Students can work with AI to support their motivation and engagement. #
Posted July 8, 2026 [ Reviewed by Lybi Ma
](/us/docs/editorial-process)
Key points
- AI works best when it supports thinking, not when it replaces student learning.
- Educational psychology helps students use AI to build motivation and engagement.
- AI prompts can strengthen planning, persistence, confidence, and learning focus.
- AI should coach students toward learning, not complete their work.
Post by Andrew J. Martin, PhD
How Is Generative AI Being Used?
Used well, AI has significant potential to support learners’ academic development. Yet despite its promise, students often use AI inefficiently. Many rely on AI primarily to complete tasks rather than deepen their learning, often outsourcing too much of their thinking in the process. In classrooms, the use of generative AI is frequently ad hoc, with students experimenting through trial and error, with teachers providing inconsistent guidance. At the same time, schools and universities lack coherent frameworks for what productive AI-supported learning should actually look like.
The upshot is that the most advanced educational technology in history is too frequently being used with very little psychological guidance.
Teaching Students How to Learn with Generative AI
Generative AI works best when students approach it as an active learning partner rather than a passive answer machine. For example, a student overwhelmed by an upcoming exam might use AI not to generate answers, but to break revision into manageable steps, reduce anxiety about falling behind, or build confidence through small achievable goals.
This requires a significant shift in educational thinking. Poor approach: “How can AI do this task for the student?” Better approach: “How can AI help the student become a more capable learner?”
When students develop the capacity to partner with AI productively, AI can become a powerful learning support.
Educational Psychology Can Inform Productive AI Learning Partnerships
Educational psychology has spent decades identifying specific processes and factors that support effective learning. Educational psychology can help students use AI in ways that target specific, evidence-based aspects of learning.
Student motivation and engagement are a case in point. AI prompting informed by educational psychology supports learners in developing specific and structured prompts aimed at, for example, building self-belief, strengthening persistence, enhancing planning, and reducing anxiety.
This prompting is vital because different learners face distinct psychological barriers. A student with low self-belief requires different support from a student with poor planning.
The Motivation and Engagement Wheel The wheel's framework unpacks these specific factors. The wheel (Figure 1) comprises 11 specific factors grouped in four broad domains: positive and negative motivation, and engagement.
Positive motivation and engagement include the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that help students to learn effectively:
Self-belief: Confidence in one’s ability to succeed in learning tasks.Valuing: Seeing learning as useful, meaningful, or important.Learning focus: Focusing on understanding, improvement, and skill development.Planning: Organizing and monitoring study and academic tasks.Task Managing time, distractions, and study routines effectively.management:Persistence: Continuing to work through challenges and difficulties.
Negative motivation and engagement comprise factors that can interfere with students’ learning:
Anxiety: Worry or nervousness about academic tasks or performance.Failure avoidance: Focusing on avoiding poor performance or disappointment.Uncertain control: Feeling unsure about how to succeed academically.Behaviors that undermine success, such asSelf-sabotage:procrastinationor avoidance.Disengagement: Withdrawal from learning through reduced effort or involvement.
**The **GenAI Motivation and Learning Buddy
The learning buddy is an open-access tool that draws on the above wheel to support students’ learning. There are 11 GenAI Buddy prompt scripts—one for each of the 11 parts of the wheel.
The GenAI buddy functions as an AI-supported coach. Rather than providing answers, it helps learners maintain motivation and engagement as they complete academic tasks such as preparing for an examination, completing homework, writing an essay, or studying for a presentation.
For example, instead of asking AI to “write my essay introduction,” the student copies a buddy prompt script into an AI tool and is guided through strategies to help reduce anxiety before starting the introduction, strengthen confidence about planning the structure, or improve persistence during revision.
[Education](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/education)Essential Reads
In this sense, the AI becomes less of a content generator and more of a support for motivation.
The buddy is carefully structured to keep students actively engaged in learning rather than passively consuming answers. It includes key elements that transform the AI interaction from passive content consumption into an active process of guided motivation and engagement. For example, each prompt script includes:
- A working definition of the specific part of the wheel the student has selected to focus on
- A clearly defined role that establishes the AI as a learning coach rather than a task-completer
- Explicit rules and guardrails that reinforce academic integrity, student agency, and responsible AI use
- Format requirements so outputs are organized, accessible, and manageable for diverse learners
- Relevant educational psychology theory to ensure the AI’s responses are psychologically informed
- Evidence-based motivation and engagement strategies for students to select from
- Self-complete exercises for students to apply their selected strategy
- Structured reflection that promotes metacognitionand self-awareness - Encouragement in the event students encounter setbacks or roadblocks
The Educational Challenge Ahead
Learners need guidance on how to use AI effectively, and educational psychology provides principles and practices to support this.
As AI becomes more capable, the role of educational psychology becomes increasingly important to help students use it in ways that preserve their agency as learners and support meaningful learning.
The author, Andrew J. Martin, Ph.D., is a professor of educational psychology at UNSW Australia and a Fellow of APA’s Division 15. His areas of interest are student motivation, engagement, learning, and quantitative research methods.