By Dr Hazel Farrell & Ken McCarthy, South East Technological University & GenAI:N3
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Generative AI has become part of higher education with remarkable speed.
In a short period of time, it has entered classrooms, assessment design, academic writing, feedback processes, and professional workflows. For many educators, its arrival felt sudden and difficult to make sense of, leaving little space to pause and consider what this shift means for learning, teaching, and academic practice.
Initial responses across the sector have often focused on risk, regulation, and control. These concerns are understandable. Yet they only tell part of the story. Alongside uncertainty and anxiety, there is also curiosity, experimentation, and a growing recognition that GenAI raises questions that are fundamentally pedagogical rather than purely technical.
On 21 January, we are delighted to host #LTHEchat to explore these questions together and to move the conversation from reaction towards more intentional, reflective practice.
The discussion will be grounded in the Manifesto for Generative AI in Higher Education, and informed by the wider work of GenAI:N3, a national initiative in Ireland supporting collaborative engagement with generative AI across higher education.
GenAI:N3: A Collaborative Project for the Sector
GenAI:N3 is a national network that was established in Ireland as part of the N-TUTORR programme, to support technological higher education institutions as they responded to the rapid emergence of generative AI. Rather than focusing on tools or technical solutions, the project centres on people, practice, and shared learning.
At its core, GenAI:N3 aims to build institutional and sectoral capacity by creating spaces where educators, professional staff, and leaders can explore GenAI together. Its work is grounded in collaboration across institutions and disciplines, recognising that no single university or role has all the answers.
The project focuses on several interconnected areas:
- Supporting communities of practice where staff can share experiences, challenges, and emerging approaches
- Encouraging critical and reflective engagement with GenAI in teaching, learning, assessment, and professional practice
- Exploring the ethical, social, and institutional implications of GenAI, including questions of power, inclusion, sustainability, and academic judgement
- Developing shared resources, events, and conversations that help the sector learn collectively rather than in isolation
GenAI:N3 is not about accelerating adoption for its own sake. It is about helping institutions and individuals make informed, values-led decisions that are aligned with the purposes of higher education.
The Manifesto as a Shared Thinking Space
The Manifesto for Generative AI in Higher Education emerged from this collaborative context. It did not begin as a formal deliverable or a policy exercise. Instead, it took shape gradually through workshops, conversations, reflections, and recurring questions raised by staff and students across the sector.
What became clear was a need for a shared language. Not a framework that closed down debate, but a set of statements that could hold complexity, uncertainty, and difference.
The Manifesto brings together 30 short statements organised across three themes:
- Rethinking teaching and learning
- Responsibility, ethics, and power
- Imagination, humanity, and the future
It is intentionally concise and deliberately open. It does not offer instructions or compliance rules. Instead, it invites educators and institutions to pause, reflect, and ask what kind of learning we are designing for in a world where generative tools are readily available.
One of its central ideas is that GenAI does not replace thinking. Rather, it reveals the cost of not thinking. In doing so, it challenges us to look beyond surface solutions and to engage more deeply with questions of purpose, judgement, and educational values.
Why These Conversations Matter Now
Much of the early discourse around GenAI has centred on assessment integrity and detection. While these issues matter, they risk narrowing the conversation too quickly.
GenAI does not operate uniformly across disciplines, contexts, or learning designs. What is productive in one setting may be inappropriate in another. Students experience this inconsistency acutely, particularly when institutional policies feel disconnected from everyday teaching practice.
The work of GenAI:N3, and the thinking captured in the Manifesto, keeps this complexity in view. It foregrounds ideas such as transparency as a foundation for trust, academic judgement as something that can be supported but not automated, and ethical leadership as an institutional responsibility rather than an individual burden.
These ideas play out in very practical ways, in curriculum design, in assessment briefs, in conversations with students, and in decisions about which tools are used and why.
Why #LTHEchat?
#LTHEchat has long been a space for thoughtful, practice-led discussion across higher education. That makes it an ideal forum to explore generative AI not simply as a technology, but as a catalyst for deeper pedagogical and institutional reflection.
This chat is not about promoting a single position or reaching neat conclusions. Instead, it is an opportunity to surface experiences, tensions, and emerging practices from across the sector.
The questions we will pose are designed to open up dialogue around issues such as abundance, transparency, disciplinary difference, and what it means to keep learning human in a GenAI-rich environment.
An Invitation to Join the Conversation
Whether you are actively experimenting with generative AI, approaching it with caution, or still forming your views, your perspective is welcome.
Bring examples from your own context. Bring uncertainties and unfinished thinking. The Manifesto itself is open to use, adapt, and challenge, and GenAI:N3 continues to evolve through the contributions of those engaging with its work.
As the Manifesto suggests, the future classroom is a conversation. On 21 January, we hope you will join that conversation with us through #LTHEchat.
Links
LTHE Chat Website: https://lthechat.com/
LTHE Chat Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lthechat.bsky.social
Dr Hazel Farrell
GenAI Academic Lead
SETU
Ken McCarthy
Head of Centre for Academic Practice
SETU
