Embedding AI Competence into the Curriculum: The ADM-AI Model for European Higher Education

Artificial intelligence is reshaping disciplinary practices and academic work, moving higher education beyond technical adoption towards human–AI collaboration as a core graduate capability. This raises a central challenge: how can AI-related human competences be systematically integrated into teaching and learning in ways that foster future-ready skills, while aligning pedagogical transformation with evolving teaching roles and institutional governance?

This paper introduces the Agile Curriculum Development Model (ADM-AI), a governance-compatible framework for systematically integrating AI-related human competences into higher education programmes. Its core contribution is to address the implementation gap between AI competence frameworks and programme-level curriculum transformation under formal higher education governance conditions. The model combines competence clarification, constructive alignment, curriculum mapping, and iterative implementation cycles, enabling continuous curriculum transformation within Bologna-type systems. AIComp serves as a conceptual starting point, providing an empirically grounded competence framework that defines AI competence as a multidimensional capacity for reflective, ethical, and collaborative engagement with AI. The model conceptualises curriculum transformation as a multi-level process linking institutional strategy, programme design, and pedagogical practice.

AI competences are enacted in situated learning environments where learners engage with AI systems as partners in inquiry, problem-solving, and knowledge construction, accompanied by a shift in academic roles towards learning design and facilitation. The model enables embedded, iterative innovation and positions implementation as institutional learning, offering a scalable approach to curriculum transformation in AI-mediated higher education.