AI/EmTech
Abstract
This chapter examines the AI and emerging technologies reshaping teaching-focused higher education and develops the mechanism framework that gives those technologies strategic meaning. This chapter opens by tracing an AI capability spectrum, moving from established machine learning applications to generative AI to experimental agentic architectures. It then surveys complementary technology clusters, including immersive reality, blockchain, IoT, learning analytics, and educational robotics. A maturity assessment classifies these technologies into three readiness bands with corresponding strategic postures. This chapter then develops five mechanisms, defined as causal pathways through which technologies produce institutional effects: automation, augmentation, systemic substitution, architectural reconfiguration, and value innovation. Each mechanism is examined through its definition, higher-education applications, implications for the three domains of the institutional core (value proposition, operating model, and capability set), theoretical grounding, and constraints. This chapter maps specific technologies to their primary and secondary mechanisms and proposes a four-phase transformation trajectory that illustrates how institutional mechanism portfolios may shift over time. Framework limitations and boundary conditions are acknowledged.
