Student Driven Recommendations on Generative AI Policy

Role: Research Assistant | Jan 2025-Sept 2025 | Dr. Yasmine Kotturi, Human Centered Computing

Exploring how students perceive generative AI's role in design education and it's integration through student-authored policies.

Skills: Qualitative data analysis, Community driven participatory research, AI policy writing, Zine making, Semi-structured interviews

Research Questions

Project Background

R1: How do students perceive AI integration into a design course?

R2: How can student-driven policies inform generative AI use in classroom settings?

With the increasing integration of generative AI in education, policies governing its use are often created without direct student input. This gap can lead to policies that do not align with students' needs or learning experiences. By positioning students as “lead users” (Von Hippel, 2006)—early adopters of generative AI in education—our project aims to address this issue by developing student-authored AI policies to better support their learning outcomes. Through understanding how students perceive AI and its role in their coursework, this research provides actionable insights that can inform future AI policies in design education.

My Role

led three workshops with 8 participants, who were peers recruited from my HCC629 course from the previous semester
helped design activities that fostered candid discussions and guided students in policy writing, including a Think-Pair-Share exercise to reflect on AI use in design classrooms
developed scaffolds to support their work and collaborated on creating policy topics and guiding questions based on literature about AI in design education
contributed to the core research process, assisting with IRB protocol development, data collection, and data analysis.
conducting qualitative analysis of workshop transcripts and interviews
curating final policy artifacts, student-authored zine, and redesigned GenAI interface mockups
preparing the paper for academic publication at CHI 2026

Participants

9 students who took HCC629: Fundamentals of Human-Centered Computing at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Fall 2024 with Dr. Yasmine Kotturi.

Methods: Three Part Design Workshop Series

Recruitment & Consent: Screening surveys, participant consent

Workshop 1: Brainstorming policy recommendations through candid conversations
- Students shared their experiences using GenAI in class, raising concerns about unclear ethical boundaries and academic integrity through a Think-Pair-Share activity
- A UMBC AI committee member presented campus-wide survey data about GenAI use, followed by students selecting policy topics to explore further

Workshop 2: Curating policy recommendations through student-authored zine making
- Students critiqued peer-drafted policies to reduce redundancy and make them more concrete and actionable
- Students refined their statements and expressed them through physical and digital zine pages

Workshop 3: Applying policy recommendations through interface redesign activity
- Students reviewed and critiqued each other's zines, then selected a GenAI tool to redesign
- Students' redesigns incorporated conceptual metaphors and HCC 629 learning objectives to support their proposed policies

Data Analysis: Conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis on surveys, discussions, and interviews

Next Steps

Complete qualitative analysis of workshop transcripts and interviews
Circulate zines across campus
Present findings in research paper

Student-Authored Zine

Full Zine coming soon!

Outcomes

To be determined. Stay tuned!