ChatGPT is revolutionizing the field of higher education by leveraging deep learning models to generate human-like content. However, its integration into academic settings raises concerns regarding academic integrity, plagiarism detection, and the potential impact on critical thinking skills. This article presents a study that adopts a thing ethnography approach to understand ChatGPT’s perspective on the challenges and opportunities it represents for higher education. The research explores the potential benefits and limitations of ChatGPT, as well as mitigation strategies for addressing the identified challenges. Findings emphasize the urgent need for clear policies, guidelines, and frameworks to responsibly integrate ChatGPT in higher education. It also highlights the need for empirical research to understand user experiences and perceptions. The findings provide insights that can guide future research efforts in understanding the implications of ChatGPT and similar Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in higher education. The study concludes by highlighting the importance of thing ethnography as an innovative approach for engaging with intelligent AI systems and calls for further research to explore best practices and strategies in utilizing Generative AI for educational purposes.

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) requires innovative educational environments to leverage this technology effectively to address concerns like academic integrity, plagiarism, and others. Additionally, higher education needs effective pedagogies to achieve intended learning outcomes. This emphasizes the need to redesign active learning experiences in the GenAI era. Authentic assessment and experiential learning are two possible meaningful alternatives in this context. Accordingly, this article investigates how GenAI can enhance teaching and learning by constructively addressing study situations beyond conventional learning approaches and cultivating high-order skills and knowledge acquisition. This study employs thing ethnography to examine GenAI tools’ integration with authentic assessment and experiential learning and explore implementation alternatives. The results reveal insights into creating human-centered and GenAI-enhanced learning experiences within a constructive alignment. Specific examples are also provided to guide their implementation. Our contributions extend beyond the traditional use of GenAI tools as mere agents-to-write or agents-to-answer questions to become agents-to-support experiential learning for authentic assessment. These findings underscore the transformative role of GenAI tools in enhancing teaching and learning efficacy and effectiveness. The limitations in treating GenAI tools as subjects in thing ethnography are acknowledged, with potential for future implementation evaluation.

Background: The growing demand for more efficient, timely, and safer health services, together with insufficient resources, put unprecedented pressure on health systems worldwide. This challenge has motivated the application of principles and tools of operations management and lean systems to healthcare processes to maximize value while reducing waste. Consequently, there is an increasing need for professionals with the appropriate clinical experience and skills in systems and process engineering. Given their multidisciplinary education and training, biomedical engineering professionals are likely among the most suitable to assume this role. In this context, biomedical engineering education must prepare students for a transdisciplinary professional role by including concepts, methods, and tools that commonly belong to industrial engineering. This work aims to create relevant learning experiences for biomedical engineering education to expand transdisciplinary knowledge and skills in students to improve and optimize hospital and healthcare care processes.Methods: Healthcare processes were translated into specific learning experiences using the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) model. This model allowed us to systematically identify the context where learning experiences were expected to occur, the new concepts and skills to be developed through these experiences, the stages of the student’s learning journey, the resources required to implement the learning experiences, and the assessment and evaluation methods. The learning journey was structured around Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, which considers four stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Data on the student’s learning and experience were collected through formative and summative assessments and a student opinion survey.Results: The proposed learning experiences were implemented in a 16-week elective course on hospital management for last-year biomedical engineering undergraduate students. Students engaged in analyzing and redesigning healthcare operations for improvement and optimization. Namely, students observed a relevant healthcare process, identified a problem, and defined an improvement and deployment plan. These activities were carried out using tools drawn from industrial engineering, which expanded their traditional professional role. The fieldwork occurred in two large hospitals and a university medical service in Mexico. A transdisciplinary teaching team designed and implemented these learning experiences.Conclusions: This teaching-learning experience benefited students and faculty concerning public participation, transdisciplinarity, and situated learning. However, the time devoted to the proposed learning experience represented a challenge.

This work is about sustainability-related learning experiences for the discipline of supply chain management (SCM) in Higher Education. It arises from the need to motivate students with relevant and interesting activities to improve their learning performance. Higher Education must respond to dynamic demands to keep impactful topics for students, organizations, and society over time. This work addresses the relevance of contemporary challenges in real-world SCM situations concerning Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also provides an actionable framework integrating experiential learning ideas, the ADDIE model for instructional design, the Triple Bottom Line for sustainability, the continuous improvement cycle, and the SDGs into an SCM model. In a case study, the article illustrates the use of this framework for instructional design in a learning experience from an undergraduate course in an Industrial and Systems Engineering program. The application describes the impact of food ecosystems on cities and communities during the COVID-19 crisis. The results suggest positive attainment levels in students’ learning outcomes and highly favorable opinions regarding learning relevance, interest, motivation, and the recommendation of the course. Therefore, this work contributes to SCM education by including sustainability-related challenges and disciplinary topics in novel instructional designs that will actively prepare future professionals and decision-makers.

This research paper presents a proposal for a learning model that extends the availability of resources for training and development of professional skills in the field of Lean Manufacturing. This research arises due to the lack and current limitations of effective teaching models for the development of professional competencies. The importance of this educational innovation proposal lies in being a unique reference frame of its type. This offers cutting-edge methods for optimization and process improvement tools, while developing general and disciplinary competencies in the area of industrial engineering. The notion of learning is presented in a context of real-world experiences to develop relevant competencies in real businesses settings for manufacturing and services. This work presents a literature review on competency-based education, experiential learning and challenge-based learning. Therefore, a background explanation of the proposed learning model and a learning space called Lean-Thinking-Learning Space are elaborated. Additionally, an experiment carried out to measure the development of competencies is showed in terms of comparing the teaching results of a course in two different learning spaces; namely, a traditional classroom and the proposed experiential learning space. The results of this investigation reflect an increase of 29% in the level of attainment of competencies observed in the experiential learning space proposed in this research work.

Complex thinking is an important tool for effective decision-making, as it helps people to better understand uncertain situations by considering the multiple variables and relationships involved in a situation, thus being able to identify patterns and connections that would not otherwise be evident. This article presents the results of a bibliometric study to identify academic publications that consider the correlation between decision-making in the business area and complex thinking competency and its sub-competencies. The intention was to have a theoretical horizon that provides a complete overview of the current academic situation regarding the correlation of both professional skills to identify areas of opportunity for new studies. Methodologically, we conducted a literature review using Scopus and Web of Science databases under the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) protocol from which a sample of 339 articles related to both topics was obtained. R, Rstudio, and Bibliometrix were used for the quantitative analysis of the data. The results showed an academic tendency to associate decision-making in business with critical thinking, paying little attention to the other sub-competencies of complex thinking. Furthermore, we found a concentration of research in specific universities and countries, repeating a tendency to study only a few sub-competencies. Overall, this work sheds light on the broad opportunity to link the complex thinking macro-competency with decision-making in business, to provide more extraordinary skills and tools to future professionals.