The Case for Cognicy

This position paper introduces the idea of cognicy, the foundational ability to think and understand in a process that decouples cognitive processes from their tangible outcomes. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) can produce output often nearly indistinguishable from a human product, which presents a problem for educational assessment. Cognicy focuses on the process of thought, which is uniquely human, rather than the output, which can be machine generated. The nearest parallel is numeracy, which decouples the underlying mathematical concept from the task of calculation. Similarly, cognicy seeks to disentangle the essential thought process from the outputs, which now can be easily composed by AI. Cognicy is thus a tool for shifting the way in which higher education views the intersection of generative artificial intelligence, learning, and evaluation. It must be where future frameworks for learning focus. Process must be seen as separate from product so that human skills and learning stay relevant. This paper gives a name to these human-based, AI adjacent skills, creating a shared language to begin larger discussions. As a means of starting the conversation, the paper explores the relationship of cognicy to the concepts of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), metacognition, and AI literacy to show how this emerging framework might be employed.