July 2026
Dear Editors,
We are pleased to submit our manuscript, "Beyond Prompting: Framing, Judging, and Steering as Assessable Competencies for Reasoning With Generative AI in Higher Education," for consideration as a Research Article in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.
As students increasingly turn to generative AI, higher education needs to assess not whether a student can produce an answer, but how well they reason with a fallible machine. Our manuscript proposes CoRe-3, a competency model that decomposes this ability into three teachable, independently assessable skills, Framing, Judging, and Steering, grounded in learning theory. It gives instructors a diagnostic, discipline-general instrument that scores each skill separately, released as an open platform they can use in their own courses.
The work fits the journal's scope in AI literacy, competency assessment, and self-regulated learning in higher education. To our knowledge, it is the first framework to separate the skills a student exercises before and after a model generates, and to demonstrate that these skills can be measured apart.
We confirm that the manuscript is original, has not been published previously, and is not under consideration elsewhere; that both authors approve its submission; that the study involves no human participants; and that the authors have no competing interests. The manuscript and its additional file are anonymized for double-anonymous review.
Thank you for considering our submission.
Sincerely,
Alexander Apartsin, Holon Institute of Technology Dr. Yehudit Aperstein (corresponding author), Afeka College of Engineering. Email: apersteiny@afeka.ac.il