Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1007/s11528-025-01055-3

Publication Title

TechTrends

Pages

20 pp.

Abstract

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has demonstrated their affordances and limitations in revolutionizing pedagogical strategies in higher education. Given the lack of guidelines, policies, and resources to assist instructors in efficiently and ethically integrating AI into teaching and learning practices, this systematic review aimed to investigate AI integration competencies and challenges in higher education from the intelligent Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) perspective. We first applied the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) to identify 23 studies published between 2019 and 2023 that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. After conducting open coding and thematic analysis, the research findings showed four AI integration competencies and strategies, including 1) AI literacy and readiness as intelligent technological knowledge, 2) AI-supported innovative pedagogy to supplement instructor social presence and transform the instructor-student relationship, 3) AI as intelligent learning partners to increase student engagement in self-regulated learning and higher-order thinking skills, and 4) AI-driven learning experience design and delivery. AI integration limitations and challenges contained: 1) the short-term novelty effect, 2) digital divides, 3) technical deficiencies, and 4) ethical concerns. Based on the implications for future practices, a diagram was developed to illustrate the systematic considerations to support the sustainability of AI-assisted teaching and learning in higher education.

Rights

© The Authors 2025

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "Not applicable."

Original Publication Citation

Ren, X., & Wu, M. L. (2025). Examining teaching competencies and challenges while integrating artificial intelligence in higher education. TechTrends. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-025-01055-3

ORCID

0000-0002-1042-0100 (Ren)

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