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Good practice Imported

UPNG's Campus-Wide AI Survey Sparks Curriculum Overhaul in Port Moresby

Papua New Guinea · Port Moresby · See the Papua New Guinea profile · See the Port Moresby profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 77% 40/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A 949-student UPNG survey (±5% margin, >99.9% confidence) found 33% had used AI to write assignments and 96% wanted clear guidelines, prompting the university to launch AI-focused degrees and embed AI literacy across all programmes from 2027.

949 undergraduates
Students surveyed (main study) (2026)
±5 %
Margin of error
>99.9 %
Confidence level
77 students
Pilot survey respondents
42 %
Daily AI use (pilot)
30 %
Weekly AI use (pilot)
33 %
Students who used AI to generate assignments (main survey)
0.54
Gender Parity Index
~90 %
Students owning a smartphone/laptop
77 %
Students reporting mixed emotions/guilt about AI use
96 %
Students wanting clear institutional guidelines
UPNG's Campus-Wide AI Survey Sparks Curriculum Overhaul in Port Moresby

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
University of Papua New Guinea
Period
2025-2026
Keywords
higher education, public policy, information technology

Context

Following two surveys — a 77-student pilot in the School of Business and Public Policy, then a census-quality follow-up of 949 undergraduates across the Waigani and Taurama campuses (±5% margin of error, >99.9% confidence) — Raymond Kamb John and Nematullah Bizhan published results via the PNG Journal of Education and the Devpolicy Blog (Development Policy Centre, ANU) in June 2026.

Results

Findings: 42% daily and 30% weekly AI use in the pilot; in the larger survey, 33% had used AI to generate assignments, the Gender Parity Index stood at 0.54, about 90% owned a smartphone/laptop (often low-performance), 77% reported mixed emotions or guilt about AI use, and 96% wanted clear institutional guidelines.

Conclusions

Vice-Chancellor Prof. Ian Findlay announced a Centre of Excellence in Information Technology, three immediate certificate programmes, and four new Bachelor of Information Technology specialisations (Programming, Networking, AI, Cyber Security) starting 2027, plus a mandate to review all UPNG programmes to embed digital technology, AI, research/critical thinking and workplace skills. This is a self-reported survey (no causal learning-outcome data yet) and the curriculum overhaul was only announced in July 2026, with implementation still pending; the documented gender and device-access gaps have no measured intervention yet.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
University of Papua New Guinea School of Business and Public Policy researchers (Raymond Kamb John, Nematullah Bizhan), Vice-Chancellor's office (Prof. Ian Findlay) for policy response, Planned Centre of Excellence in Information Technology

Conditions for success

  • Rigorous, census-quality survey methodology (±5% margin, >99.9% confidence) to ground the policy response in evidence
  • Institutional leadership buy-in to act on survey findings with concrete new degree specialisations

Common failure modes

  • Documented gender gap (Gender Parity Index 0.54) and uneven device access have no measured intervention yet
  • Curriculum overhaul announced but implementation still pending as of this record

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