace, human critical thinking.
We have developed a core information literacy programme that currently includes the sessions Introduction to AI, Literature Searching with AI and Mapping the literature with AI. These sessions focus on how LLMs can be used in academic research and to support learning, providing students with foundational knowledge of AI capabilities, limitations, and effective prompting skills. Workshops aim to build critical information literacy skills, including understanding model architecture and behaviour and evaluating AI-generated outputs.
We are continuing to develop our offer, with an intermediate-level session that will build on these foundational workshops.
Find out more about our current offer on our teaching support pages. If you would like to discuss how we can support AI literacy in your modules, please contact the team at library.training@sussex.ac.uk
Nick Heavey, Teaching and Learning Librarian.
Nick Heavey, who leads on the development and delivery of the Library’s teaching strategy, will be presenting at the AI CoP meeting. See details of the event at the top of this bulletin.
From ITS:
ITS have published a news item regarding AI use in meetings here: AI tools in meetings : Staff Hub : University of Sussex. Please familiarise yourself with the expectations regarding any use of AI tools to minute or record meetings, and only use Microsoft CoPilot, ensuring that you are logged in using your Sussex credentials.
From Educational Enhancement:
February 2026 saw the arrival of an AI tool, Einstein, which purported to enable students to bypass the work of studying and offered to complete assignments on students’ behalf. The tool launched week commencing 23rd February and by 27th February the website had closed down. This article from THE* Strange case of ‘Einstein AI’ spotlights chatbot concerns explains that the creator, Advait Paliwal, was issued a cease and desist notice from CMG Worldwide, which manages the licensing rights for the Einstein name. There are also reports that Instructure, who own Canvas, issued a similar order. At the time of writing this bulletin, the site is inactive.
We understand that reports of tools like this are concerning. Educational Enhancement has published blog posts here Episode 12: Talking to Students about Generative AI | Learning Matters and guidance here Talking with students about AI : Artificial Intelligence in teaching and assessment : … : Educational Enhancement : Staff Hub : University of Sussex for talking to students about AI tools, which we hope you find helpful.
*University of Sussex staff can access Times Higher Education articles using their university login details.
Training and Learning Opportunities
The JISC Introduction to Generative AI in Education course starts again on 1st March. Sign up here Jisc. The course runs throughout the year and you can join at different points
Also from JISC, Sussex staff and students have access to the Building Digital Capabilities Discovery Toolkit which includes resources about using AI. Access the tool here Discovery tool | Building digital capability.
Educational Enhancement has produced a self-study course on using AI which Sussex staff can enrol on here.
Across the Sector
Published towards the end of 2025, Tom Chatfield’s white paper AI and The Future of Pedagogy can be accessed via Sage here AI and the Future of Pedagogy. Chatfield, a British tech philosopher with a special interest in critical thinking, AI, and future skills, makes the point that “no matter how powerful AI systems become, they will only ever be part of a learning process”.
“no matter how powerful AI systems become, they will only ever be part of a learning process”
Chatfield – AI and The Future of Pedagogy, 2025.
Further Afield
- One of WonkHE’s recent “long reads” came from Jim Dickinson, reflecting on AI and the exciting challenge it presents to “a system of higher education built on pretence, performance and proxies”. You can find the article here: The end of pretend – AI and the case for universities of formation | Wonkhe.
- Sussex Alumna and former Pro VC, Emerita Professor of Learner Centred Design at UCL, and CEO of Educate Ventures Research Limited, Professor Rose Luckin, spoke with Carmen Tomas for the Higher Learning Exchange podcast about her three decades working with AI in Education. Rose’s wealth of experience spanning computer science studies in the early 90s, through a career focusing on teaching and learning, is evident in this interesting conversation. Listen by following the links from this page.
- The BBC shared details of its AI Unpacked Week (2-8 March) here with some elements already available on iPlayer. The tone of what I’ve seen so far has been rather pessimistic, although I am very pleased that Nicholas Bailey is back on the EastEnders credits (more from The Radio Times here), but it’s not all doom-and-gloom and the project includes some useful resources for people who want to learn more about AI here.
- Join the Teaching and Learning with GenAI Community: If you’d like to join the community and be first to hear about events. Get in touch with us and we can add you to the list and dedicated MS Teams community. www.tinyurl.com/sussex-ai-cop
- Disclaimer on any tools not supported at Sussex. Please do not share Sussex, student, colleague, sensitive or personal data via these platforms. Not being supported means they have not passed stringent Data Protection assessments and could put you at breach of policy and legislation. For a list of supported platforms for teaching and learning please visit the Educational Enhancement website.
This was a Spotlight on AI in Education update from Educational Enhancement, University of Sussex.
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