A substantial majority of college faculty express deep concern about the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on student learning and about their own preparedness to address it effectively. A national survey conducted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) found that 90% of faculty believe generative AI will diminish students’ critical thinking skills, while 68% report that their institutions have not adequately prepared faculty to use AI for teaching or mentoring (AAC&U, 2026). With the rapid growth of AI, educators—or, really, any human—can easily feel disempowered.
AI-driven anxieties around human purpose seem to dominate popular discourse. Reports on workforce trends indicate that AI is already reshaping labor markets, with many workers reporting job displacement or fear of future displacement due to automation and generative technologies (Leopold, 2025). Such trends have intensified questions not only about what humans will do in an AI-augmented future, but also about the purpose of AI.
Importantly, scholars have argued that AI currently lacks a stable social purpose. Lindgren (2024), who leads the AI Test Kitchen at Boston College, suggests that AI remains a general-use technology without a clearly defined societal role, similar to earlier technologies such as search engines before they crystallized around a dominant function. Today, users Google everything from scholarship to football scores. But AI has yet to form a defining function like Google. AI presently appears as assistant, analyst, creative partner, or replacement. Is it task master? Job replacer? Linguistic calculator? Second mind? Second soul?
Uncertainty—about human and technological purpose—creates a critical moment for higher education. Rather than viewing AI solely as a threat, it can be understood as an opportunity to influence the social, ethical, and cognitive impacts of AI while its role is still being negotiated. In undergraduate psychology courses in particular, this moment calls for frameworks that move beyond fear toward intentional skill development and ethical engagement. Fortunately, we have an effective compass for navigating the current moment.
The APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major: Version 3.0 (American Psychological Association, 2023) offer a path forward. They illuminate important values that can help translate anxiety into agency.
One effective approach to operationalizing the APA 3.0 guidelines involves combining scholarly inquiry with structured creative expression. This method employs a practice known as “generative sense making,” which entails elaboration, visualization, and creative enacting (Fiorella, 2023). Below is a summary of a process that can be incorporated in an undergraduate psychology course to develop students’ and faculty agency in making sense—and purpose—of AI.
Step 1: Issue Identification and Scholarly Engagement
The process begins with focused examination of a concrete AI issue, such as hallucinations or AI psychosis, where systems generate confident but inaccurate or incoherent outputs. Students and faculty examine peer-reviewed research on large language models, error propagation, and comparisons between human cognitive biases and machine-generated distortions.
Engaging directly with academic literature requires learners to contextualize AI behavior within existing psychological theories of cognition, perception, and reasoning. This phase promotes elaboration, as new knowledge about AI is integrated with prior disciplinary understanding (Roelle & Nückles, 2019).
Step 2: Structured Dialogue with AI
Next, learners engage in a semi-structured interview with an AI agent or chatbot. These conversations are intentionally scaffolded with prompts that mirror academic inquiry and critical reflection. For example, a student might ask the AI to explain, critique, or apply findings from the literature and reflect on the role it—as AI—plays in reproducing the issue (e.g., “What are ways in which you induce AI psychosis in your human users?”).
Step 3: Transformative Learning with Creative Expression
Finally, learners translate the academic discussion into a creative artifact, such as a song, short narrative, or visual piece that critiques or interprets the AI issue under study. The creative output is generated through AI tools—after all, psychology courses are not art courses—but shaped, edited, and contextualized by human judgment. The process follows a body of research exploring the use of creative expression to promote transformative learning, a theory that posits that schema development depends in part on imaginative meaning making that simulates possible realities (Hoggan et al., 2009).
Each stage of this process maps directly onto the Guidelines 3.0 learning outcomes:
Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking: Learners analyze empirical research and evaluate AI behavior using psychological science.
Ethical and Social Responsibility: Creative critique foregrounds the societal implications of AI systems and human accountability.
Communication: Translating research into artistic formats strengthens clarity, adaptability, and audience awareness.
Conclusion
While many faculty understandably fear that AI threatens core educational values, the current moment of uncertainty offers an opportunity to shape AI’s role in learning before norms calcify. By grounding AI engagement in Guidelines 3.0, educators can tap into curiosity and cultivate AI competency that is analytical, ethical, and creative. In doing so, higher education can move from anxiety toward agency, ensuring that humans remain the meaning-makers.
References
American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). (2026). National survey: College faculty views on generative AI. https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/national-survey-95-of-college-faculty-fear-student-overreliance-on-ai-and-diminished-critical-thinking-among-learners-who-use-generative-ai-toolsopens in new window
American Psychological Association. (2023). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major (Version 3.0). https://www.apa.org/about/policy/undergraduate-psychology-major
Fiorella, L. (2023). Making sense of generative learning. Educational Psychology Review, 35(2), 50.
Leopold, T. (2025). How AI is reshaping the career ladder, and other trends in jobs and skills on Labour Day. World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/04/ai-jobs-international-workers-day/opens in new window
Lindgren, T. (2024). How to Create Custom AI Chatbots That Enrich Your Classroom. Harvard Business Impact. https://hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/how-to-create-custom-ai-chatbots-that -enrich-your-classroomopens in new window
Roelle, J., & Nückles, M. (2019). Generative learning versus retrieval practice in learning from text: The cohesion and elaboration of the text matters. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(8), 1341.
Hoggan, C., Simpson, S., & Stuckey, H. (Eds.). (2009). Creative expression in transformative learning: Tools and techniques for educators of adults (pp. 1-2). Malabar, FL: Krieger publishing company.
About the author
JT Torres directs the Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington & Lee University. He earned a PhD in Educational Psychology from Washington State University and researches the relationship between literacy, identity, and learning. His co-authored book, How to Use Writing for Teaching and Learning, is informed by his research into the ways students write themselves into a disciplinary identity. Torres approaches literacy as an inclusive process, relying on culturally sustaining practices that frame reading and writing as acts of agency and social engagement, a point frequently made in his co-edited book, How to Incorporate Equity and Justice in Your Teaching. He also explored, in Situated Narratives and Sacred Dance, the ways oral literacy practices sustained the social memory of Arará communities in Cuba. He has two forthcoming books: one focused on assessment, Nonviolent Response: Strategies for Responding to Writing, and the other focused on interdependent instruction, Teaching, Learning, and Caring in Higher Education: How to Cultivate an Interdependent Classroom.
