Making sense of generative AI: a comparative study of students’ appropriation of generative AI in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Germany

Over the past few years, university students around the world have rapidly incorporated generative AI applications into their academic practices. While research has begun to examine students’ patterns of use, perceived benefits and risks, and institutional responses, little is known about how students in different higher education contexts practically appropriate and make sense of generative AI as part of their studies. Taking a practice-theoretical position, this study posits that the adoption of generative AI as an epistemic rather than an educational technology can only be understood in relation to existing practices and their associated epistemic regimes. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 29 students in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Germany, this study explores the complex ways students engage with generative AI in different educational settings. The findings reveal a predominantly instrumental stance on generative AI across all settings. It is argued that this stance enables students to stay in control of the epistemic activities while simultaneously making them susceptible to rote computing and mechanical processing. This study contributes to critical research on learning, media, and technology by rendering salient students’ situated entanglements with emerging technologies and prevalent epistemic regimes.