I-Powered Multilingual Degrees in Higher Education: Postcolonial Insights on Linguistic Justice and Disruptive Innovation
Open accessAbstract
Abstract: Purpose – Artificial-intelligence (AI) powered multilingual degree programmes are emerging as a potential game-changer for global higher education, yet little scholarship integrates their technological, sociolinguistic and theological implications. This study synthesises postcolonial theory, disruptive-innovation economics and a biblical theology of education to evaluate whether such programmes democratise learning or reinscribe hierarchy. Design/methodology/approach – Guided by a critical-realist, transformative paradigm, the inquiry triangulates an integrative literature review (n = 162 sources, 2018–2025), five embedded case studies spanning Africa, Asia and North America, and a 10–15-year strategic foresight exercise. Four constructs—linguistic justice, pedagogical personalisation, epistemic authority and mission fidelity—anchor six falsifiable propositions that were pattern-matched through reflexive thematic analysis. Findings – AI translation and tutoring markedly widen access for under-resourced languages, but only when coupled with mother-tongue pedagogy, equitable bandwidth and faculty mentorship. Personalisation yields moderate learning gains (d ≈ 0.35) yet heightens automation bias, threatening epistemic authority unless Scripture-first verification and periodic human audit are enforced (2 Tim 3:16-17). Accreditation-aligned metrics confirm the super-additive effect of pairing linguistic justice with mission fidelity, whereas neglecting either variable erodes learning, equity and spiritual formation. Practical implications – The paper advances inspectable standards (S1–S3) and model-card templates that regulators, developers and Christian universities can deploy immediately to safeguard data ethics, doctrinal integrity and learner outcomes. Originality/value – By integrating postcolonial critique, disruptive-innovation theory and biblical theology, this study supplies the first holistic framework and evidence-informed guardrails for AI-mediated multilingual higher education. Keywords: AI-powered multilingual degrees; Christian higher education; disruptive innovation; linguistic justice; pedagogical personalisation; postcolonial analysis; biblical theology.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
ODL students in the Global South face additional inequities, from patchy internet access to linguistic mismatches with mainstream AI tools.
“ODL students in the Global South face additional inequities -from patchy internet access to linguistic mismatches with mainstream AI tools (see Sangwa & Mutabazi, 2025b) -raising the stakes for ethical AI governance that is sensitive to low-resource contexts (Jin et al., 2024;North, 2023;UNICEF, 2020UNICEF, , 2021)).”
From <b>Generative AI and Academic Integrity in Online and Distance Learning: A Policy Index and Evidence for Assessment Redesign in the Global South</b> (2025) · cites this paper as Sangwa & Mutabazi, 2025b
The Introduction (1.1–1.2; page not provided) describes uneven AI infrastructure, linguistic inequity, and digital divides, supporting the general concern about unequal access and language fit. The passages do not specifically establish patchy internet access or identify ODL students in the Global South as the affected group. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Sangwa, S., & Mutabazi, P. (2025) · Open Journal of AI, Ethics & Society (ISSN: 3105-3076) · doi:10.65655/dg1rsd17
Self-citation
- Authors
- SANGWA, S., & MUTABAZI, P.
- Affiliations
- African Leadership University (RW)
- Open Christian University (US)
- Venue
- Open Christian Press
- Publisher
- Open Christian Press
- Published
- 2025-09-07
- OpenAlex
- W7080224479
- Cited by
- 0
- References
- 0
- Type
- other
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (cc-by)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Artificial Intelligence in Education
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Digital Education and Society
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Multilingual Education and Policy
- Keywords
- artificial intelligence in higher education, linguistic justice, postcolonial critique, disruptive innovation, Christian higher education, automation bias, epistemic authority, data ethics, language equity, strategic foresight
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
