CLIP THINKING IN THE ERA OF GENERATIVE AI: PHASE TRANSITION AND PEDAGOGICAL RESPONSE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

The relevance of this study is driven by the mass adoption of generative artificial intelligence, which has qualitatively transformed the nature of students’ cognitive activity and generated pedagogical challenges for which existing tools prove insufficient. The article investigates the transformation of clip thinking in the context of these changes and substantiates meta-digital competence as a strategic pedagogical response in higher education. The mass adoption of generative artificial intelligence has qualitatively transformed a phenomenon that educational science has been addressing for decades – clip thinking. The study is based on theoretical analysis and synthesis of domestic and international scholarly literature, conceptual modelling, and the method of analogy. The source base encompasses research in the fields of clip thinking, cognitive psychology, metacognition, digital competence, and the cognitive effects of generative artificial intelligence use. The analysis yields the following results. A conceptual distinction is proposed between two phases of clip thinking: the “social media phase”, characterized by superficial yet direct student engagement with learning content, and the “neural network phase”, in which students delegate the very acts of understanding, analysis, and meaning-making to the machine, severing cognitive contact with the subject matter altogether. It is demonstrated that the tactical pedagogical tools developed for the first phase – microlearning, gamification, the ten-minute rule, and the flipped classroom – are insufficient for addressing the second. Meta-digital competence – defined as the capacity for conscious, reflective self-regulation of cognitive activity in digital and neural network environments – is substantiated as the conceptual response to the neural network phase. The particular significance of the reflexive component, which develops students’ awareness of their own cognitive processes, and the ethical component, which cultivates responsibility for verifying transmitted content, is established. The paper concludes that clip thinking in the neural network era is no longer a problem of attention but a problem of cognitive engagement. Meta-digital competence operates at a strategic level inaccessible to tactical tools: it cultivates in students an internal demand for independent thinking in an environment that systematically suppresses it. The paper is addressed to higher education instructors, curriculum developers, methodologists, and researchers in the fields of digital pedagogy and philosophy of education.