The Educational Information Cocoons Effect in the GenAI Era: Generation Process, Action Mechanisms, and Breakthrough Pathways

With its powerful generative capabilities, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) provides new momentum for educational innovation and transformation, yet it also gives rise to the educational information cocoons effect, exacerbating information narrowing and triggering information bias. Therefore, focusing on the GenAI-empowered collaborative learning scenarios, this paper clarifies the connotation and characteristics of the educational information cocoons effect in the GenAI era, and further explores its generation process, action mechanisms, and breakthrough pathways. The paper points out that the generation of the educational information cocoons effect in the GenAI era undergoes three stages of cognitive assimilation, generative solidification, and behavioral reinforcement. Furthermore, under the joint interaction of four elements including learners, learning platforms, learning resources, and collaborative environments, this effect triggers a series of problems, such as the standardization of generative collaborative content, the homogenization of generative collaborative groups, and the limitation of generative individual choices. To address these issues, this paper proposes the breakthrough pathways of educational information cocoons effect with the “empowerment-promotion-optimization-driving” of GenAI: empowering environmental reshaping to break the information closed-loop reinforced by group collaboration; advancing technological upgrading to eliminate the technical loop solidified by algorithmic bias; optimizing profile adjustments to interrupt the cognitive loop reinforced by behavioral preferences; and driving content generation to break the supply loop of homogenized generated content. The analysis of the educational information cocoons effect in this paper can provide theoretical references for optimizing the intelligent dissemination of educational information.