Empowered or Outsourced: Rethinking Student Agency in the Age of AI at EdTech Week

As artificial intelligence tools become fixtures in classrooms and on campuses, educators face a question that cuts to the heart of learning itself: are students becoming more capable, or are they quietly ceding the cognitive work that makes education meaningful?

This panel brings together researchers, practitioners, and instructional designers to examine how AI is reshaping the conditions under which students exercise agency — the ability to set goals, make decisions, persist through difficulty, and take ownership of their intellectual development. When a tool can draft an essay, solve a problem, or generate a study plan in seconds, what happens to the productive struggle that builds genuine competence? And who is responsible for ensuring that convenience doesn’t quietly hollow out the learning experience?

Panelists will explore the tension between efficiency and growth, asking whether current AI integration models in K–12 and higher education are designed with student development in mind or primarily with productivity. The conversation will draw on emerging research into self-regulated learning, metacognition, and motivation, alongside honest accounts from educators navigating these tradeoffs in real classrooms.

Rather than staking out a pro- or anti-AI position, this panel is committed to a harder and more generative question: what does thoughtful integration actually look like? How do we design learning environments where AI serves as a scaffold rather than a substitute and how do we help students develop the judgment to know the difference?

Attendees will leave with frameworks for evaluating AI use through the lens of agency, concrete instructional strategies, and a shared vocabulary for the conversations that matter most right now.

Thursday, October 15
9:00 AM -9:45 AM