AI-driven academic advising: Enhancing education through technology

Artificial Intelligence is fast altering the landscape of higher education, with academic advising no exception. Networking systems are increasingly utilized for student performance predictions, personalized academic advice, and administrative tasks such as course registration and timetabling. Various universities worldwide, spanning the United States, Australia, China, and other parts, are presently incorporating AI into their advising frameworks to give way to better student outcomes and take some pressure off human advisors. The benefits of AI in academic advising, discussed in this paper, are threefold: efficiency, scalability, and predictive analytics. Its shortcomings involve emotional intelligence, data-driven errors, and ethical concerns. The discussion extends to the adoption of AI in the Gulf region: countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia currently invest aggressively in AI as part of their national digital transformation strategy, which has spilled over into Qatar. This is already beginning in institutions like Khalifa University and Qatar University, where student support services using AI are being enhanced. It is further exacerbated by AI, taking into account cultural resistance. To such a great degree, in this region, emphasis is put on face-to-face contact types, dampening full-scale adoption. This paper highlights that this is a hybrid model where the strengths ofusing AI for routine activities can be amalgamated with human involvement when the situations are more personalized and require complex advising. Finally, the issues of ethical consideration include the privacy of data and algorithmic bias of AI-powered academic advising systems, which are recommended for future research. With all these balanced approaches, universities would ensure that AI enhances the experience but does not eliminate the much-needed personal touch.