As an emerging technology, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools are currently subject to constant re-inventions, and they may be employed in widely different ways by users. This study sought to develop understanding pertaining to the adoption of GAI tools on the basis of a cross-sectional survey conducted within a specific institutional context. It explored the following research question: “How do staff and students in an academic setting perceive their own responses to the specific emerging technology of Large Language Models?”.
As a result, user engagement is always filtered through imagined affordances rather than being an immediate encounter with functionalities and constraints that are objectively part of the software. Indeed, the relational character of affordances complicates objectivity, in the sense they don’t straight forwardly inhere in the software itself but rather manifest themselves through the interaction (Archer, 2000). If the user does not imagine the software can be used for a particular purpose, they will not use the technology in such a way. The perceptions and understanding of users are thus integral to appreciating technology use. Nagy and Neff (2015, p. 1) argue that “Imagined affordances emerge between users’ perceptions, attitudes, and expectations; between the materiality and functionality of technologies; and between the intentions and perceptions of designers”. It is particularly interesting to consider this within universities where educators might take on a parallel role to that of the designer, in terms of scaffolding the uptake of emerging technologies through the implicit and explicit expectations which students are confronted with concerning their use. The notion of imagined affordance offered by Nagy and Neff (2015, p. 5) integrates “the various ways of theorizing affordance to create a concept flexible and robust enough for the complex emerging socio-technical relationships in social life”.
Mark Carrigan 