4.2. Future work
Beyond ChatGPT, other GenAI tools and models such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 that automatically generate videos, and images within minutes; Eleven Labs that transforms text into audio; and Magic Write that assist creative writing (Peres et al., 2023), can potentially influence students’ everyday use of AI to assist their coursework. The full potential of GenAI in general and specifically on education is still unknown and underpins a need to investigate its impact in a manner that considers students’ points of view (Gašević et al., 2023) and their development. Accordingly, efforts to better align and assess the effectiveness of the learning agreement from a self-determination theory perspective should be explored. For example, the UNESCO guide providing an overview of how ChatGPT works and can be used in higher education, highlights the importance of autonomy in suggesting that guidance on “how and when ChatGPT can be used (and when it cannot) … should be negotiated with students and teachers, not imposed on them” (Sabzalieva & Valentini, 2023; p. 13). Investigating effects on student feelings of autonomy in comparison to other ways of communicating academic integrity and course policies can be explored. The same UNESCO guide suggests that GenAI should relate to course learning outcomes to help students understand how it “can support their learning and what expectations there are for them” (Sabzalieva & Valentini, 2023; p. 13). Thereby, helping students develop a competence around figuring out how it can best serve their needs and around what uses align with their value systems. Future work can investigate the effectiveness of different learning agreement designs and implementations in terms of impact on student decision making – and pair the use of learning agreements with approaches to help students make more thoughtful decisions (Arvai et al., 2004) related to GenAI use. This support of thoughtful decision making can also explore and assess how effective learning agreements are as tools for raising awareness of ethical concerns as identified by researchers, policy makers, and the public. Concerns such as discrimination – and the need for transparency and accountability (Nguyen et al., 2023; Akgun & Greenhow, 2022; Miao & Holmes, 2021); an increasing digital divide – accessibility limits due to internet availability and/or regional access restrictions (Sabzalieva & Valentini, 2023; Miao & Holmes, 2021); concentration of power and abuse of power (Sabzalieva & Valentini, 2023); surveillance and intrusiveness (Miao & Holmes, 2021; Akgun & Greenhow, 2022); loss of autonomy (Nguyen et al., 2023; Akgun & Greenhow, 2022); obstructing holistic competencies (Chan & Hu, 2023); and lack of ecological sustainability (Nguyen et al., 2023). In relation to the last aspect of self-determination theory, relatedness, future work can compare learning agreement construction and use at individual and group levels to investigate the impact of relatedness on student decision making and understanding of the ethical concerns related to GenAI use. Finally, the design and implementation of the learning agreement can be improved following the suggestions made by students which align with research related to improving the effectiveness of another type of agreement, informed consent forms. Improving readability, including causal explanations, and supporting understanding with enhanced discussions can help overcome cases in which student prior knowledge of the items in the learning agreement are impoverished (Beardsley et al., 2019).