lunch&LEARN | Access Timing as Scaffolding: Does the timing of GenAI access matter?

Generative AI has become a part of students' everyday working life. If used without guidance, GenAI can cause over-reliance and leave students with a distorted sense of what they have actually learned. Most research and practice have focused on how we can scaffold students' GenAI use, for example through prompts, guardrails, or redesigned tasks. This talk asks a simpler question that has received far less attention. When should students be allowed to use AI so that it helps their learning?

In this lunch&LEARN session, Janne Rotter turns to a question that's been largely overlooked: not how, but when should students be allowed to use AI for it to actually support learning? Janne will present findings from a study of 105 university students comparing three conditions: unrestricted AI access, no access at all, and a "timed" condition where students could only turn to AI after first attempting the task on their own.

Drawing on multiple pedagogical theories to build a decision rule for when access should open up, the results show that students in the timed condition outperformed those with unrestricted access on an objective post-test, and had a more accurate sense of their own understanding, without an explicit metacognitive prompting. Compared to withholding AI entirely, timed access also seemed to reduce task errors and time spent on task.

Join us to learn more about the topic and engage in further discussion.