Faculty well-being in the age of GenAI

The emotional and cognitive impact of genAI on post-secondary faculty is pressing, particularly in a context of chronic institutional underfunding, high student-faculty ratios, and an increasing reliance on precarious labour. The logistical burdens of adapting to a fast-changing technology, navigating academic integrity protocols in unclear terrain, and managing profound changes in the emotional relationship to the work itself pose real risks to faculty job satisfaction and retention, as well as to instructors’ ability to maintain the pedagogical integrity and standards of postsecondary education. 

However, little attention has been paid to the lived experiences of faculty. That gap prompted our study, now published as an open access article, The Affective Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Instructors of First-Year Writing Courses.  

In interviews with eight instructors of first-year writing across four Ontario institutions, we found that respondents’ job satisfaction has suffered because of genAI. Grading has become more demanding and less rewarding, with fewer of what one participant termed those “little gems where you can see the light bulb go off in the student’s head.”  

The logistics of handling suspected genAI misuse creates new emotional minefields, as instructors have no preexisting “script” to draw from when speaking with a student whose work they suspect to be AI-generated. As one instructor observed, “It is one thing to be like, here are some… sentences lifted from another source that you haven’t cited. It is another thing entirely to be like: You could never write this way.”  

The instructors we spoke with also reported a rupture in the teacher-student relationship, a relationship that is fundamental to job satisfaction among educators. The shift from being intellectual guides to “cops in the classroom” rippled throughout the responses, with one participant reflecting on a change in her professional identity: “without me acting like an authoritative figure, they would take advantage of me. So, I have to be someone else. A person I don’t want to be.”  

Another consistent theme was the experience of moral injury, a phenomenon researchers define as “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.” Respondents expressed grief over bearing witness to what they view as immense losses arising from the availability of genAI: a generalized deskilling that they reported already observing among students, and a loss on the part of young people of the pleasures in developing their own voices and identities as thinkers.  

Paths Forward 

In June 2026, the federal government released the Canadian National AI Strategy: AI for All. In response, U15 Canada issued a statement highlighting the critical role of post-secondary institutions in developing AI literacy and preparing AI-capable talents. Integrated into any postsecondary initiatives, however, must be attention to the working experience of front-line educators. 

Our interviews revealed a resounding need on the part of faculty for clearer institutional guidance on ethical use of genAI in student work, from procedural details like standards of evidence required by academic integrity policies (and how those standards would be met in genAI-related cases) to logistical guidance on how to conduct meetings with students whose work raises concern.  

We also recommend that institutions expand the supports offered to faculty for navigating genAI: in addition to professional development opportunities to learn about the affordances and limitations of the technology, training should be available on issues such as how to restore trust in the classroom.  

Underlying much of the emotional difficulty reported by our participants was the spectre of job insecurity: consistent with the typical faculty complement leading first-year writing courses, all of our participants were precariously employed, either in teaching-intensive limited-term appointments or in sessional contracts at multiple institutions. As one participant observed, “[precarity] is a compounding factor in everything. In a negative sense.” Not only did respondents have high teaching loads and limited access to training in genAI and pedagogical best practices, but they also experienced significant anxiety when addressing potential student misconduct, with fears of student reprisal exacerbated by the vulnerability of precarity.  

During our research, many participants thanked us for tackling the topic, describing a sense of catharsis at being able to talk about something not widely discussed, either because of a sense of shame or institutional pressure. Our final recommendation, then, is that institutions and professional organizations establish communities of practice where faculty can openly share their experiences, exchange practical strategies, and provide one another with logistical guidance and emotional support.