The RESHAPE project held its kick-off meeting with international collaborators on 8 May 2026. The meeting brought together the project team and collaborators to discuss the project aims, research design, ongoing analyses, and future directions for collaboration. It marked an important step in building a shared research agenda on GenAI-mediated group collaboration in higher education and opened up new possibilities for joint inquiry, exchange, and collaboration. 

Project Focus and Research Directions 

RESHAPE focuses on how GenAI becomes involved in students’ group collaboration and problem-solving processes in higher education contexts. During the project introduction, the team presented several core research directions. First, the project approaches AI-mediated interaction as a form of group collaboration, examining how the multidimensional, interdependent, and synergistic nature of collaboration appears in AI-mediated contexts. Second, the project investigates how students engage in sensemaking when interacting with GenAI, as well as the capability and literacy demands and developments that may emerge in prolonged AI-mediated interactions. The project also addresses grounded ethics in higher education, exploring how students and teachers understand the social and ethical boundaries of AI use. Finally, through a micro-ecological approach, the project analyzes the practices and dynamics of AI-mediated collaboration across multiple layers, including individual, group, social, and institutional levels. 

In the sharing of ongoing research, team members introduced several analytical directions, including postdigital agency, productive interactions with conversational agents, and AI literacy and capability development. Together, these studies point to a central question: How can we develop a more nuanced understanding of the relationships that emerge among students, AI tools, task situations, and educational environments when GenAI enters group collaboration? This question will continue to guide the project’s theoretical, methodological, and empirical work as the team moves forward with its collaborators. 

International Discussion and Exchange 

The meeting also facilitated in-depth exchange between the project team and international collaborators. Inspiring discussions addressed the importance of defining agency, how AI agents can be pedagogically designed, the extent to which students may configure or influence AI tools, and how different students may actively embrace, pragmatically use, or resist AI tools. Participants also highlighted the distinctive value of the RESHAPE project in studying conversational agents, particularly its potential to generate deeper insights into the design and training processes of AI agents, rather than only observing students’ use of commercial AI tools. 

Looking Ahead 

The kick-off meeting laid the groundwork for RESHAPE’s emerging international collaboration. Future directions may include joint data analysis, co-authored publications, further development of data collection strategies, cross-cultural comparative research, and researcher visits and exchanges. Through these efforts, RESHAPE will continue to develop theoretical, methodological, and practical understanding of GenAI-mediated group collaboration in higher education. The team looks forward to further exploring how human agency can be protected and promoted as GenAI becomes increasingly embedded in educational collaboration.