Students Want Both Technology and Human Connection: Listening to Learners 2025

The latest Listening to Learners report from Tyton Partners continues a multi-year effort to center student voices in the conversation about digital learning and student success. Drawing on survey data from thousands of learners, instructors, and administrators, the 2025 edition explores how students are navigating new technologies, shifting expectations for career readiness, and the continuing pressure on institutional resources.

In general, each section of the report presents an opportunity to better understand gaps between faculty and student expectations. For example, significant portions are devoted to questions about AI tools, and it documents growing use by students. But it also shows that faculty “tend to overestimate its current use among students. This disconnect reinforces the opportunity for blended support strategies that pair human guidance with AI-enabled tools.”

Cathy Shaw, managing director at Tyton Partners and one of the co-authors of the report, says faculty who read Listening to Learners 2025 will hear from students who are more career savvy than they’re often given credit for, wary of AI replacing human judgment in grading, and eager for comprehensive, personal advising that connects academic progress with real-world goals. A common theme across all the major findings is that students want both technology and human connection. They value digital tools that make learning and advising more efficient, but they don’t want those tools to replace meaningful relationships with instructors and advisors.

Learners are career savvy

Shaw says one notable result from the survey is “the level of awareness learners conveyed about the value of being able to demonstrate skills.” For example, more than half of students are aware of non-degree credential options, nearly 90 percent express interest in NDCs, and they are four times more likely than advisors to want to discuss NDCs.

The results suggest a large gap between what students want and what institutions provide when it comes to flexible, career-aligned pathways beyond the traditional degree. “I thought that was surprising, maybe because I wasn’t that career focused when I was in my four-year college experience,” Shaw says. “I think our learners are more sophisticated than some educators would give them credit for.”

Students don’t want AI grading their work

A clear signal from the survey is that “students felt it doesn’t matter if students themselves use AI frequently or not,” Shaw says. “They just don’t want faculty to be using generative AI to grade. That’s probably where these results impact teaching and learning the most.”

Even among daily AI users about a third of students are against instructors using AI for grading. While institutions explore ways to use AI to ease faculty workloads, students — even those experimenting with AI themselves — strongly prefer that a human make the final call on their grades.

“We’re not talking about feedback, we’re talking about actually assigning a grade,” Shaw says.

Students show critical thinking by verifying AI outputs

High awareness does not automatically equal high trust. Students spend more time than faculty checking LLM outputs, “and it’s encouraging that they are mindful that they need to do so,” Shaw says.

The report proposes two possible explanations for this: “This verification gap may reflect students’ greater familiarity with genAI use and reinforces why genAI hasn’t fully displaced human-centered supports. Alternatively, this data may point to instructors’ greater subject matter expertise — when you’re confident in the right output, checking for it takes less time.”

Students want comprehensive advising

As noted above, students are much more likely than advisors to see non-degree credentials as an important topic of discussion in advising sessions. There are similar gaps between students and advisors on topics like campus safety and financial issues. While students are eager to discuss them, advisors are much less likely to prioritize those topics than course selection, registration, and degree progress.

Those gaps suggest universities should consider directing their limited resources toward technology that makes short advising meetings less transactional and more personal, says Shaw: “Registration or progress toward graduation are knowable by looking at a dashboard. An advisor or a student could plan for an advising meeting, with the right access to these kinds of tools, and then that session with an advisor could be a richer conversation.”

Faculty can play a vital role in connecting students to support services

The report notes that awareness of student support resources is particularly low among some students and that students cannot benefit from tutoring, financial aid help, or mental health resources they don’t know exist. Shaw encourages faculty to help close this gap. “It’s actively reminding them of what’s available since faculty get more face time with students than support providers themselves,” she says.

When instructors know how to point students toward campus resources, they can play an important part in keeping students on track. For institutions, this suggests investing in robust support services and making sure faculty are informed and empowered to refer students, extending the reach of those services without adding more staff.

Lasting change requires top-level leadership and trusted data

The report finds that over three-quarters of institutions do not report encouraging disaggregation of course-level data. Many lack clear responsibility for maintaining data quality, illuminating how effective change depends on leadership alignment and trustworthy data practices.

Shaw says, “You need the person at the top, the provost, to really say, ‘We need to make these changes.’ That top-down attention is the secret sauce.” She adds that for any data-driven initiative, “you need a CIO or CTO who can ensure data hygiene. If the data is unreliable, no amount of provost-level attention will change things.”