eSTEeM Seminar Series: Scholarship Showcase - November 2026

The AI Paradox in Higher Education: Students Want AI, But Not at Any Cost

Servel Miller and Jenny Duckworth

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly reshaping higher education, yet student attitudes toward its use remain deeply polarised. While large‑scale surveys indicate widespread adoption of AI tools for academic purposes, less is known about how these technologies are perceived and negotiated within distance‑learning institutions and environmentally focused disciplines, where issues of ethics, sustainability, and epistemic responsibility are particularly salient. This talk discusses OU undergraduate students’ use, perceptions, and resistance to generative AI within environmental and earth science modules, following student surveys and focus group discussions. We will highlight some of the key tensions in AI use mentioned by students, for example between; support and dependency, access and integrity, and equity and fairness. As a result of our findings, we propose that universities, particularly distance‑learning institutions, must move beyond prohibition or silence by providing clear boundaries, discipline‑specific guidance, and critical AI literacy frameworks that align AI use with robust pedagogical principles and student values

Exploring life competences and green skills for 21st century designers

Emma Dewberry and Vera Hale

The project centres on the development of Stage 3 of the BDes (R63) qualification. It reviewed frameworks that address the embedding of sustainability within learning contexts to enhance individual learner capabilities and develop stronger outcomes that help define ‘green skills’ and competences for a 21st Century society. It specifically looked at this issue through the lens of the design discipline to develop robust evidence to enable the scoping of ‘lifewide’ capabilities in ways that enable reflective practices in learning contexts, and outcomes that help evaluate employability assets informed by sustainability goals. 

Registration

This event is open to OU staff, please visit the registration form to register.