WIP: Implementing and Deploying Artificial Intelligence Solutions in Higher Education Institutions

This innovative practice WIP paper discusses the importance of deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Latin American Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It presents the preliminary findings of a workshop in Mexico that brought together nineteen Latin American universities' academic and IT leaders to define strategies for AI deployment. AI can shape higher education (HE) by advancing skills and technologies, generating and sharing knowledge, and supporting people adjusting to technological changes. However, AI integration in HEIs is limited, and there are significant global gaps, particularly in resource-constrained contexts and countries without guaranteed infrastructure. Thus, the intended outcomes of this work are the dynamic involvement of participants, who were encouraged to introduce novel topics that contribute to the overall AI discourse to yield a comprehensive and adaptable global strategy for AI implementation and deployment in HEIs through collective wisdom. Under this rationale, we designed and conducted a workshop sequence. A survey was conducted before the workshop to obtain leaders' opinions about AI deployment in HE. Later, participants were distributed in teams, and a unique restriction was considered for their proposals to generate a deployment strategy. As findings, academic institutions have been slow to adopt AI, but the new generation patterns have forced them to embrace it. They are considering automating their operations to improve student services and attract more students. However, the primary challenge is the lack of strategy. Conclusive remarks emphasized the collaborative efforts among universities to fortify and enhance the implementation and deployment of AI solutions within HE. In the future, we aim to establish a foundation for future collaborations on innovation projects related to AI in education among the workshop attendants.