10 GenAI tools and tricks every higher ed pro should be using

With energy and enthusiasm, Erin Callihan, assistant vice president for strategic marketing and campaign communications with New York University, kept her promise to give you “10 of the most up-to-date, game-changing AI tools for writing, ideation, automation, data analysis and more!” during the Digital Collegium 2025 Annual Conference.

Here’s a short list with a quick overview of what the tools are and what they’re good for.

Tools

1. WISPR — voice to text, usable within other tools
2. ChatGPT — text personalization (think voice for your text) and project outlines
3. Gamma — custom slides and website designs
4. NotebookLM — mind maps, audio/video overviews, custom reports
5. Google Sheets and Excel (yes, you read that right) — in-cell AI functions to help evaluate data
6. Napkin — create cool visuals fast
7. Midjourney — image generation, with the ability to view prompt examples from their library as inspiration for how to get better images
8. Gamini’s Nano Banana — high quality image editing and generation that preserves identity (just does what you want it to do, doesn’t redo your entire image)
9. Synthesia — text to video (take a script and turn it into a polished video); great time saver for training videos
10. Perplexity Comet — agentic browser that doesn’t just search

Insights

Interspersed with each tool review were valuable insights and practical tips including:

• How to use them together, in phases, to get a better output, including prompt engineering that emphasizes the value of accuracy
• Warnings about use of AI-generated imagery and the murky copyright laws in this area (e.g. don’t use AI to create your next institutional logo unless you don’t want to have control of it)
• A reminder that AI tools are constantly being updated so what may not be what you want today, could be what you need tomorrow
• Costs for each tool

The audience came away excited at the possibilities of leveraging these tools!

Link Journal has covered the Annual Conference since 2011. Explore our archives for articles about previous conference sessions.