LearnWise AI Wins at the Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence 2025

We’re excited to share that LearnWise AI has been named a winner in the Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence: Best of 2025, in the Higher Education category. The move reflects an industry trend in 2026 and beyond: moving from implementing fragmented tech tools in education to developing the capability to run AI responsibly, and at scale.

The Best of 2025 Awards celebrate educational technology from the last 12 months that has excelled and shone in supporting teachers, students, and education professionals in the classroom, for professional development or general management of education resources and learning. Judged by a panel of industry experts, winning an Award of Excellence is more than just acknowledgement from Tech & Learning’s editors, it’s a showcase of which products are truly going above and beyond to contribute to the education sector.

The Tech & Learning editorial team have shared that “The awards bought a huge number of high quality entries. Our panel of industry experts judged the winning products to be those that were most impactful in helping schools improve teaching and learning during 2025. Every winner should be really proud of their accomplishments - a well-deserved congratulations from the entire awards team.”

For us, this award mirrors a fundamental shift in the way higher education leaders are planning for 2026: shifting from “Which AI tools should we try?” to “Do we have the capability to run AI sustainably?”

This shift marks a move from AI readiness as a product decision, to an institutional capability.

How to position AI as an institutional capability in education

Organizations like Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence recognize edtech that has excelled in supporting educators, learners, and education professionals, with an emphasis on solutions that can succeed at system scale, not just in isolated pilots. 

In 2026, AI isn’t staying in the sandbox. It’s entering core workflows: student support, learning design, assessment practices, knowledge access, and operations. Once AI is in the loop, institutions need governance, integration, measurement, and trust foundations, or they end up with pilot fatigue and risk exposure.

The edtech solutions that will win in 2026 are those that embed big-picture thinking and governance into their product vision and applications. Think:

• Large-scale efficiency
• Data management
• Strategic goal achievement
• System integration & interoperability
• Data privacy & governance
• Usage & measurement
• Value / ROI at system level

In edtech, it’s important to note these are not features, but more like key vendor capabilities and product vision that should help guide your institution towards AI readiness and beyond implementation.

How to plan for AI-readiness in 2026

AI support trends from the 2024-2025 school year are signaling to AI beyond an emerging capability, and to a key part of institutional strategy in 2026 and beyond. In budget and planning season, education leaders are asking questions such as:

• What’s the governance model?
• How do we know it’s safe, reliable, and compliant?
• What will we stop doing manually if we scale AI?
• What outcomes will we measure, and how?

Winning edtech solutions in 2026 reflect what buyers increasingly require: proof that a solution fits into institutional ecosystems, respects governance, and drives measurable impact at scale.

A practical, leadership-oriented way to think about AI readiness in 2026

Our guide to AI readiness for higher education leaders covers a few key considerations regarding AI governance:

1. Implementing ethical guardrails in AI
2. Creating an institutional-level AI readiness checklist
3. How to implement AI solutions in weeks, not months
4. Understanding common objections to AI implementation in education
5. Building AI Adoption in Education Toolkits and Templates

Understanding the process of AI governance as an institutional capability rather than an isolated decision is what will turn AI into a sustainable advantage that continues serving students, faculty and staff in the years to come, ethical and at scale.

AI Readiness in Education in 2026 and beyond 

We’re grateful to Tech & Learning for recognizing LearnWise AI with a 2025 Award of Excellence, and we’re especially encouraged by what the award criteria signals about where the sector is headed. In 2026, the institutions that lead won’t be those with the most AI tools. They’ll be the institutions that can answer, with confidence: “Yes, we can run AI responsibly, at scale, with measurable impact.”

Curious about the State of AI Support in Higher Education?

The 2025 State of AI Support in Higher Education Report analyzes nearly 100,000 real AI-powered support conversations across 24 global institutions to show how universities are using AI today, what delivers measurable ROI, and where to focus next. It offers a clear, data-backed roadmap for turning AI into lasting academic and operational impact through secure, LMS-integrated support for every campus stakeholder. Get the report.