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Why high-quality learning must be human-centred

  • May 6
  • 5 min read
By prioritising character formation and collaborative process over static products, institutions can bridge the gap between technical brilliance and practical human utility.

The following insights are drawn from an April 2026 roundtable focused on the fundamental challenges facing education systems as they prepare learners for an uncertain, AI-driven future. The provocateur for this roundtable was Steven Butschi, Director of the North American Google Education Go-to-market and Partnerships team. During his 15 years at Google, Steven has helped universities migrate to Google Workspace for Education; worked on the founding team to bring Chromebooks to the education market, which have become the #1 device in K-12 education in the US; and launched Google’s efforts to bring Google Cloud Platform to researchers, universities and EdTech companies.



For centuries, higher education operated on the premise that knowledge gained at the start of a career would last you for decades, if not a lifetime. That assumption has been obliterated by the AI explosion (and many argue it has been defunct for decades). The global job market is in a state of flux, while some of the technical skills that were relevant in a student’s first year of higher education are obsolete before they reach graduation.


We are entering an era where the most valuable currency is human agency: the capacity to identify wicked problems and mobilise diverse perspectives to tackle them. To meet this moment, education must look closely at where AI tools can support and enhance their work, and what educators and institutions can provide that technology can’t.


AI as a partner, not a replacement

A key challenge for educators and employers alike is ensuring AI supports capacity without replacing human-directed interaction. To explain the nuance between the two, roundtable provocateur Steven Butschi contrasted cognitive offloading — delegating rote tasks to free up space for deeper creativity and thinking — with cognitive surrender — surrendering critical human tasks, such as empathy, moral judgement and nuanced communication. When the right balance is struck, AI can complement experiential, social learning experiences; but without intentional, iterative design, AI tools can too easily undermine learning altogether.

Roundtable participants shared examples of what effective deployment of AI might look like in practice, from AI being used to create personalised simulations or Jeopardy-style games, to even acting as a reflective dialogue partner or coach pushing students to deepen their reflections. 



Process over product

This is part of a wider shift in sentiment underway regarding AI’s role in the classroom, from a “cheating tool” to a “collaborator”. 


Roundtable participants explored how a rise in AI-enabled cheating is a symptom of an outdated assessment model, rather than a moral crisis. Products — such as essay papers or charts — can now be produced near-instantly by AI tools. As a result, reliance on these outputs as proof of mastery is increasingly redundant. In place of static products, educators should look to assessment methods that require students to explain their reasoning in real-time, such as oral defences (vivas), think-alouds or live demonstrations, allowing them to prove their ability to articulate and interrogate concepts. This approach also has the added benefit of more closely resembling how employers evaluate talent.


Digital tools can also support a more robust, effective assessment process, via the “observability framework”. Traditionally, when students work in teams on long-term projects, the internal dynamics (such as who led the brainstorming, how conflicts were resolved, and how ideas evolved) remain a “black box” to the educator, who only sees the final product.


The observability framework leverages digital tools and AI to create a layer of visibility into these processes that has never been available before. By capturing and digesting data from digital interactions (such as transcripts of meetings or collaborative document history), educators can assess how a student navigates complex information, the nature of peer-to-peer interactions, and emotional regulation and mindset during high-pressure challenges. This approach also mirrors the internship model of hiring, where employers evaluate how a person actually works rather than just how they appear on paper. AI-driven observability also allows high-touch learning models to be scaled to larger groups of students. 



The essential role of cognitive and social friction

While AI is increasingly capable of handling complex cognitive tasks, the roundtable participants reached a strong consensus that learning remains a deeply human, social activity. At the core of this discussion were the concepts of cognitive and social “friction": the necessary, often messy emotional process of wrestling with hard problems, making mistakes and navigating interpersonal dynamics. While AI can smooth the way by generating ideas and deepening individual reflections, it lacks the lived human experience required for relationship building and conflict navigation.


To prevent the motivational cost associated with purely AI-driven education, the future of learning must prioritise human interaction. This involves a deliberate focus on “conflict competency", meaning the ability to navigate disagreements, interrogate one’s own biases and debate contrary perspectives. These vital skills are poorly suited for AI, which struggles with emotional, contrary-to-opinion engagement. Instead, they require the safe space of direct human encounter — a role university campuses are uniquely positioned to fill. In fact, participants even suggested universities double down on physical social spaces, such as campus bars or common areas specifically designated as device-free zones to encourage deep conversation. 



There is also a growing concern that students will shy away from traditional office hours in favour of the convenience of AI prompting, thereby missing out on invaluable mentoring opportunities. As Steven noted, "I do believe that there will be teachers forever... humans need to be in the loop, not only because you need to be able to verify what AI says, but also because of the social connection". Some participants highlighted the use of "AI guardrails": tools that provide initial coaching but eventually point the student back to a human instructor, ensuring that technology serves as a bridge to, rather than a replacement for, human connection.


This demand for lived experience and connection is a direct response to a burgeoning crisis of meaning among the current generation. For a generation facing soaring rates of despair and isolation, the ultimate limit of AI is its inability to touch the existential. Take the "Existential Despair" course at the University of Pennsylvania, which recently saw 500 applicants for only two dozen seats. Meeting weekly from 5:00 pm to midnight with absolutely no technology allowed, the course serves as a stark antithesis to the AI-infused experience. As one participant noted, the answer to these challenges "is not better AI tools," but a return to the direct human encounter that speaks to a student’s sense of purpose and character.



The next generation must be builders and learners

As technical coding becomes easier through natural language, the humanities skills — critical thinking, ethics, communication — become the most practical, high-value assets for the future (what a participant referred to as “the revenge of the English majors”!). Rather than optimising for career paths that are increasingly unpredictable, higher education must dedicate itself to producing graduates who are deeply curious, adaptable and skilled at using AI to tackle real-world challenges. The ultimate goal is to foster humans who are not just capable of using AI, but who possess the character and purpose to steer it. And just as we must support students to develop agency, all of us, too, have agency to shape the future of learning. 




Thank you also to everyone who attended this roundtable. We look forward to continuing this urgent dialogue as we actively work with partners across education and industry to bridge the gap between the classroom and the world.



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