Abstracts

This presentation reports on a recent study on the ability of LLMs to write creatively, in comparison to human creative writers, in the domain of fan fiction. Three authors—one experienced fan fiction writer and two highly educated writers with no fan fiction writing experience—created 12 stories on writing prompts from the Harry Potter fan fiction community. Two LLMs were also used, generating 24 texts on the same prompts. The total of 36 texts were anonymised and reviewed by three human raters and one AI rater. Contrary to expectations, AI-generated texts scored higher than the non-experienced writers on all criteria, and were indistinguishable from the experienced writer's texts. Inter-rater reliability was strong (α = .80). However, style mimicry differed significantly between authors. These findings raise questions for fan studies, creative writing, and liberal arts education.

Artificial intelligence is widely used for human language analysis and human reasoning, including in education and liberal arts disciplines. Though human argumentation includes not only observed language constructions but also context, causality, implicit premises and comparative judgements. In order for AI to analyse arguments, human reasoning needs to be preserved into a computable representation: text, features, labels, and predictions. This gives rise to the main question of this work: which properties of human reasoning are preserved, and which are lost when an argument is translated into computational features? The work is based on three years of experience in debate and teaching debate. FRIC—Framing, Reasoning, Impacting, and Comparative analysis—is used as a human-centred argument structure. The paper examines argument mining as a way to explore the boundary between computational pattern recognition and human reasoning.

Automation of speech and language has led to the disappearance of political language and the human experience attached to it. Humboldt considers language and thought are not only inseparable, but speech and listening form part of human nature. With the loss of meaningful political language, public spaces as preconditions for democracy, dialogue and tolerance have eroded. Liberty, instead of leading to emancipation and individual autonomy, has led to loss of political language and freed the individual from the meaningful political language and the capacity to think. The paper argues that this has been exacerbated through the intertwining between liberal theory and technology in the twenty-first century. The manuscript re-examines language and speech along liberal theory and technology through several thinkers such as Arendt, Orwell and Chomsky.

Generative AI participates in inquiry through the questions, explanations, and priorities it helps users formulate. This conceptual presentation examines framing power: the capacity to shape which problems, perspectives, and criteria of success receive attention. Drawing on Schön’s (1983) account of problem setting and Entman’s (1993) framing theory, it argues that AI literacy should include scrutiny of the assumptions and purposes that organize inquiry. Research on opinionated AI writing assistance demonstrates influence on users’ writing and subsequently expressed views (Jakesch et al., 2023), while multilingual model evaluations identify cultural defaults that changes in prompt language do not consistently overcome (Bulté & Rigouts Terryn, 2026). Through illustrative cases involving seminar participation, academic assessment, and university priorities, the presentation examines how alternative questions direct attention toward different evidence and interventions. It proposes a classroom assignment in which students compare competing framings and justify a research question through evidence, contextual understanding, and a short rationale. The argument positions liberal arts education as a practice of cultivating epistemic agency: the capacity to shape inquiry and take responsibility for its justification. Universities’ educational responsibility therefore includes helping learners explain what is worth asking, whose concerns a question represents, and what evidence could warrant reframing it.

Universities across Asia face rising levels of student and faculty stress, cognitive overload, and psychological distress, while campus support systems remain largely reactive and dependent on self-reporting. This paper presents an ethical, non-invasive framework for translating multimodal biometric signals into actionable cognitive analytics for preventive campus well-being. The framework integrates camera-based photoplethysmography-derived heart rate variability, galvanic skin response, and oculomotor measures such as fixation stability and saccadic latency. During standardized cognitive stress tasks, continuous physiological signals are combined through supervised machine-learning models to identify transitions from productive engagement to cognitive overload and acute distress. The paper also addresses governance conditions required for responsible adoption: informed consent, data minimization, transparent algorithms, human oversight, safeguards against surveillance and discrimination, and validation across diverse Asian populations.

As artificial intelligence increasingly takes on tasks once considered uniquely human, universities face a deeper question: not only what students should know, but what kind of people they should become. This presentation introduces TOLYQ ADAM, AlmaU’s whole-person education model rooted in Abai’s concept of Aqyl, Zhyrek, Qayrat — Mind, Heart, and Will — and informed by contemporary global approaches to student agency, values, and human development. Implemented through an integrated first-year curriculum, TOLYQ ADAM connects critical thinking, dialogue, self-understanding, research, and service learning to create repeated opportunities for practice, reflection, and transfer across different contexts. The presentation will also share findings from AlmaU’s 2025–2026 student study, examining perceived development across key competency areas and students’ understanding of themselves and their values. It argues that in the age of AI, the university’s role is not to compete with technology, but to cultivate people capable of directing it with judgment, empathy, agency, and responsibility.

Institutional responses to student well-being, from biometric stress detection to reactive counseling, largely follow a biomedical paradigm that defines health by the absence of dysfunction (Engel, 1977). Abai Kunanbayev's triadic philosophy of aqyl (reasoned judgment), zhүrek (moral-affective orientation) and qayrat (volitional resilience) offers a complementary model, closer to the WHO's (1948) view of well-being as a positive, integrated state and to Keyes's (2002) account of flourishing. At a Kazakhstani university, the triad is put into practice through a compulsory general-education curriculum and a six-domain competency framework that pairs two domains with each dimension, Resilience among them. A mixed-methods evaluation of 547 first-year students grounds the argument empirically. Preliminary results show that most students reported improvement in all six domains, including resilience and adaptability, although these self-reported gains are modest in size. The model suggests how institutions in multilingual, postcolonial contexts can move from deficit-oriented detection toward developmental approaches to resilience (Smith, 1999). For counselors, student affairs staff and curriculum designers, it offers a practical alternative to reactive support.

As colleges and universities look for ways to internationalize their campuses while working around real obstacles such as cost, distance, and political barriers to travel, virtual exchange has become a genuinely effective way to build meaningful cross-cultural learning experiences. This presentation shares a working model of International Virtual Discussions, developed through a collaboration between universities across Asia and Africa, including AUCA, the American University of Nigeria, and Parami University. The project shows how virtual exchange can complement, rather than simply substitute for, traditional study abroad, expanding access to intercultural communication, collaborative learning, and global citizenship. The presentation offers practical, step-by-step guidance covering how to design activities, prepare students, facilitate discussions, assess outcomes, and choose digital platforms.

International student mobility is commonly understood as a means of promoting intercultural competence and academic development. Yet mobility also exposes students to different pedagogical cultures, including approaches to student autonomy, seminar participation, and student-faculty interaction. This qualitative single-case study examines selected pedagogical practices encountered during an exchange semester at UiT The Arctic University of Norway through a cognitive psychology lens. Using structured reflective observation and cognitive-pedagogical mapping, the study identifies selected pedagogical practices, interprets them through relevant cognitive principles, and considers their potential relevance across Asian higher education contexts. The analysis suggests that greater student autonomy may support self-regulation and metacognitive monitoring when accompanied by appropriate learning structures; seminar discussion may encourage retrieval and elaborative processing; and collaborative learning may facilitate peer learning and the active construction of knowledge.

Rapidly changing diplomatic relations, regional realignments, and shifting border policies present clear hurdles for higher education across Central Asia. For liberal arts institutions, maintaining meaningful international exchange while protecting core academic values requires flexible, ground-level strategies rather than rigid policies. This paper outlines a practical framework for sustaining academic mobility during periods of geopolitical uncertainty. Drawing on recent administrative experiences, student exchange data, and policy adaptations across Central Asian universities, the presentation focuses on three core areas: defending open inquiry, navigating bureaucratic barriers, and building resilient networks. Rather than offering purely theoretical models, this session focuses on lessons learned from the field. Participants will leave with realistic takeaways for modernizing international offices, supporting cross-border faculty research, and keeping liberal arts education connected to global scholarly networks.

When traditional cultural practices begin to disappear, what are we really trying to preserve: the technique itself, the memory of it, or the conditions in which this knowledge can continue to live? This presentation follows one small material—chiy, the traditional Kyrgyz practice of weaving local reed stems into mats and decorative panels—as it gradually expanded the boundaries of research from anthropology toward ecology, economics, material culture, heritage studies, and intergenerational change. Through this experience, liberal arts became practical rather than an abstract educational idea. The presentation argues that interdisciplinarity is not simply combining disciplines but following a real problem far enough to recognize when one disciplinary explanation is no longer enough.

Senior theses and master dissertations are an important part of the curriculum in many universities. But how does supervision style shape psychology students' experience and results? In countries like Kyrgyzstan, where different education models coexist, understanding and flexibility in supervision is needed. This research analyses thesis and dissertation supervision styles in Psychology Departments at five universities in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, aiming to identify actual supervision styles and explore their associated challenges and opportunities. The qualitative approach was applied: 13 semi-structured interviews with supervisors and alumni, interpreted using materials of 5 focus group discussions with students. Four primary supervision styles were identified: paper-oriented, process-oriented, student-oriented, and balanced. The findings could help think about thesis supervision as a process based on relationship between supervisor and supervisee.

While artificial intelligence is rapidly taking over the world, the role of universities, where we teach thinking and reasoning, is noticeably growing. Of course, having the necessary set of facts is important, but even more crucial is the ability to competently analyze data and draw non-obvious conclusions from it. Furthermore, this must also be taught. As is well known, the main pedagogical technique is teaching by example. This paper will critically analyze the well-known conversation between the great mathematician Euclid and King Ptolemy I Soter, and challenge the popular view that ancient mathematics was Hellenistic. The problem of the relationship between official government bodies and scientists, educational institutions, and universities will be discussed.