There’s been a huge amount written about how the emergence of generative AI has disrupted the lives of school teachers and university academics. Not in any way to downplay this, we’re rectifying the rather less attention that’s been paid to the impact all this is having on students.
In 2024, a consortium of Australian universities set out to understand their experience — or rather, experiences — since what has become very clear is that there is no single ‘student voice’ when it comes to attitudes to, and behaviours around, GenAI in all its diverse forms. Sponsored by the DVCs Education/Academic/Students at UTS, UQ, Deakin and Monash Universities, the UTS team is led by CIC Director Simon Buckingham Shum, with Lisa Lim, Antonette Shibani, Mohsen Ebrahimzadeh and Jan McLean.
Check out the Student Voices on AI in Higher Education project to learn more about we’ve been hearing from >8000 students who took our survey and/or engaged in focus groups: HEDx conference panels/executive briefings, presentations, stories (The Conversation, Future Campus), open source surveys, and research papers.
A fresh snapshot with an even larger sample has just been gathered to enable us to compare what’s changed in the last two years, and to investigate emerging topics. Watch this space as we crunch the data…
Selected results below…
Fawns, T., Bearman, M., Corbin, T., Henderson, M., McLean, J., Matthews, K. E., Oberg, G., Liang, Y., & Walton, J. (2026). Illuminating complex student realities of artificial intelligence through an entangled pedagogy framework. Higher Education (Published online: 24 July 2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-026-01730-1
Oberg, G., Liang, Y., Bearman, M., Fawns, T., Henderson, M., & Matthews, K.E. (2026). Feeling AI: Circulating emotions, institutional climates, and moral boundaries in student use of AI. Higher Education, 1-19. (Published online: 28 March 2026) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-026-01658-6
Chung, J., Henderson, M., Slade, C., Liang, Y., Pepperell, N., Corbin, T., Walton, J., Yu, A.S., Bearman, M., Buckingham Shum, S., Fawns, T., McCluskey, T., McLean, J., Oberg, G., Seligmann, A., Shibani, A., Bakharia, A., Lim, L.A., & Matthews, K. E. (2026). The use and usefulness of GenAI in higher education: Student experience and perspectives. Computers and Education Open, Volume 10, June 2026, 100347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeo.2026.100347
Bearman, M., Fawns, T., Corbin, T., Henderson, M., Liang, Y., Oberg, G., Walton, J., & Matthews, K. E. (2025). Time, emotions and moral judgements: how university students position GenAI within their study. Higher Education Research & Development, 1–15. (Published online: 11 Nov 2025) https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2025.2580616.
Henderson, M., Bearman, M., Chung, J., Fawns, T., Buckingham Shum, S., Matthews, K. E., & de Mello Heredia, J. (2025). Comparing Generative AI and teacher feedback: student perceptions of usefulness and trustworthiness. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 51(5), 863–878. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2502582.