Co-creating custom GPTs: an autoethnographic study of undergraduate students as partners in generative AI innovation

Synthesis: Lo et al. (2026) report an autoethnographic study at Monash University in which undergraduate science students co-created and evaluated custom GPT chatbots (cGPTs) within a students-as-partners (SaP) framework. Across five subjects (physiology, physical chemistry, organic chemistry, scientific inquiry, polymer science), student teams in a Summer Scholarship program and a placement unit partnered with academics to design, test, and refine unit-specific chatbots aligned with pedagogical goals. Inductive analysis of summer scholarship autoethnographic logs revealed the iterative, unpredictable, and creative nature of working with Generative AI. Abductive analysis of placement reflections, guided by SaP principles, surfaced themes of Agency, reciprocity, reflexivity, identity shift, authenticity, adaptability, and a technology-pedagogy nexus. The authors argue that co-creation with GenAI can extend the SaP paradigm to include GenAI tools, advocating student voice as central to responsible AI innovation and offering a model for inclusive, critical, and transformative engagement with emerging technology in Higher Ed.

Partnership as a Lens on GenAI

Much early discourse around Generative AI in Higher Ed positioned students either as potential cheaters or as passive victims of the technology, often omitting student Agency entirely. In parallel, students-as-partners (SaP) pedagogy has repositioned students as co-creators of knowledge, curriculum, and educational innovation. This study sits at the intersection of these trends, asking what happens when undergraduates and academics partner not merely to use AI but to build it. The authors adopt a dual theoretical lens — SaP for the collaborative process and autoethnography for capturing the lived experience and meaning-making of the students involved — to examine both the mechanics of partnership and its impact on participants.

Co-Creating Unit-Specific Chatbots

Students partnered with academics to build custom GPT chatbots specialised for the content and learning outcomes of specific units, working through an iterative cycle of design, tailoring, testing, and optimisation. This arrangement extends SaP beyond curriculum co-creation into the co-development of AI tools, a domain where student co-creation without formal computer science training remains nascent. The authors draw on participatory design traditions and on legitimate peripheral participation to frame how students' learner expertise was combined with academics' disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge to produce trustworthy, context-sensitive tools.

Themes From Student Reflections

• Agency and ownership — students reported genuine influence over the design and pedagogical direction of the tools, consistent with core SaP values of respect, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.
• Reciprocity and reflexivity — autoethnographic reflection surfaced metacognitive awareness, a hallmark benefit of partnership approaches.
• Identity shift — participants moved from consumers of educational technology to co-producers and shapers of it, an experience that demystified AI and built critical understanding of AI.
• Authenticity and adaptability — students balanced the creative, unpredictable nature of working with GenAI against the need for reliable, unit-appropriate outputs.
• Technology-pedagogy nexus — co-creation foregrounded how tool design decisions are inseparable from pedagogical intent, echoing the broader turn toward using GenAI as a catalyst for innovation rather than a threat to be managed.

Extending Students-as-Partners Into the AI Era

The central argument is that co-creation with GenAI can extend the SaP paradigm to include GenAI tools themselves, moving students from passive use toward genuine partnership in shaping educational technology. The authors reflect on the ethical and pedagogical implications of GenAI and advocate for student voice as central to responsible innovation. By embedding partnership pedagogy into GenAI co-creation, the study offers a model for more inclusive, critical, and transformative engagement with emerging technology — one that positions student co-design as both a learning activity and a Governance mechanism in the responsible integration of AI across university settings.

Connected Concepts

• Pedagogical Partnerships
• Generative AI
• Student AI Interaction
• Human AI Collaboration
• Collaborative Learning
• Agency
• AI Literacy
• Higher Ed
• Qualitative Research
• Ethics
• Student Experience

Connected Articles

• Guided Inquiry GenAI Course Policy 2026 — A Guided Inquiry Approach to Students Co-Designing Generative AI Course Policies
• Student Centered GenAI Responsible Framework 2026 — A Student-Centered Framework for Responsible Use of Generative AI in Higher Education
• Chang Should I Tell My Teacher AI Disclosure 2026 — "Should I Tell My Teacher?" Student AI Disclosure Practices
• Reclaiming Epistemic Agency Co Agency 2026 — Reclaiming Epistemic Agency

Citation

Lo, S., Lea, T., Mavromoustakos, A., Joseph, B., Yii, M., Exintaris, B., Karunaratne, N., Pearson, D. L., Ritchie, T., Yuriev, E., & Pyun, J. (2026). Co-creating custom GPTs: An autoethnographic study of undergraduate students as partners in generative AI innovation. Frontiers in Education, 11, 1818781.