I have four children. Two of them are twins. The twins are six-years-old, which means that they occasionally produce imaginative turns-of-phrase that are cute and humorous. For example, my daughter recently noted that it was “raining snow,” and her brother called the electrical socket a “wall battery.” I could go on and on.

Instead, I’ll talk about how this anecdote (vaguely) relates to a Featured Session. I’m excited and honored to be co-presenting at Innovate 2025 with my OLC colleague, Colette Chelf, and my colleague from D2L, Emma Zone. The three of us will be sharing the findings from a very recent research study that focuses on student engagement and AI. In this project, we took a mixed method approach to answer two key questions:

• How do student use and perceptions of AI in higher education impact student engagement?
• How can students be better supported by institutions in their learning and use of AI?

We presented our findings from the initial survey at the Accelerate conference back in November, but we have more to share now that the interviews have been completed, the transcripts cleaned up, the answers coded, and the results analyzed.

I don’t want to give too much away because it’s better to hear it from all three of us at our session, which will be held on Wednesday, April 2 from 12:45-1:30 pm ET. The good news is that there’s still time to register for the conference, and since it’s virtual, you don’t have to worry about hotels and airfare and Ubers and babysitters. The hardest part is carving out some dedicated time from your busy schedule to attend.

Back to the kids. I mention them in this context because I am endlessly delighted and surprised by their points-of-view. They see the world much differently than I do, and that’s a good thing. To that end, many or most of our students see the world very differently than we do. Also a good thing. My intention is not to infantilize students by comparing them to children but to illustrate how much we can learn by investing in their perspectives.

That’s why I am particularly excited about this research; we intentionally sought out student voices. Too many of our conversations about AI and other topics of grave importance begin and end with faculty, staff, and administrators, to our detriment.

As I said, I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll leave you with a few quotes from the student interviews. I hope you find them as thought-provoking as I do. They lack context, but that’s what the session is for.

“AI is like a knife. It has a sharp side and another side.”

“The biggest challenge for me is the over-reliance on AI where it replaces critical thinking, creativity, and innovation.”

“I think that whenever I put it into AI that they give me like new ideas that I haven’t seen…and like helps me think more about what I’m writing or the assignment I’m doing or the quiz I’m taking. Whatever it may be, I think that ChatGPT is just a really good spark.”

“I use it as a tool. I try to use it more as a tool than like a way to cheat.”

“AI is terrible for the environment and like this obsession that our society is starting to put towards it for what? For the most part, it would be a lot more useful for humanity if we focused our efforts elsewhere. There’s a major like ethical dilemma for me.”

“…when I get stuck in procrastination…you know, what ideas to write about, … AI kind of helps me. It helps me get a framework before I even do it and avoids the procrastination for me.”

“Sometimes … it like will check my papers for just like grammar errors. And so I’m able to submit an assignment and be like, I know that I did my best, or I have my grammar errors checked.”

“… this (AI) is really more helpful than me emailing my professor and waiting like a few hours or even like a few days for a response whenever I could like be getting my assignment done.”

“If we get into a habit of surveilling students, I think it’ll be detrimental to them in a different way. So finding a way to balance education where they understand that AI can be useful but they also should not abuse it. … Balance.”

Again, I could go on and on, but you’ll have to join us on April 2 to hear more. In the session, we’ll provide a more comprehensive review of our research and, most importantly, discuss the implications for those who are invested in students and their use of AI. We hope to see you there!