Sep 29, 2026 - News

AI tools not as popular on campus as the buzz suggests

Mike Deehan

Illustration of binary and a column. — Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios

AI may be getting a lot of buzz on campus, but AI tools remain largely absent from colleges' classroom software, according to Instructure's first higher-ed EdTech top 40 report.

Why it matters: Colleges are still working out how to formally fold AI into coursework, even as students and faculty experiment with it on their own.

What they found: The Salt Lake City-based education technology company tracked nearly 19.5 million users of the educational software Canvas across the 2025-26 school year.

Not a single dedicated AI tool cracked the top 100 tools used in college classrooms.

By the numbers: Google Gemini was the most-used AI tool, reaching about 88,000 users at 211 schools.

Fewer than 1 in 8 college instructors report getting real AI training.
The average college measured by the report runs 28 different classroom tech tools. The average student uses five. The average instructor four.

State of play: Digital course content from textbook publishers and distributors remains the single largest category of tools in the ranking.

The bottom line: Formal AI adoption in higher ed is moving slower than the hype suggests. Legacy publishers and infrastructure tools still anchor the college system.

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AI tools not as popular on campus as the buzz suggests

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