Alignment Literacy with Generative AI in Postdigital Studio-Based Pedagogy

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has rapidly become entwined with studio-based design pedagogy, yet we still know relatively little about how students learn to align AI outputs with their own intentions rather than simply accepting what the system produces. This article introduces alignment literacy as a postdigital literacy concerned with how learners steer GenAI systems toward envisioned ideas, reframe their intentions in response to GenAI’s constraints, and sustain precision and authorship awareness in human–AI collaborations. Drawing on postdigital literacies, literacy-as-practice, and reflective practice, the study treats a postgraduate design studio as a designed postdigital literacy ecology and analyses four iterative offerings using curriculum artefacts and analytic autoethnography. The findings show how (1) when GenAI experimentation is introduced in the curriculum, (2) including explicit GenAI output analysis activities, and (3) embedding project-specific learning reflective discussions, collectively configure opportunities for steering, reframing, and authorship awareness to emerge in students’ learning with GenAI technology. The article proposes alignment literacy as an ecological property of postdigital GenAI-integrated studio-based pedagogy, and it outlines implications for educators who seek to foster more reflective, critically aware engagements with GenAI in postdigital higher design education.

keywords: postdigital literacies; studio-based pedagogy; generative artificial intelligence; alignment literacy

• year: November 2025 — ongoing