SoTL Spotlight

This SoTL Spotlight shares findings from an REB-approved qualitative study exploring AI transparency, student agency, and reflective decision-making in higher education.

AI Transparency and Reflection: This video uses an AI-generated avatar and voice representation of Evelyn Chan to support clear delivery of the presentation. The original on-camera recording presented pronunciation and audio clarity issues that could not be re-recorded within the available production timeframe. AI was therefore used to support the presentation of the research.

The research, study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, script, and final content are the researcher’s original work. The use of AI in producing the video reflects the same principle explored in the research: being transparent about how and why AI is used while maintaining human judgment and responsibility for the final work.

In this case, AI supported the delivery of the research story; the scholarly inquiry and decisions behind it remained human-led.

In this way, the production of the Spotlight also provides a practical example of the transparency and reflective decision-making explored in the research.

Generative AI has created a lot of conversation in higher education. You can see it every day on LinkedIn posts, discussion about academic integrity. AI use it, um, in classroom, and whether students should or shouldn't use AI in their academic work. 

Students are already making decisions about AI in their academic work, so perhaps the more important question are: Why did you choose to use and not use AI? How did you use it? And how did that decision support your learning? 

Rather than using AI transparency simply to document whether students use AI, I wanted to explore what might happen if transparency became an opportunity for students to explain and reflect on their own decisions. 

During the Winter 2026 term, I explored this across four fully online film courses with four different sections. So that involved approximately two hundred students working in forty-five production groups. 

The students were completing an authentic filming project. 

Rather than prohibiting AI or requiring students to use it, I provided them with, AIguidance about how to use AI responsibly, and gives the students the tools, uh, the guidance to decide whether and how AI would support their work. 

As the filmmaking project developed, students had opportunity to decide their decisions about AI. They were asked whether they use AI, which tool they used, when capable, and how AI support their work, and importantly, why they make those decisions. 

AI-related statement and reflection were available from thirty-nine of the forty-five production groups. And when I analyzed those reflections, I found that the students were thinking about AI in a ways that we weren't well beyond a simple yes or no decision. 

There is a four interconnected themes emerged. 

So the first one is students were making deliberate decisions about AI rather than simply using it because it was available. 

Second, students who used AI generally position it as for supporting their learning. They described it using it for things like brainstorming, organizing ideas, clarifying concepts, and improving communication rather than replacing their own learning. 

Third, the authenticity and creative ownership mattered. Students talked about originality, responsibility, and maintain ownership of their creative process. 

And the fourth, the transparency statement themselves created opportunity for students to reflect on learning, authorship, and responsibility. 

For me, this fourth finding is particularly important. 

AI transparency doesn't have to be only about disclosure or compliances. It can also become part of the learning process. 

Instead of stopping them, "Did you use AI? You cannot use AI," that kind of, uh, restriction, we can continue the conversation by asking, "Why did you choose to use, not use AI? How did that decision support your learning? And what remain your own responsibility?" 

These are relative simple questions, but this shifts the conversation from monitoring AI use to works making students thinking about and decision-making more visible. 

The finding from this study suggest that AI transparency statement may offer a practical way to support students agency, reflective practice, and responsible AI literacy while keeping human judgment and responsibility at the center of the learning. 

And that's where I think the conversation about AI in education needs to continue. Not only what AI can do, but how we design learning experience that help students decide when, why, and how it should be used.