The Impact of AI on Curriculum and Education Innovation

Dear Colleagues,

The emergence of generative AI—particularly large language models (LLMs)—has transformed higher education at an unprecedented pace. These technologies offer great promise for enhancing teaching, learning, and assessment. At the same time, they raise urgent questions about ethics, academic integrity, inclusion, and institutional readiness. Studies and experiments are still underway to understand how to integrate AI in education, updating teaching methodologies and curricula even in non-technical fields.

This Special Issue invites contributions that address the integration of generative AI in education through ethical, evidence-based, and pedagogically grounded approaches. We seek papers that move beyond general debates to present practical solutions, policy-informed frameworks, and tested interventions that support the responsible adoption of GenAI tools across all levels of education.

We welcome original research, case studies, conceptual models, institutional strategies, and policy insights that explore the following:

• Ethical and inclusive GenAI adoption in education;
• Institutional frameworks and readiness for AI-enhanced teaching;
• Pedagogical design of GenAI-integrated learning activities;
• Certified CPD and micro-credential pathways for AI in education;
• AI literacy and competence development aligned with DigComp and DigCompEdu;
• Policy-making and quality assurance for AI use in higher education;
• Institutional self-assessment tools and maturity models for GenAI integration;
• Co-designed AI learning labs and participatory methods in curriculum innovation;
• GenAI for personalisation, inclusion and lifelong learning;
• Risks and safeguards: transparency, bias, fairness, and academic integrity;
• Comparative analyses of governance models across Europe;
• Interplay between the AI Act, UNESCO/OECD frameworks, and institutional practice.

This Special Issue will particularly favour contributions grounded in empirical evidence and connected to current European policy frameworks, including the Digital Education Action Plan, DigComp 3.0, and the forthcoming AI literacy guidelines from UNESCO and the OECD.

Submission themes may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• GenAI-enhanced teaching in real-world university settings;
• Competence frameworks for ethical AI use in teaching and learning;
• Digital toolkits and AI-readiness assessment in HEIs;
• Staff and student engagement with GenAI: practices, perceptions, and impacts;
• Governance and policy responses to the challenges of GenAI in education;
• The role of distance, open and online universities in pioneering ethical AI practices.

We aim to assemble a high-quality, interdisciplinary collection of studies that will support educators, institutional leaders, policymakers and researchers in navigating the complex intersection of AI, pedagogy, and educational values.

Prof. Dr. Dario Assante
Dr. Alessandra Antonaci
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.