AI Meets Education at Stanford
AI Meets Education at Stanford (AIMES) is a VPUE effort to catalyze and support critical engagement with generative AI in Stanford teaching and learning contexts, coordinated by the Center for Teaching and Learning.
AIMES fosters discussions among faculty, instructors, and students, and lower barriers for Stanford educators to engage productively and teach effectively in a world where generative AI appears to be here to stay. This effort is focused specifically on teaching and learning at Stanford University, complementing projects that advance AI research and policy in the broader world by bringing insights home to Stanford teaching and learning.
As a collection of activities and resources, AIMES sparks engagement fueled by the kinds of deep critical thinking and discourse that are hallmarks of a Stanford education. As the homophone “aims” suggests, AIMES takes academic goals as the starting point for considering, rejecting, integrating, or leveraging generative AI affordances in Stanford teaching and learning. The purpose of AIMES is to amplify a range of approaches to AI in undergraduate education and how they function ethically, pedagogically, practically, ecologically, and disciplinarily within the university context.
AIMES Library of Examples
Examples of how Stanford instructors have responded to generative AI in their classes, including a range of teaching artifacts. These examples are meant to spark ideas and showcase a variety of approaches to teaching in a university setting where generative AI exists.
AI Teaching Strategies
An overview of strategies that may be helpful when assigning, limiting, and prohibiting AI use.
Teaching Commons Artificial Intelligence Teaching Guide
Learn how to positively influence the dialogue around AI in education, in your own courses and at Stanford. Modules cover AI literacy, pedagogical uses, implications for your course, creating your course policy, and integrating AI into assignments, as well as a DIY workshop kit.
Critical AI Literacy for Instructors Canvas Resource
This self-paced resource is for instructors who are new to generative AI (genAI) technology. It provides the foundational knowledge and skills to begin critically and effectively navigating genAI in teaching and learning contexts.
AI and Your Learning: A Guide for Students
This guide from CTL provides information and guidelines to help students make informed decisions about navigating AI tools.
Academic Technology Tools List
The new Academic Technology Tools List is an interactive guide to Stanford supported academic technologies. You can browse or filter the list by integration level, tool type, and AI capabilities.
Share Input: Thoughtful Approaches to AI in Education
Share examples of how Stanford instructors are engaging with generative AI in their course. Whether it's a creative use of AI tools, strategies to help students navigate AI, or methods that encourage students to think critically about when and why not to use AI, we want to hear it. Your input will help CTL facilitate community discussions and share diverse practices and perspectives.
Request a Consultation or Workshop
For one-to-one advice on creating your course AI policy or revising assignments in light of generative AI, to try out generative AI approaches at the CTL Academic Technology Solutions Lab, or to request a customized workshop on generative AI in your department or academic community at Stanford, contact us.
Share Feedback on AIMES
We welcome your feedback on all aspects of AI Meets Education at Stanford. Please share your input via this anonymous feedback form, or email AIMES co-leads, Michele Elam, Senior Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered AI, and Cassandra Volpe Horii, Associate Vice Provost for Education and Director, CTL
AIMES Approaches
- Enact proposed principles from the January 9, 2025 Report of the AI at Stanford Advisory Committee (AISAC):
- human oversight
- human alignment
- human professionalism
- ethical and safe use
- privacy, security, and confidentiality
- data quality and control
- AI golden rule.
- Build coherent and reusable resources when investing in the creation of new resources. Make them as evergreen and reusable as possible, while planning ahead for sustainable refresh cycles in this rapidly developing domain.
- Emphasize a campus culture of reflection, curiosity, and experimentation to promote conversation and experimentation with AI, within boundaries that are openly discussed.
AIMES Goals
- Address education-specific needs and recommendations from the AISAC 2025 report, such as developing and sharing “frameworks and worked-out examples to help instructors think through… aspects of pedagogy impacted by AI” and facilitating “setting[s] where community members can experiment with AI tools.”
- Support Stanford academic communities to more readily discover, create, and share discipline-specific AI approaches.
- Integrate AI approaches with known evidence and with the university’s core mission related to teaching and learning: for example, metacognition, scaffolding, transparency, purposes of a liberal education, preparation for citizenship and discovery.
- Connect across initiatives and groups working on AI and AI-adjacent issues in teaching and learning at Stanford.
Coming Soon
AIMES team members at CTL, along with partners in VPUE, schools, and departments, are preparing the following new resources and opportunities:
- Discipline-based and departmental community conversations sharing and discussing specific examples and practices within relevant shared educational contexts
- Forums for discussion about generative AI across instructor, TA, and student roles
Additional Stanford Resources
The AIMES team in CTL and VPUE is committed to coordinating and collaborating with colleagues across the university, each working on distinct and connected aspects of generative AI. This network of experts and endeavors provides a resource-rich environment for Stanford instructors, researchers, and learners, including the following:
- University IT provides resources on Responsible AI at Stanford and the Stanford AI Playground. The AI Playground is a user-friendly platform, built on open-source technologies, that allows Stanford faculty, staff, students, postdocs, and visiting scholars to safely try various AI models.
- The Office of Community Standards provides guidance on generative AI with respect to the Honor Code.
- The AI at Stanford Advisory Committee published a report on January 9, 2025.
- The Stanford Accelerator for Learning addresses research and policy on various facets of digital learning, including generative AI, and hosts the AI Tinkery, “a collaborative space for educators to learn and make with generative AI.”
- The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) is an interdisciplinary institute that advances AI research, education, policy, and practice.
Questions?
For questions and suggestions related to AIMES, please contact co-leads:
- Cassandra Volpe Horii, associate vice provost for education and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, at cvhorii@stanford.edu
- Michele Elam, senior associate vice provost for undergraduate education, William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities, and senior fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered AI