AI literacy facets in creative higher education: associations with learning performance and academic well-being

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how students learn, create, and evaluate knowledge in creative higher education, particularly in design-related programmes where students use AI for ideation, prototyping, visual exploration, content generation, and critique. Rather than treating AI literacy as a single global competence, this study conceptualises it as a multidimensional construct comprising AI knowledge, awareness of affordances and limitations, critical reflection, operational ability, ethical awareness, and emotional adaptability. This study examines how these facets relate to learning performance and academic well-being among students in design and related programmes. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 475 students enrolled in design and related programmes across Europe, Asia, and Australia. Data were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). Three main patterns emerged. First, AI knowledge was positioned as an upstream resource in the theoretically specified model and showed strong positive structural associations with awareness, critical reflection, operational ability, and ethical awareness. Second, learning performance was associated with a “recognise–reflect–produce” pathway, in which awareness and critical reflection helped connect AI knowledge and operational skills with stronger perceived learning outcomes. Third, ethical awareness was more clearly associated with academic well-being than with learning performance, suggesting that ethical clarity around authorship, fairness, bias, and acceptable AI use may support students’ sense of clarity, fairness, and control in AI-supported creative learning. The findings support a knowledge-first, self-regulated, reflective, and ethically transparent approach to AI literacy in design-related creative higher education.