Generative AI (GenAI) is increasingly appealing to students for academic writing supporting source summarization, translation, automated text evaluation, and personalized feedback, potentially fostering critical engagement with literature and content. The cognitive offloads of GenAI are, however, considered disrupting students’ learning processes in relation to understanding (interpreting, summarizing) and evaluating of academic texts. This study examines students’ prompting and their reflective discussions on experiences of GenAI in their study practices in higher education.

Digitalization is rapidly transforming society and reshaping higher education. Driven by generative AI technologies (GenAI), this shift challenges traditional paradigms and requires exploration of how digital literacy supports Reflective Practice-based Learning (RPL). Drawing on a sociomaterial theoretical understanding, this case study explores challenges and solutions in the dynamic interplay between social and material elements as AI is woven into the students' study practices. The aim is to generate insights into students’ perspectives on the use of GenAI in their study practices. International master’s students in Swedish higher education participated in focus group interviews, reflecting on AI’s role in their education. Using a problem-tree methodology, students discussed the focal problems, the underlying causes, and possible solutions. Findings show that while students value GenAI for efficiency and judgement-free support, its ubiquity creates a perceived obligation to adopt it, which fuelling ethical, emotional, and academic tensions. Students fear diminished critical thinking and creativity through over-reliance, describing AI as both enabler and threat. They call for compulsory AI-use labelling by tool providers, explicit institutional guidelines, and more hands-on, creative assignments that foster independent reasoning and AI literacy. Without such measures, comfort, social pressure, and “speed culture” risk undermining RPL’s reflective depth. The study underscores the need for balanced, transparent integration of GenAI to harness its benefits without compromising core academic skills.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nordic higher education institutions (HEIs) as any other learning providers had to abruptly switch from onsite in-person delivery strategies to a more ‘pandemic-friendly’ online mode. To manage these emergent transformations of learning environments successfully, development of teachers’ digital competence became pivotal. This study investigates the experiences of teachers and students from HEIs in the Nordic countries of the impact of the transition to online teaching during the pandemic crisis on teachers’ professional digital competence (TPDC). The findings indicate that the pandemic promoted teachers’ creativity and innovation, enabling individual initiatives, openness, and decentralization that demonstrates the Nordic HEIs readiness to mobilize relevant digital infrastructure and exert academic freedom in times of crises. The study further broadens the concept of TPDC involving aspects of well-being and physical environment as additional indicators, to ensure equality, inclusion, and sustainability in the future of online education in higher education.