The Paradox of Access and Agency: Designing for Creative Initiative with GenAI

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has introduced new forms of support for learners, lowering the threshold for engagement in complex cognitive tasks. Yet this ease of access brings a paradox: the same tools that help learners to engage may also inhibit the development of creative initiative and epistemic agency through premature convergence. This paper contributes to the field of Design for Learning (D4L) and the learning sciences by theorising how GenAI reshapes the conditions that enable, inhibit, or redirect learner creative initiative. Drawing from educational psychology, learning sciences, and sociotechnical design, it argues that initiative must now be treated as a core concern in D4L, not as a learner disposition but as a designed-for phenomenon. It frames GenAI not simply as a tool, but as participatory infrastructure that reconfigures when and how learners act with agency. The paper proposes three time-placed design strategies—pre-prompt framing, post-prompt reflection, and contrastive evaluation— and provides guidance for learning designers in higher education on approaching D4L in the AI era. These proposals invite learning designers and educators to rethink how learner agency is cultivated in GenAI-rich environments and suggests that D4L must evolve to explicitly support initiative, particularly in moments of learner uncertainty and epistemic risk.