Tensions and Possibilities of Generative AI in Higher Education: Unforgetting History, Imagining Multimodal Futures

• In Event: Adoption and Resistance: Understanding the Human Factors of AI Integration

Abstract

This paper explores how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and other multimodal tools are reshaping knowledge production and participation in higher education. It focuses on how students use AI technologies to support their learning, while also uncovering the ethical, epistemological, and pedagogical tensions involved. By placing current uses of AI in the historical context of educational technologies and struggles for justice, the paper argues that GenAI is not a break from the past but part of a long-standing trajectory of educational innovation and exclusion—especially for multilingual learners, disabled students, and first-generation university students.
Rather than approaching AI as a neutral innovation, this work centers student experience to reveal how technology intersects with deeply embedded institutional hierarchies.

Author

• Anqi He, University College London - IOE