The College of Education advances research that addresses student success (learning, retention, graduation), social & education policy (local, state, national) and organizational leadership, as well as, institutional research on learning. Our programs follow our college motto: Learn to Teach, Lead, Guide, Inquire… and Inspire!
Student Success: Learning, Retention, and Graduation
Researching how people learn — and using that evidence to strengthen teaching, retention, and graduation.
Mental Health & Special Education: Learning & Practice
Studying wellbeing, mental health, and disability to build more supportive, inclusive learning for every student.
Policy in Education: Local, State & National
Bringing evidence to questions of access, equity, and persistence — shaping policy that helps students succeed.
Organizational Leadership
Researching leadership, policy, and data to make educational institutions more effective and equitable.
Emerging Areas: Teaching with AI
Educator & Instructor Preparation
Start here. This is your entry point into teaching with AI—a four-module path that takes you from "what even is this?" to confident, principled use in your own classroom or course. Get oriented to the whole journey, access the U of A GenAI platform, and see how foundations, guardrails, prompting, and tool selection fit together.
AI Learning Modules: Foundations
New to AI in education? This module gives you the conceptual footing to engage thoughtfully—how generative AI actually works, what it can and can't do, and where your professional judgment remains irreplaceable. It also takes the hard questions seriously: bias, privacy, environmental cost, and what the research says about over-relying on AI to think for us.
AI Learning Modules: AI Guardrails
Before you bring AI into your practice, know where the lines are. This module helps you use AI without compromising student privacy or your own accountability—keeping a human in the loop, staying FERPA and COPPA compliant, and using a simple red-yellow-green system to judge which tools are safe for which kinds of data.
AI Learning Modules: AI Prompting for Lesson Design
This is where AI starts saving you time. Learn to write prompts that produce genuinely usable lesson materials—then verify and refine them so they fit your real learners and standards. You'll work with reusable templates and a clear revision workflow, and walk away with an actual lesson plan you could teach, built with AI as a drafting partner rather than a replacement.
AI Learning Modules: Tools and Decision Systems
With so many AI tools out there, the real skill is knowing which one fits the task in front of you. This module helps you choose intentionally, set clear expectations for students about acceptable AI use, and sharpen your prompting with a simple framework you can apply to any tool—today's or whatever comes next.