Transformation of University Students’ Educational Agency in the Era of AI Technologies

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) into education brings to the forefront the issue of keeping the human at the center of the educational process. A student’s traditional digital competence, focused on operational skills, does not ensure critical and ethically responsible interaction with AI. The aim of the research is to substantiate the principles of interaction within the human-AI system that contribute to the positive transformation of a university student’s educational subjectivity. The methodological foundation is formed by the socio-cultural and competence-based approaches, according to which the transformation of subjectivity in the university educational process is socio-culturally conditioned and requires the development of students’ meta-digital competence (MDC). The theoretical framework of this study is built upon the concept of distributed cognition, which posits a cognitive system spanning humans, technology, and the environment (Hutchins E.), and the concept of metacognition, defined as the capacity for reflection on one’s own thought processes (Flavell J.). As a result of the research, the core dimensions of MDC are defined: the hermeneutic dimension, requiring the interpretation of AI outcomes with consideration of their limitations, and the axiological dimension, pointing to the ethically responsible application of technologies. It is substantiated that meta-digital skills allow overcoming barriers that hinder the establishment of partnership interaction between humans and AI in education. These barriers include: the inability to trace the logic of AI’s result generation, the disparity between human understanding of meaning and computational data processing, and the risks of losing critical thinking due to over-reliance on technology. The research defines the concept of a university student’s “educational subjectivity” and substantiates the principles of partnership interaction with AI: critical reflection on AI outcomes, dialogue with the system to clarify responses, consideration of the technology’s cultural limitations, and ethical responsibility for the choice to use it. The novelty of the research lies in substantiating MDC as a means for the positive transformation of educational subjectivity, defining its hermeneutic and axiological dimensions, and, based on them, developing principles for partnership interaction with AI. The practical significance is that the identified principles can form the basis for educational standards and pedagogical practices within the university educational space.