A Michigan State University teaching and learning innovation leader joined policymakers, technologists and educators at an international summit to grapple with how artificial intelligence, or AI, should be used and governed as it reshapes higher education.

Jeremy Van Hof, director of the MSU Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation, or CTLI, served as an invited delegate at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, AI Malaysia Summit 2025 in Kuala Lumpur this past November, where MSU was the only American institution represented. His invitation stemmed from a National Science Foundation–funded AI ethics workshop he co-presented at MSU that was attended by members of the Malaysian summit’s planning committee.

Van Hof showcased CTLI’s ongoing efforts in AI-enabled teaching and learning by leading a workshop at the summit on authoring AI policies for courses, participated in panels on assessment integrity and automated education, and took part in roundtable conversations with international leaders on institutional strategy for AI use and governance in higher education.

“It’s important that CTLI specifically, and MSU more broadly, has a seat at these international dialogues because, ultimately, this is a technology that is going to affect everyone, and it’s valuable for us to be a partner in establishing how we approach this,” he said.

The summit focused on Southeast Asian nations, and discussions highlighted how approaches to AI governance in higher education differ within the region and from those in the U.S.

Leaders from ASEAN member states described a measured approach to AI use and governance, comparing it to the invention of the automobile: The critical piece in the invention of the car wasn’t the car itself; rather, it was the invention of brakes, allowing the car to become capable of traveling faster and faster because inventors learned how to safely slow it down.

While leaders said they want to rapidly adopt AI tools, Van Hof said their approach focused first on placing safeguards and control mechanisms to responsibly guide their evolution. In a similar approach, MSU has emerged as a leader in AI ethics and teaching innovation by encouraging educators to iterate their course policies and teaching practices alongside the rapidly changing technologies, grounded in shared ethical values.

“You don’t have to like generative AI. You don’t have to believe in it. You don’t have to accept that it’s a good thing for society, but it’s important to acknowledge that it’s here and that it’s having an effect, both on the art and science of teaching and on the fields our students are graduating into,” he said. “I think it’s important for anyone in an instructional capacity not to advocate necessarily for the use of these tools, but to advocate for awareness around these tools and, specifically, to advocate for discipline-specific and field-specific awareness around them.”

Ethics, culture and equity in education

Equitable access to AI technology was a shared concern at the summit, as well as ensuring cost doesn’t act as a barrier to people reaping the benefits of using AI tools.

Cultural sensitivity was another topic specific to the ASEAN summit, Van Hof said, noting the importance of balancing the rapid evolution of generative AI while also ensuring it doesn’t quell the uniqueness of cultures and also supports respect for all customs, voices and ways of thinking.

MSU is already leading the way in discussions on the ethics of AI use.

“Those conversations here at MSU often focus on environmental justice, on social justice, on how these machines are affecting the electrical grid, the water supply, how they were trained, how ethically they were being treated, and also some of the questions surrounding the capitalistic nature of the rapid development of these things,” Van Hof said. His sessions at the conference helped draw attention to these ethical considerations, encouraging attendees to bear them in mind as they develop their own governance and policy strategies.

Advancing AI at MSU

In August 2025, MSU announced new resources and opportunities to engage as a campus community around AI. This included the launch of ai.msu.edu, a resource hub for tools, education, research, events and innovation, as well as new campuswide guidelines that supersede all previously issued AI guidance.

These guidelines set clear expectations for ethical, responsible and transparent use of AI across educational, research, scholarship, artistic endeavors and administrative contexts, reflecting MSU’s commitment to innovation while safeguarding academic integrity, protecting sensitive data and ensuring equitable access.

Van Hof is an advocate for the creation of clear, course-level policies that support pedagogically relevant and responsible use of AI in education. He also emphasized that students’ perspectives are essential to developing these rules so that they are collectively and effectively adopted.

A workshop Van Hof hosted during the summit focused on drafting course-level AI policies, bringing with him MSU’s meaningful and student-centric perspective in drafting such guidelines.

Student voices must be considered, Van Hof said, and he spent the workshop coaching the attendees on mechanisms to solicit student input and involve students collaboratively in authoring policies. He encouraged that collaborative approach to “trickle up” from the course level to the program, department and faculty levels, ensuring student voices are reflected in institution-level AI policies and guidance.

For AI to be effectively used at the course level, faculty must know enough about it and know how and why it should be used in the specific course. Blanket guidance for all courses will not work, Van Hof said. Not only must faculty think about AI use at the course level, but at a module-by-module or even activity-by-activity level.

AI and academic integrity

AI’s integration into higher education comes with numerous opportunities for student learning enrichment, but Van Hof also has concerns regarding academic integrity.

“The primary conundrum is how we make sure that assessments remain meaningful and legitimate in an age when computer-assisted technologies can reproduce the results that we expect on an assessment,” he said. “How can we assign an essay if a robot can write it? How can we assign a coding assignment if a robot can code it? How can we assign an art project if a robot can draw it?”

CTLI works daily to support MSU’s educators as they address these questions, and that work resonated with the global audience at the summit.

“So much of our discourse at the conference was about the future of the university globally. Why does a university exist in an age that is infused with generative AI, and what does it mean for us to have tertiary education in an age where generative AI can provide so much of these outputs already?” Van Hof shared.

While participating in a panel on AI and academic integrity during the summit, Van Hof also explored the importance of providing students with an education that emphasizes experiential learning and authentic assessment. The notion of higher education must be reframed, he said, not as a place where knowledge transfer happens, but in a new way: where the university campus and classroom become places of application of new knowledge, as opposed to the accrual of it.

A top concern remains addressing students’ potential misuse of AI — using AI to do work for them, think for them and impersonate their work. It leaves universities to address the concern by adopting pedagogical practices aimed at preventing the misuse of AI for academic dishonesty.

Despite concerns of misuse, the list of possibilities and benefits of AI continues to grow.

Instructors can use AI to make their teaching more efficient and allow for more individualized learning environments, Van Hof said. AI can enable instructors to bring students into the content at various levels of depth best suited for them while still advancing the class toward shared learning goals.

Using AI to streamline course planning and alignment between course outcomes and learning objectives with assessments and assuring alignment between lecture content and small group instruction and activities or assessments are just a few possibilities that AI poses.

“There are ways that we can use these tools to polish and refine elements of the teaching environment that I think will add a real richness to the learning experience,” he said.

And students can use AI to assist in their own learning, like building customized study aids, including study guides based on their own notes and generating practice problems.

As the benefits and concerns of generative AI continue to grow and institutions experiment with how AI can support teaching and learning, conversations around governance, effective use and ethics are only beginning.

“This is a snapshot in time,” Van Hof said. “The nature of AI and its rapid evolution mean a lot of what I just told you will be irrelevant in six weeks. There is definite intent to continue these conversations here on campus, across the state, across the country and internationally because this is changing so quickly.”