At ASU+GSV 2026, Learning Transformation Studios Connected Two Conversations Education Can No Longer Keep Apart

The two panels – one focused on human development, one on student voice and AI – made the case that education’s biggest challenges are more intertwined than separate. Together, the conversations pointed to the same conclusion: the future of education has to be more human, more adaptive, and more responsive to the world learners are already living in.

At ASU+GSV 2026 in San Diego, CA, the Learning Transformation Studios convened two conversations that carried a shared message. The first asked what happens when schools separate character, connection, and cognition from one another. The second asked what adults still misunderstand about how students are actually using AI. The panels reflected a larger ASU proposition, one deeply aligned with the Charter and President Crow’s design logic for the university: education has to create public value, and universities have to deliver social outcomes alongside technical ones.

In Character, Connection, and Cognition: The Missing Links in Student and Educator Success, Alan Arkatov drove a conversation with Houston Kraft, Sarup Mathur, Kori Street, and Lori Woodley-Langendorff that pushed beyond the usual categories. Houston Kraft named the core issue directly as a “human development problem,” not a set of disconnected academic, behavioral, or mental health problems. Kori Street drew attention to USC CANDLE’s work on transcendent thinking, a way of helping students connect academic content to identity, values, community, and the world around them. The larger point was clear: if schools want stronger outcomes, they have to design for the human conditions that make learning, thinking and choosing possible.

That is also why one of the strongest lines from the session landed so powerfully: “connection is the condition in which learning can happen.” It captured the spirit of the entire panel and echoed ASU’s own commitments to student success, principled innovation, and social embeddedness. This was not a conversation about adding something soft around the edges of school, but about redesigning learning around what students and educators actually need now.

The second panel, Busting the Myths: What K-12 Students Really Think about the Potential for AI and Learning, arrived at a similar conclusion from the opposite direction. Moderated by Project Tomorrow CEO Julie Evans and introduced by Larry Corio, the conversation was built around a deceptively simple idea: asking students what they think and listening to them.

The four student panelists, all high school freshmen, described using AI for study guides, concept clarification, practice, brainstorming, and self-directed learning outside school. They were equally direct about the risks, from cheating and overreliance to misinformation and privacy. But they were clear about the path forward too. As one student put it, AI should function as a “study guide rather than a study cheat,” and another urged schools to “use it in moderation.”

The panel connected naturally to ASU’s ambition to lead in education and learning technology, digital immersion, and accessible learning at scale. But what made the conversation especially compelling is that it addressed AI in the context of a much larger question: how education systems respond when the world changes faster than schools do. In that sense, the panel was about more than tools. It was about honesty, adaptation, and listening to learners as experts in the conditions they are already navigating. It reinforces that our collective effort to elevate students’ futures hinges on how we design learning journeys that hone their ability to absorb and process knowledge as well as to discern and dream of who they would like to become.

Together, the panels told a coherent ASU story: the future of learning cannot be built by choosing between human development and technological change; it has to hold both. This is where the Learning Transformation Studios is trying to work: at the intersection of research, design, student voice, public value, and future-facing learning. At ASU+GSV 2026, those ideas were tested in conversation, challenged from multiple angles, and made visible through the voices of practitioners, researchers, and students themselves.