If GenAI was always there: how might student approaches to learning research have developed differently?

Student approaches to learning research has historically explored relations among students’ approaches, conceptions, perceptions of context and learning outcomes. This Point of Departure considers how that research tradition might have developed if generative artificial intelligence had formed part of university learning throughout its fifty-six-year history. It suggests that GenAI would have complicated the attempts to investigate the reasons underpinning qualitatively different outcomes of learning. The paper explores how SAL research might consequently have attended to intellectual activity that involves the affordances of GenAI, learner and GenAI direction, scaffolded and simulated understanding, productive and non-productive reliance, and the distinction between learning and performance optimisation. It argues that investigating student learning with GenAI requires greater attention to how students experience and negotiate relations among their own purposes, generated contributions, disciplinary knowledge, assessment and judgement and suggests key questions for useful ways forward in understanding student learning in GenAI-ubiquitous contexts.