Many strategies have been proposed for responding to generative AI (genAI) in higher education since the public launch of ChatGPT, but many challenges remain for teaching, learning, and assessment. This conceptual essay explores tensions arising from the introduction of genAI into higher education, focusing on implications for equity outcomes. These tensions include the need to teach foundational academic skills concurrently with critical AI literacy, assessment redesign challenges, and genAI’s impact on knowledge production. In this articulation of tensions, genAI is conceptualised as an “assemblage” of technologies, sociopolitical and pedagogical contexts, epistemological foundations, and so on. By understanding genAI in this way, this essay argues that there are fundamental aspects to how genAI functions as a technology, along with the particularities of the contexts into which it is introduced, that make it a potential threat to equity outcomes. Countering this potential threat must not be left up to individual educators but will require institutional and sector-wide leadership.
Pike et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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