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Good practice Imported

UNED Costa Rica Adopts an Institutional AI Policy After Surveying 483 Faculty on Ethical Risks

Costa Rica · San José · See the Costa Rica profile · See the San José profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 56% 47/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Costa Rica's UNED became the country's first public university to adopt an institutional AI policy, grounded in a CINED survey of 483 faculty that flagged algorithmic bias, data-privacy and over-reliance as top concerns, and stood up a standing network (RedIIA) to govern rollout.

483 academic staff
Faculty surveyed on AI use in education (published 16 May 2026)
UNED Costa Rica Adopts an Institutional AI Policy After Surveying 483 Faculty on Ethical Risks

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) — Centro de Investigaciones en Educación (CINED)
Period
September 2025 (policy approved) – May 2026 (study published)
Keywords
higher education, AI governance, research ethics, data protection, faculty development

Context

Costa Rica's Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) approved an Institutional Artificial Intelligence Policy in its ordinary session 3088-2025 on 4 September 2025, becoming the first public university in the country to formally govern AI use across teaching, research and administration.

Objectives

Govern how AI is used institution-wide and create a standing body — the Red Institucional de Inteligencia Artificial (RedIIA) — to coordinate training, research, technology governance and institutional accompaniment as AI use spreads.

Activities

The policy was informed by a CINED study led by researcher Jensy Campos Céspedes, surveying 483 academic staff (published 16 May 2026) on AI use in teaching, research, materials development, assessment and administrative work. UNED has since published general orientation guidelines for responsible AI use alongside the policy.

Results

The survey found AI already embedded across faculty work, with personalised learning, time savings and richer resources cited as main benefits, but it also surfaced explicit concerns — algorithmic bias, growing technological dependence, data-privacy risks and the ethics of automated decision-making — as faculty's primary worries, though the published reporting does not break these down by percentage.

Conclusions

RedIIA is positioned as an ongoing mechanism for keeping practice aligned with the stated ethical principles, rather than treating the policy as a one-off document.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — No published budget; an internal university policy and survey research effort led by UNED's own research centre (CINED).
Time to results
Short (< 1 year) — Policy approved 4 September 2025; the underlying CINED survey was published 16 May 2026, roughly eight months later.
Staffing & skills
Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) — Centro de Investigaciones en Educación (CINED), Red Institucional de Inteligencia Artificial (RedIIA), UNED's standing AI-governance body

Conditions for success

  • Grounding the policy in an empirical faculty survey of documented concerns and benefits before finalising governance rules
  • A standing cross-institutional body (RedIIA) tasked with coordinating training, research and governance on an ongoing basis

Common failure modes

  • Concerns (bias, privacy, over-reliance) are reported only in aggregate, without percentage breakdowns, limiting precision for targeting mitigations

Commonly funded by

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