Paddling Without a Map: The Understructured Rise of AI Literacy in Internet-Enabled Higher Education

Abstract

Higher education institutions are rapidly implementing AI literacy initiatives through internet‑enabled courses, workshops, and professional development experiences, yet these efforts are often undertaken without sustained engagement with empirically grounded AI literacy frameworks. Despite the availability of such frameworks, adoption across institutions remains limited, pointing to gaps in dissemination, perceived relevance, and institutional prioritization. Drawing on publicly available materials and semi‑structured interviews across 17 higher education institutions, this qualitative study examines how institutions govern and design AI literacy learning experiences for non-technical learners under conditions of rapid technological change. Findings indicate that most institutions rely on informal influences, independent research, and internally defined priorities rather than formal frameworks when designing internet‑enabled AI literacy offerings. Institutions primarily emphasized functional use and ethical caution, with less consistent attention to social, civic, and global dimensions of AI. While this decentralized approach affords flexibility and rapid response to technological change, it raises concerns about coherence, equity, and consistency in AI literacy implementation. The study also identifies notable misalignment between publicly stated workforce‑readiness goals and enacted instructional design, as well as tensions between tool‑agnostic approaches and the implementation of accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) practices. By providing a cross‑institutional empirical account of current AI literacy practices, this study contributes to scholarship on internet‑enabled teaching and learning in higher education and offers implications for institutional policy, professional development strategy, and the development of more coherent and equitable AI literacy initiatives.