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This study investigates the impact of generative AI (GenAI) on higher engineering education through informed educational fiction. Based on educators’ predictions and analyzed through Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), the study presents six near-future scenarios. These illustrate both potential strategies and the challenges educators face in managing GenAI, including conflicting learning goals, excessive self-direction among students, unpredictable GenAI development, conflicting regulations, changing educators roles and interactions with students, and the forging and AI-ready campus. The results provide new insights into why GenAI might be challenging to manage in education, while also discussing how potential changes are not historically unprecedented. This study contributes to society and academia by offering empirically grounded future projections that reflect educators’ perceptions of managing GenAI. These projections can inform future interventions and support the development of alternative educational futures. In doing so, it advances the discussion on fiction-based research as a method for exploring complex technological transformations.
Lindell et al. (Mon,) studied this question.