Welcome to a study on posthuman learning and AI!

 

You are being asked to participate in a research study. Your participation in this research study is voluntary, you do not have to participate, and you may discontinue participation at any time without penalty. This document contains important information about this study and what to expect if you decide to participate. Please consider the information carefully. Feel free to ask questions before making your decision whether to participate.

This study intends to explore instructors’, instructional designers’, and students’ understanding of artificial intelligent agents (i.e., chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft CoPilot) as co-learners in United States educational settings. The Community of Inquiry framework describes community-driven learning across three interconnected dimensions—social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence—as necessary for deep educational experiences. We will base our study on this, considering artificial intelligence (AIs) as part of this community. Then, by approaching AIs in this way, we will explore the degree to which the human learner is “decentered” and what this means for education for instructors, instructional designers, and learners. The purpose of this study, then, is to illuminate how instructors, instructional designers, and learners see ever-more humanlike AIs as equal in the learning experience. You will not be exposed to AI or directed to use AI as part of the study; we are asking only for your experiences up to this point.

The duration of your participation should not exceed 10 minutes and is limited to completing the survey instrument. You will be tasked with completing this online survey and responding to questions ranging from demographic information to your experiences with and perspectives on AI, and you will be given an opportunity to provide unstructured responses to open-ended questions on the same topic.

There is a possible risk of loss of confidentiality. You may find completion of this survey clarifies your own feelings and understanding of AI’s use in education. Results from this study may lead to policy changes or considerations and an expansion of academic literature on the implementation and use of AI in educational spaces.

Your participation in this research is voluntary. You have the right to withdraw at any point during the study, for any reason, and without any prejudice. Because of the nature of the data, it may be possible to deduce your identity; however, there will be no attempt to do so, and your data will be reported in a way that will not identify you. Research data will be encrypted, and password protected. Your information may be used for future research or shared with another researcher for future research studies without additional consent, for further or related studies. Survey data will be kept securely on the Qualtrics server. Only the Principal Investigator (PI) will have access to the raw data. Anonymized data will be published. You will be able to find this anonymized data on the project’s Open Science Framework (OSF) page after the study concludes in April 2025: https://osf.io/73svk/

The information that you provide in the study will be handled confidentially. However, there may be circumstances where this information must be released or shared as required by law. The University of Arizona Institutional Review Board may review the research records for monitoring purposes.

Please e-mail Ryan Straight (ryanstraight@arizona.edu) should you have any questions, concerns, or complaints about this study.

For questions about your rights as a participant in this study or to discuss other study-related concerns or complaints with someone who is not part of the research team, you may contact the Human Subjects Protection Program Director at 520-626-8630 or online at https://research.arizona.edu/compliance/human-subjects-protection-program.

By choosing the “I consent. Take me to the study!” option below, you acknowledge that you have read (or someone has read to you) this consent form, that you are aware you are being asked to participate in a research study, that you have been provided the opportunity ask questions and have them answered to your satisfaction, that your participation in the study is voluntary, you are 18 years of age or older, that you are not in a country covered by GDPR, that you are an English speaker, and that you are aware that you may choose to terminate your participation in the study at any time and for any reason.

Please note that this survey will be best displayed on a laptop or desktop computer. Some features may be less compatible for use on a mobile device.