AI for Emotional Regulation

Today's students have grown up using technology to regulate emotions, and AI is the most powerful version of that impulse yet. For the professionals supporting students, the picture is equally complicated. International education carries the emotional and cognitive load of teaching and caregiving across cultures, crises, and constant uncertainty. So what happens when a profession built on helping students sit with discomfort reaches for the same shortcut?

As part of the AI-Enhanced Study Abroad Office series, this session will examine how AI is reshaping the emotional landscape of international education, and explore where it can genuinely support well-being and where it risks substituting for it. Through guided reflection, stress reframing, and prompt exercises, this session focuses on responsible experimentation, helping participants leave with practical ideas and clear guardrails for integrating AI into their professional contexts.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Explain how current technological patterns shape the emotional landscape that students and professionals bring to international education.
• Distinguish between AI use that supports emotional regulation and AI use that substitutes for it, with particular attention to the relational and caregiving demands of international education.
• Evaluate the benefits and risks of AI-assisted emotional processing, with attention to privacy, inclusion, cultural context and appropriate boundaries of use.
• Apply structured prompts and guiding questions to use AI intentionally for emotional regulation in ways that complement human judgement, relational care, and intercultural learning.

Focus

Examine how AI is already reshaping the emotional landscape of international education and whether that's making the field more capable or just more comfortable.

This session will include a breakout activity. Please come ready to engage and participate.