Reshaping Higher Education Designs and Futures: Postdigital Co‑design with Generative Artificial Intelligence

This article examines how collaborative design practices in higher education are reshaped through postdigital entanglement with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). We collectively explore how co-design, an inclusive, iterative, and relational approach to educational design and transformation, expands in meaning, practice, and ontology when GenAI is approached as a collaborator. The article brings together 19 authors and three open reviewers to engage with postdigital inquiry, structured in three parts: (1) a review of literature on co-design, GenAI, and postdigital theory; (2) 11 situated contributions from educators, researchers, and designers worldwide, each offering practice-based accounts of co-design with GenAI; and (3) an explorative discussion of implications for higher education designs and futures. Across these sections, we show how GenAI unsettles assumptions of collaboration, knowing, and agency, foregrounding co-design as a site of ongoing material, ethical, and epistemic negotiation. We argue that postdigital co-design with GenAI reframes educational design as a collective practice of imagining, contesting, and shaping futures that extend beyond human knowing.

keywords: co-design; generative artificial intelligence; higher education; postdigital futures; collaborative design

• with: Sandris Zeivots (lead), Alison Casey, Tiffany Winchester, Jack Webster, Xin Wang, Wina Smeenk, Frank P. Schulte, Antonia Scholkmann, Belinda Paulovich, Diego Muñoz, Joanne Mignone, Lilia Mantai, Stefan Hrastinski, Rebecca Godwin, Olov Engwall, Henrik Dindas, Marieke van Dijk, Laura Ann Chubb, Chrysi Rapanta, Jimmy Jaldemark & Sarah Hayes
• year: April 2025 — November 2025
• for: Postdigital Science and Education
• download: Article