Structuring AI in Our Learning: What Are We Missing in the Conversation?

Across higher education, conversations about AI have focused on policy, risk, and academic integrity. These conversations matter – but they often leave unexamined the conditions faculty and students are already operating within. 

This session begins from a different premise: AI adoption is not only a technological shift. It is a signal about the environments we have built.  This session is organized around a single question, shared with participants before the conversation begins: 

When AI arrived at your institution, what did it walk into?

When a student turns to AI instead of asking a professor or peer for help, that decision reflects more than convenience. It reflects what feels safe, accessible, and low-risk in a given environment. This interactive session invites faculty to explore how existing classroom and institutional conditions shape students’ use of AI – and how those same conditions influence help-seeking, participation, and trust. 

The session is structured as a facilitated dialogue, opening with a live conversation between the facilitators and moving into participant reflection through an anonymous reflection tool. The focus remains on conditions rather than individuals, allowing insight to emerge without requiring personal disclosure. 

Participants’ reflections contribute to an ongoing body of work exploring how institutional conditions shape AI use in higher education, with insights shared back in future sessions. 

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• Identify how existing classroom and institutional conditions influence students’ use of AI
• Recognize where asking for help may carry social or academic cost in their context
• Analyze how assumptions about participation shape student engagement
• Identify at least one condition they can shift to reduce barriers to help-seeking and support more meaningful interaction

Speakers: 
Rhoan Garnett is a researcher and practitioner whose work examines how educational systems shape access and belonging, and how students navigate postsecondary pathways across institutional contexts -- from community colleges to selective liberal arts institutions. He is the founder of WeBe Collab, an initiative that brings institutions into collaborative dialogue to surface and redesign the conditions shaping student experience. His current work extends this focus to the role of artificial intelligence in higher education, drawing on multi-institutional engagements and ongoing research into institutional design and student decision-making. He writes about education, technology, and institutional change on Substack, where he explores how we bridge belonging in collaboration: https://substack.com/@rhoangarnett

Lance Eaton is the senior associate director of AI in Teaching and Learning at Northeastern University. His work engages with the possibility of digital tools for expanding teaching and learning communities while considering the profound issues and questions that educational technologies open up for students, faculty, and higher ed as a whole. He has engaged with scores of higher education institutions about navigating the complexities and possibilities that generative AI represents for us at this moment. His musings, reflections, and ramblings on AI and Education can be found on his blog: https://aiedusimplified.substack.com

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