FROM DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TO AI-ENABLED EDUCATION: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF EMERGING TRENDS, OPPORTUNITIES, AND CHALLENGES

The higher education sector has seen the emergence of several technological advancements over the past two decades. These include learning management systems, massive open online courses, and the latest on the market: Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). This paper aims to make a critical review of the shift from Digital Transformation to AI-driven education as a whole. The paper particularly emphasizes the shift of the digital transformation from being an administrative phenomenon to being more of a central feature in education. The paper summarises the literature on the concepts of digital transformation, the implementation of generative AI, and adaptive learning and AI ethics in the teaching and learning process, based on peer-reviewed papers that were mainly published in Scopus and Web of Science from 2019 to 2026. There are three themes that are repeated in the literature. First, AI in education is a further step towards digital transformation in which capacity building processes are substituted with independent decision making. Second, personalisation, accessibility and efficiency are opportunities, not equally accessible or equally taken up, nor equally realised; and these opportunities go first to the best resourced institutions.