Classrooms are no longer passive spaces for absorbing information; they’re becoming creative studios where students use technology to solve real-world problems, according to interviews in an EdSurge webinar exploring the intersection of creativity, artificial intelligence and student success in K-12 and higher education.
Expert panelists included Melissa Vito, vice provost for academic innovation at the University of Texas at San Antonio; Laura Slover, managing director of Skills for the Future, a joint initiative of ETS and the Carnegie Foundation; Justin Hodgson, associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington; Adeel Khan, founder and CEO of MagicSchool AI; and Brian Johnsrud, global head of education learning and advocacy at Adobe.
What skills matter most for students’ futures, and how are institutions responding?
Slover: We want all students coming through the K-12 system to develop essential, durable skills. According to Carnegie and ETS research, the 11 most important durable skills are collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, curiosity, digital and AI literacy, growth mindset, leadership, perseverance, self-regulation and civic engagement.
Johnsrud: The careers of tomorrow are out of sync with what we are teaching today. AI has disrupted the value of certain skills. Some skills are replaceable, some are augmented. But what’s most interesting is the set of skills that are now more accessible for students to add to their toolkit — the kinds of things AI is surprisingly good at helping students develop.
How is AI shifting the role of the educator in today’s classrooms?
Hodgson: For the most part, faculty are beginning to understand that their role needs to shift — not just in terms of what they assess, but also in becoming AI-enabled mentors. We’re moving from fear-based reactions to more thoughtful engagement. The initial response was that AI would lead to cheating. But now we’re seeing more strategic thinking about what AI enables.
How are educators using creativity and AI together in practice?
Vito: At UTSA, we jumped in early. We started with a few core values — one was to be curious and experiment. We wanted to create opportunities for faculty to just learn; we were all learning together. The velocity of change is very fast right now, and we need to realize that.
Students early on described AI as a great anonymous tutor — especially valuable for first-generation students who used it to ask questions, refine thinking and learn.
Johnsrud: If you look at existing research on how often students actually get to practice creativity and develop creative thinking, I think it’s humbling.
Most creative industries are actually reporting more creativity — especially when you break it down into the components of creative thinking: understanding a problem in different ways, brainstorming multiple solutions, designing different approaches to solve a problem and exploring a variety of ways to communicate those solutions.
These are exactly the kinds of things AI is very good at helping us with.
EdSurge
