My continued involvement with the Center of Engaged Learning at Elon University has led to my current role as a co-leader of the 2026-2028 Research Seminar on Rethinking Engaged Learning in the Age of GenAI. I am writing this blog post in late June as we have been ramping up for our first seminar session to take place in early July. During this time our team has been putting together an annotated bibliography on GenAI in higher education and planning details for our activities with seminar participants. In this blog post, I share some of my thinking related to this planning work and resources on GenAI in higher education. 

To provide some background, I have contributed as math faculty at Elon University for the past twelve years and teach undergraduate math and math education courses. My PhD is in math education and much of my research involves technology use for teaching and learning math. Over the past few years this research focus has evolved to include understanding and investigating student and faculty use of GenAI in higher education. I documented some pedagogical experiments with GenAI and calculus instruction in a series of blog posts as a CEL scholar in 2023-2025 and am excited to pick up this thread of inquiry again in the current research seminar 2026-2028. 

The Cat Is Out of the Bag 

While recently investigating literature about the intersection of GenAI and higher education, I often thought of the idiom, “the cat is out of the bag” that figuratively expresses a situation where a secret is made known and we should stop pretending we don’t know what’s really happening. This idiom, of course, does not completely match and represent the advent of GenAI in higher ed academics, but it may be useful for prompting us to deal with this powerful technology previously unavailable.  

Humans have adopted other technologies such as automobiles, airplanes, calculators, cellphones, etc. in productive and unproductive ways. If and to what degree a particular technology is productive depends on its utilization in a particular context and towards a purpose. Sometimes it is better to walk or ride a bike instead of driving, and we might appreciate the shortcut that driving provides if we walked more often. In another example, calculators can be productive tools if we have enough number sense to ensure the answers calculators provide are reasonable. 

A Discipline-Specific Approach to AI Literacy 

With these thoughts in mind, some recent readings about GenAI stood out to me. Stolpe, et al. (2026) speak to the need to recognize and honor disciplinary context when incorporating GenAI into teaching and learning practices. Their team developed the Discipline-Specific AI Literacy (DiSAIL) framework (figure 1) to promote AI literacy within specific academic disciplines rather than through generic AI skills alone. AI literacy then involves understanding and applying disciplinary knowledge, practices, and ethical considerations while using AI tools. 

The authors explain that their model, “emphasizes the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between potential and enactment in AI-mediated disciplinary learning” (2026, 1922). In their article, Stolpe, et al. delineate their framework development process, encourage others to investigate student use of GenAI in AI-mediated contexts, and use the framework to develop activities that are pedagogically meaningful and disciplinary appropriate.  

Redesigning Teaching and Learning  

I also found the episode, Teaching with AI, with José Bowen, on the podcast Teaching in Higher Ed to be informative. José gives many suggestions for how GenAI can be purposefully and meaningfully incorporated into teaching and learning practices in higher education. He offers examples of how to redesign curriculum to incorporate GenAI as a learning tool to promote creativity along with critical thinking. Many of the examples José shared have overlapping themes with examples of redesigned assessments for learning that I shared in previous blog posts. In one example, I redesigned a writing-to-learn assessment with AI-active and AI-inactive components to prompt students to use GenAI to make connections from the mathematics we were learning to applications students identified as relevant to their interests.  

Looking Ahead 

Redesigning and creating activities that infuse GenAI in educative ways in particular disciplines is no easy feat. The availability of GenAI to students and faculty represents both a challenge and an opportunity. For institutions of higher ed to remain relevant to students’ current lived experience and post-collegiate plans, faculty and student partnerships that redesign curriculum to these ends will be essential. Within this context and with these goals in mind, I look forward to engaging with participants in our first summer session on Rethinking Engaged Learning in the Age of GenAI. 

References 

Stachowiak, Bonni, host. “Teaching with AI, with José Bowen.” Episode 518 of Teaching in Higher Ed. Podcast audio, 49 min. Innovate Learning, May 16, 2024. https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/teaching-with-ai/. 

Stolpe, Karin, Andreas Larsson, and Marlene Johansson Falck. “Discipline-Specific AI Literacy (DiSAIL): A Theoretical Framework for Situated Engagement with Generative AI in Education.” International Journal of Technology and Design Education (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-026-10060-3. 

About the Author  

Aaron Trocki is an associate professor of mathematics at Elon University and co-leader of the 2026–2028 CEL Research Seminar, Rethinking Engaged Learning in the Age of GenAI. A 2023–2025 CEL Scholar, his research focuses on mathematics education, technology for teaching and learning, and assessment practices beyond traditional grading. His recent work explores the role of generative AI in higher education, including AI-supported assessments for learning and the pedagogical redesign of courses to foster meaningful student engagement.   

How to Cite This Post  

Trocki, Aaron. 2026. “GenAI in Higher Education: Embrace, Deny, or Somewhere In Between.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog). July 10, 2026. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/genai-in-higher-education-embrace-deny-or-somewhere-in-between.