The End of Our University: When AI Became the First Technology to Compete with Both the Teacher and the Learner
Lluís Vicent Safont, EUBS Barcelona, Spain, Spain
Authentic Assessment in Computer Science: Projects, Teams, and Human Skills in (Online) CS Education
Thomas Staubitz, German University of Digital Science, Germany, Germany
Short Bio
Dr. Lluís Vicent is the Barcelona Dean at EU Business School and a leading figure in the design and transformation of modern universities, combining his roles as professor, researcher, academic leader, and international strategic advisor.
His academic career began in the field of technology and has evolved through its application to education, culminating in a focus on the design of innovative university models and higher education systems. He has been a principal investigator in more than 50 research projects and an author of over 100 scientific publications, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in technology-enhanced education and institutional design. He has also served as an external evaluator of universities in the United States, contributing to academic quality assurance processes.
He has served as Rector of three universities — including the University of Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain), La Salle Open University, and WE — and as Regional Director for Europe and Africa within the La Salle International University Network, coordinating academic strategy across multiple countries.
Throughout his career, he has advised and supported numerous higher education institutions in Europe and the Americas in the creation, transformation, and strategic development of their academic models, including collaborations with institutions such as La Salle University of Mexico, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and Universitat de Vic (UVic). Dr. Vicent holds a PhD in Information Technology and Management, as well as degrees in Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering. He is currently the Barcelona Dean at EU Business School and serves as an advisor to international higher education initiatives, including emerging digital university models.
His work focuses on the future of universities in the context of technological disruption, particularly the impact of artificial intelligence on academic structures, teaching models, and institutional design.
Dr. Vicent is an Academic of the Royal European Academy of Doctors.
Abstract
Throughout history, every technology that entered the university served one of two actors. The printing press amplified the professor. The calculator empowered the student. The internet expanded access for both. Learning management systems gave teachers data about learners. Even the MOOC, hailed as the great disruptor, ultimately extended the professor's reach to a global audience. The university benefited from every one of these transformations — not because it was fast, but because every new technology remained, ultimately, in human hands.
Artificial intelligence breaks this pattern for the first time. It not only assists the teacher or the student: it occupies the functional space of both, simultaneously. It can explain a concept more patiently than most professors, personalized to the learner's level, available at any hour, in any language. It can also perform the student's work — writing, reasoning, synthesizing — at a quality that frequently exceeds what the student would produce independently. This is not a disruption. This is displacement. And it is historically unprecedented.
Drawing on thirty years of experience as a researcher, professor, rector, and founder of universities, this keynote traces the long arc of university transformation to argue that what higher education faces today is qualitatively different from anything it has survived before. The question is not whether universities will endure. They will. The question is whether what endures will still deserve the name — and whether those of us who built this system are willing and able to make the decisions that question demands.
Short Bio
Thomas Staubitz is Professor of Educational Technology and Social Learning at the German University of Digital Science. He teaches several online courses on software development to students with diverse academic backgrounds and varying levels of prior experience. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in International Media and Computer Science, as well as a doctorate in Internet Technologies and Systems. His research focus is on the delivery of such courses in a scalable way.
Before joining the German University of Digital Science in 2024, he served as a Senior Lecturer at the Hasso Plattner Institute’s openHPI MOOC platform for over a decade. In this role, he was involved in a broad range of projects in collaboration with industry and public-sector partners, including SAP and the World Health Organization, as well as in publicly funded national and European research initiatives. At openHPI, he taught several MOOCs on Java programming and contributed to the design and production of numerous additional courses in collaboration with faculty members and students. Within this context, he also completed his doctoral dissertation on the assessment of team-based, gradable assignments in large-scale learning environments.
His interest in online learning dates back to his undergraduate studies, where he worked on the development of an automated grading system for programming exercises. During his master’s studies, he worked on educational projects involving children in schools, including the production of radio plays using the XO laptop. Guided by the conviction that teaching is a powerful means of learning, he began teaching programming to diverse audiences while still completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
In addition to his teaching activities, he has held several roles in software development and product management and has published research on open online learning in international conferences and journals. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a Senior Member of the IEEE, a member of the ACM Learning@Scale and EMOOCs steering committees, and serves as a reviewer for multiple conferences and academic journals.
Abstract
Computer science education is undergoing a fundamental shift. With generative AI systems capable of producing code, explanations, and even full solutions, traditional assignments and assessments no longer reliably measure learning or understanding.
This keynote argues that project-based learning and teamwork are no longer optional pedagogical choices, but central design principles for meaningful computer science education. Drawing on examples from teaching practice, the talk explores how to assess authentic projects, collaborative work, and processes in computer science classes. This is particularly challenging in online classes where learners are distributed all over the globe.
The session addresses key challenges in the age of AI: assessing individual contribution within teams, evaluating learning when AI tools are ubiquitous, and designing assessments that reward understanding, judgment, and responsibility rather than mere code production. The talk concludes with design principles for rethinking computer science education—focusing on learning as a socio-technical process rather than a solitary technical task.