Generative AI has become a nightmare for university teachers, who must contend with papers inappropriately crafted using various AI tools. Detection tools and strategies have been developed to assist teachers. However, given the pervasive societal use of AI across professional, economic, and everyday contexts, should we not consider integrating AI into our teaching practices?

My hypothesis is that the AI challenge for the humanities can be examined on two interconnected levels: the societal level, through questions of knowledge creation and transmission, and the didactic level, through questions of what we teach and how we ensure students benefit fully from it.

In this presentation, I will analyze the process through which I have transformed my teaching to both address AI-based fraud and foster language acquisition habits among my students.

My reflection is based on the design of two Master’s-level asynchronous distance-learning courses in the Department of Educational Sciences, where I teach sociology and history. Both courses aim to teach students how to become independent users of written and oral sources on the subject of education and to introduce them to educational systems in the English-speaking world.

In designing these two classes, I had to address two key challenges: how to ensure that students read the texts provided to them and acquire new knowledge, and how AI could potentially assist me in this process.

This paper theorizes a new way of thinking about sharing content and tools that in a forthcoming book I distinguish from both open access and open source. “Open assembly” proposes a more sustainable, fiscally responsible way to support humanities work in this time of crisis, an approach that is made possible by my use of Recogito at COVE Studio, including: 1) non-profit entrepreneurship through SAML authentication at subscribing institutions, thus liberating COVE from the precarity of university and grant funding; 2) a collective sharing of content that can then be marketed to libraries or to multi-hub conferences; 3) the separation of a password-protected, fund-generating platform from an interdependent open-access publication mechanism; 4) an active-learning approach that ensures COVE cost-per-use figures are competitive while the platform more actively engages students in the exploration of humanities content; and 5) Performant’s innovative approach to grant funding, whereby multiple stakeholders share grant funds in the cross-institutional, collective creation of a shared platform. At a time when humanities work is threatened with funding cuts and pervasive censorship, we need to use tools like COVE Studio to reclaim the means of production through collective forms of cross-institutional coordination and collaboration.

The growing impact of globalization on national communities underscores the importance of intercultural competence development in higher education.

The educational field represents the privileged place to enhance logical and semantic tools of intermediation for a deeper understanding and knowledge of different human resources. Internationalization is a strategy widely adopted by Western higher education institutions, with the aim of graduating global-ready people, able to face global challenges through transversal skills, achieved in geo-political spaces other than the ones of belonging. Within the recent educational innovations useful for consolidating the processes of internationalization and cultural exchanges among students, are the Collaborative Online International Learning/COIL: educational projects designed to involve teachers and students in different countries to explore educational issues related to culture, identity, social justice, inclusion and cooperation. In COIL multidisciplinary actions -complementary to the curriculum courses- students carry out thematic research and dialogues using digital communication channels. COIL can empower young people to face social matters so to strengthen skills as future professionals as well as to expand cultural awareness.

The paper focuses on COIL as a theoretical and practical methodology to explore social fabrics where converge individual daily life narratives, shared work experiences and strategies to support community life, together with resolutions for marginalization. Furthermore, it will be analyzed as a case-study the COIL sessions carried out between the University of Macerata (Italy) and the Florida Gulf Coast University (USA) along with the produced outcomes.

The rapid evolution of information and communication technologies, along with the acceleration of digital transformations post-COVID, has reshaped the relationship between academic research and society. Among the many factors driving this shift, two major phenomena stand out, necessitating a fundamental rethinking of the Academic Research Institution (ARI).

First, ARIs no longer monopolize the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Once the primary centers of excellence in this domain, they have been surpassed in some cases by emerging digital platforms. These alternative dissemination channels have reduced the visibility of academic institutions, prompting a reassessment of how knowledge is produced and shared—essentially, a redesign of the ARI.

Second, ARIs lag behind society in technological adaptation. Today, individuals rapidly adopt new innovations without academic validation, reshaping social structures and behaviors. The ARI, constrained by ethical, legal, and institutional frameworks, struggles to keep pace. This has led to the perception—sometimes mistaken—that non-academics are not only technologically but also scientifically ahead of academic institutions. Consequently, the credibility of the ARI, and by extension, the traditional university model, is increasingly challenged.

To address these issues, and with the support of ERUA, we have conducted multiple innovation workshops involving researchers, PhD candidates, and master’s students. This contribution presents the key challenges, explores forward-thinking approaches, and details the action-research methodologies applied in these workshops, offering both an assessment and future proposals.