The recent growth in generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools has quickly changed the education landscape. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can generate new content (such as text, images, audio, computer code, etc.) based on patterns and information gathered from sets of sample materials. Some instructors are choosing to bring these new tools more explicitly into their teaching and course assignments, while others are aiming to limit the use of AI tools that are incompatible with course goals.
Below are some suggestions from the TLHub to help you be on the forefront of these tools and their impact on your course. Please note that these are emerging tools, and we will continue to provide new and updated resources as we develop our guidance on the intersection of teaching and AI.
Top Tips
- Access GSB-GPT, the GSB’s secure generative AI chatbot for GSB faculty and staff for low and medium risk data. Learn more about using GSB-GPT and other AI tools in the classroom in the FAQs on Using GSB-GPT and Other AI Tools below.
- Hear ideas from the GSB community. Watch the recording of Faculty Voices: Exploring AI in the GSB Classroom to learn how GSB faculty are exploring AI in course assignments and activities. Review the event highlights of Student Voices: Exploring AI in the GSB Classroom to hear GSB students’ experiences and perspectives on AI in the classroom.
- Establish and communicate your course policy on AI, and explain what unpermitted aid for assignments means for your course (view our template statements). State your policy in your course syllabus and the Course Policies and Norms form, and then follow up in class with your students.
- Get to know generative AI tools and how they might emerge in your course context. Consider running a few of your course’s assignment(s) through GSB-GPT (recommended) or another AI tool. Discuss your findings with your students and explain how the AI tool’s output compares to your expectations for their work. Adjust your assignments to help students go further with AI support or to clarify how students will benefit by working without using AI tools.
Not sure where to start? See our tips for Starting Small with AI in the Classroom.
A Note on Information Security
GSB-GPT is the preferred generative AI chatbot tool for GSB faculty and staff. This secure tool is approved for use with low and moderate risk data. Learn more about GSB-GPT and how it can be used in the classroom in the FAQs on Using GSB-GPT and Other AI Tools below.
When using third-party generative AI tools that Stanford does not support, follow UIT’s resource on Responsible AI at Stanford. Such tools should be used only for low risk data that can be made public. When using these tools, Stanford users should avoid inputting materials containing students’ personal information and proprietary or copyrighted materials (which may include case studies, course assignments, data sets, and more), or any information that may be classified as moderate or high risk according to Stanford UIT’s risk classifications. Information you input into these tools may be shared with third parties, and the tool may use your prompts or questions to inform content generated for other users.
GSB-GPT is not widely available to GSB students, and Stanford does not yet support other AI tools for student use. If you encourage students to use such tools for work in your course, you must offer alternatives for students who do not wish to use AI tools. This especially applies when asking students to use paid tools, to use tools that require personal information to make an account, or to complete assignments discussing personal information.
FAQs about Generative AI Tools in the Classroom
Using GSB-GPT and Other AI Tools
GSB faculty and staff have access to GSB-GPT, the preferred generative AI chatbot tool for GSB faculty and staff.
GSB-GPT is…
- Powered by ChatGPT 4.0 Turbo.
- Hosted securely to ensure GSB data privacy and protection requirements. Data that is input into GSB-GPT is not used by the large language model (LLM) provider for training purposes and cannot be accessed by other users.
- Approved for use with low and moderate risk data according to Stanford UIT’s security classifications.
- Provided at no cost to faculty and staff.
- Accessible using your SUNet credentials.
GSB-GPT is safe to use with course and student materials containing low and moderate risk data.
✅ GSB-GPT may be used with materials such as:
- Exams
- Assignments
- Lecture notes
- Slides
- Case studies
- Data sets you or Stanford owns the rights to
⚠️ Some materials have restrictions and are sometimes appropriate for GSB-GPT:
- Student generated content, including completed assignments and other coursework or student survey and evaluation responses. Instructors may input student content for uses such as generating takeaways about student learning or highlighting gaps in understanding, but Stanford discourages using AI for grading at this time.
- Some published and proprietary materials, including some library materials or research data, may not be used with AI tools. Please consult with the Business Library for specific usage guidelines.
❌ GSB-GPT is not safe for:
- Any data classified as high risk according to Stanford UIT’s risk classifications.
GSB faculty and staff may use third-party AI tools that are not Stanford supported according to UIT’s guidelines on Responsible AI at Stanford, but only for low risk data that can be made public. When using these tools, faculty and staff should avoid inputting materials containing students’ personal information and proprietary or copyrighted materials (which may include case studies, course assignments, data sets, and more), or any information that may be classified as moderate or high risk according to Stanford UIT’s risk classifications.
For information about funding for subscription fees to commercial AI tools such as ChatGPT, contact your faculty assistant or the Teaching and Learning Hub.
GSB-GPT is not widely available to GSB students, and Stanford does not yet support other AI tools for student use. If you encourage students to use AI tools for work in your course, please consider the following guidelines:
- You must offer assignment alternatives for students who do not wish to use AI tools. This especially applies when asking students to use paid tools, to use tools that require personal information to make an account, or to complete assignments discussing personal information.
- Remind students to check the fine print terms before signing up for a personal AI tool.
- Students are expected to follow UIT’s guidelines on Responsible AI at Stanford.
- Students are expected to follow their instructors’ course policies on AI use, and if no policy is given, then AI tools are not permitted for coursework (see FAQs on Crafting Course Policies on the Use of Generative AI Tools below).
GSB Digital Solutions is piloting custom course bots for students. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Max Stoaks.
Crafting Course Policies on the Use of Generative AI Tools
Guidance from the Board on Conduct Affairs states that Stanford instructors may set course policies regarding generative AI use as they choose. The guidance recommends that such policies are stated in the course syllabus and communicated clearly to students.
According to the Honor Code, students commit to not receiving “unpermitted aid” for assignments or examinations. If you do not specify that students can use generative AI tools, then their use would violate the honor code. But because these are emerging tools, it’s important to explicitly clarify with your students whether or not you permit generative AI tools.
For syllabus statement templates and tips on setting your course approach to AI use, see our resource on Course Policies on Generative AI Use.
Incorporating AI Tools into the Classroom
In a student panel discussion on exploring AI in the classroom, GSB students reported exploring or engaging with AI tools for tasks like:
- Summarizing material (developing key takeaways, asking questions about a reading, etc.)
- Creative tasks (generating image, video, or data visualizations; writing a children’s story, etc.)
- Writing support
- Generating or brainstorming ideas ahead of writing (i.e. using AI to overcome writer’s block, brainstorming, or having a thought partner)
- Using AI to refine the writing after first developing their own outlines, reflections, or ideas (i.e. as a writing mechanics assistant)
- Drafting potential talking points for a discussion
- On-demand feedback (i.e., to check whether an answer they’ve developed is correct or needs improvement)
- Information search (e.g., Perplexity.AI)
- Drafting and troubleshooting code (e.g., GitHub CoPilot)
- Meeting notes (e.g., Otter.AI)
Encourage students to critically evaluate all AI-generated content, no matter how they use the tools, and refer students to your AI use policy to let them know how and/or when to report their AI use.
For more:
- Review the event highlights or watch the recording of Student Voices: Exploring AI in the GSB Classroom to hear GSB students’ experiences and perspectives on AI in the classroom
- See Stanford Teaching Commons’ resource on exploring the pedagogical uses of AI chatbots
Watch the recording of Faculty Voices: Exploring AI in the GSB Classroom to learn how GSB faculty are exploring AI in course assignments and activities (Note: GSB faculty panel begins at 30:26). The panel features the following faculty:
- Justin Berg, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior
- Jennifer Aaker, The General Atlantic Professor in Marketing
- Glenn Kramon, Lecturer in Management
- Dan Iancu, Associate Professor of Operations, Information & Technology
- Julien Clement, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior
View our resource on Starting Small with AI in the Classroom, in which we offer tips on:
- How to test your course assignments with AI tools
- Reframing existing coursework to incorporate or disallow AI use thoughtfully
- Short in-class activities to bring AI into the classroom in 10 minutes or less
- And more!
If you would like to encourage students’ use of AI tools, especially chatbots, here are some quick tips for chatbot prompting that you might adapt to share with students:
When entering a prompt, consider instructing the chatbot to…
- “Act as if you…[are an expert on X.]”
- “Tell me what else you need to do this.” – or – “Ask me questions until you have enough information to do this.”
- “Provide me with [a specific output]…” This can include details such as form, tone, etc.
- Complete a task step-by-step, either by prompting it one part at a time, or by asking it to “complete the first step, then stop and ask if I need more information.”
- Look up and cite relevant research to answer the prompt, if using a tool that can search the live internet. Then, double check each citation yourself.
- Change its approach if you aren’t satisfied or sure about an answer. Ask the bot for clarification or to provide a different example. Tell the bot that it is incorrect and ask it to try again. Ask the prompt in a new way (or restart the chat) if the chatbot isn’t providing what you’re looking for — more specific questions and more context about how you like the chatbot to respond can often help…when in doubt, experiment
If you would like to encourage students to use AI tools, here are some ideas you may want to consider:
- You must offer alternatives for students who do not wish to use AI tools. This especially applies when asking students to use paid tools, to use tools that require personal information to make an account, or to complete assignments discussing personal information. GSB-GPT is not widely available to GSB students, and Stanford does not yet support other AI tools for student use.
- Most AI tools available today were not designed for educational purposes. It may help to demonstrate for students how you would like them to use the tools, and/or to provide students with recommendations for when and how they might benefit from using the tools. Students may also need help learning how to prompt an AI chatbot effectively to get useful responses.
- Students have differing levels of experience with generative AI tools. Consider leading an open discussion about how students could imagine using AI tools, asking students to use AI tools during an early group assignment, or having students contribute successful chatbot prompts to a course repository, so that they can learn from one another.
- Provide specific instructions and possible prompts for students to use, if possible, if you welcome students to use AI tools for an assignment. The more students are guided in their use of AI, the more likely they are to use the tools to support rather than shortcut their learning.
- Students should learn about the limitations of generative AI tools. For example, AI tools do not always provide correct responses (often called ‘hallucinations’) and the tools’ outputs can be biased (e.g., more often representing a doctor as male and a nurse as female). Students may need support and/or practice in learning how to fact-check or critically evaluate AI-generated information. The Stanford Teaching Commons’ resource on exploring the pedagogical uses of AI chatbots offers a primer on the potential risks of using AI.
Consider having students research emerging areas of AI use or brainstorm creative applications of AI tools in your field. This will allow students to explore, gain experience with, and discuss the pros and cons of such applications.
GSB resources:
- Stanford Business Insights’ Technology and AI topic for articles that highlight Stanford GSB research on AI and other cutting edge technologies
Stanford resources:
- Stanford’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Lab (HAI) and their “human-centered approach” to AI, meant to spur innovation and economic benefits
- HAI’s executive education programs, exploring AI technologies and their business implications
Other business journals’ collections of AI-focused articles with up-to-date news examining AI business tools’ promising future and current limitations:
- The Wall Street Journal’s technology section
- Harvard Business Review’s AI and machine learning topic
- MIT Sloan Management Review’s data, AI, and machine learning topic
AI Tools and Academic Honesty
We strongly encourage you to test out generative AI tools, and consider running a few of your course assignments through one or several tools. This will provide the clearest sense of how an AI-generated output may compare to high-quality student work in your course. Note that such tools do not generally produce the same output each time a question is posed.
Note: When testing assignments with AI tools, we recommend using GSB-GPT. Be sure to choose assignment prompts and materials that do not include high risk data. When using a third-party tool that is not Stanford supported, be sure to choose assignments that contain only low risk data that may be made public.
Some common strategies for detecting plagiarism may be useful for identifying unpermitted use of AI tools. These include looking for generic or repetitive language, large shifts in writing voice or style, improper and missing citations or facts, or if a student can’t explain how they arrived at an answer or made choices in producing an assignment.
AI detection software is available, but has limitations. See below for more.
Yes. Under the honor code, faculty may use AI detection software if they provide students with “clear, advance notice,” as in the Office of Community Standard’s Tips for Faculty & TAs.
However, Stanford does not have approved general licenses for plagiarism monitoring tools (a common example is Turnitin). We recommend faculty use AI detector tools with a high degree of caution, if they choose to use such software, because AI detector tools can vary widely in their accuracy and can produce both false negatives and false positives. Users can also bypass detection tools by revising AI-generated text and testing their work in AI detector tools themselves to check detection likelihood.
Note: Each AI detection tool differs in its approach to privacy and how inputted material may be shared with third parties. If you choose to use an AI detection tool, avoid inputting information that should not be made public, according to UIT’s guidelines for Responsible AI at Stanford. This includes personal, sensitive, confidential, or proprietary information that may be contained within students’ coursework, including student names.
In addition to stating your course policy clearly, there are some methods you can use to minimize students from turning to unpermitted aid to complete their assignments. The following design practices help improve learning and encourage deep student engagement but have an added benefit of incentivizing academic honesty. Consider which suggestions may be most relevant for your course.
- Make sure students know how and when to seek help on assignments and for exam prep.
- Incorporate lower-stakes assignments as practice before assigning a higher-stakes assignment or exam.
- Break a larger assignment into parts (e.g., topic proposal, outline, rough draft, final draft).
- Include assignments that are deeply context-based, such as assignments situated in personal or work experiences, group work, experiential learning tasks, in-class discussions, etc.
- Adjust assignments to enhance real-world applications and reflect as much as possible the work students may do after leaving the GSB.
- Incorporate in-class brainstorming sessions for students to generate ideas for assignments or arrange peer review feedback sessions on preliminary drafts.
- Allow students to shape assignments according to personal interests. You may consider asking students to apply course concepts to an issue of their choice that they are passionate about, or offering a selection of prompts for students to choose from.
- Convert take-home assignments that may tempt the use of unpermitted aid to in-class activities. For example, instead of assigning an essay on a general topic for homework, have students complete a five- to ten-minute freewrite at the end of class to demonstrate their understanding of course materials, or have students work in small groups to paraphrase the main takeaways of the class session and develop predictions for how those ideas will apply to upcoming course material.
See Emphasizing Student Learning Over Tools for additional small-scale tips for promoting students’ learning regardless of whether they use AI tools.
Getting Started with AI
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can generate new content based on patterns and information gathered from sets of sample materials. Here’s what else to know about this technology:
- The most well-known generative AI tools are ‘chatbots’ (such as GSB-GPT; and commercial tools, e.g., ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, or Claude). These are AI-based text generation tools that users interact with using a chat interface. Users type a question or prompt, and the chatbot responds with a cohesive and creative written answer. The chatbot can then refine or adjust its responses based on how the user continues to interact with the tool, such as by continuing to pose questions or asking for changes to the chatbot’s output.
- Other generative AI tools produce many different outputs such as images (e.g., DALL-E or Midjourney), code (e.g., GitHub CoPilot), data analysis or visualization (e.g., ChatGPT Code Interpreter), or internet search results (e.g., Perplexity).
- AI tools use ‘training data’ (sample materials or data) to inform the content they generate. The quality of AI-generated content can vary widely, in part based on the quality or focus of the training data. For example, a tool trained on large amounts of internet content may be able to respond to a prompt in many different and creative ways, but the tool’s output may also reflect the varying accuracy or biases embedded within the sample internet content. In addition, AI tools sometimes prioritize completing or responding to a user’s prompt over accuracy of information, and can sometimes make up information entirely (known as ‘hallucinating’).
- For definitions of common AI terms and additional explanations of how AI chatbots work, see Stanford Teaching Commons’ resource on defining AI and chatbots.
Test out your course’s assignment(s) using one or several AI tools. Discuss your findings with your students and explain how the AI tool’s output compares to your expectations for their work. See tips and suggestions for testing your course assignments with AI tools.
Note: When testing assignments with AI tools, we recommend using GSB-GPT. Be sure to choose assignment prompts and materials that do not include high risk data. When using a third-party tool that is not Stanford supported, be sure to choose assignments that contain only low risk data that may be made public.
Learn more about AI tools’ strengths and limitations with five fun exercises. We recommend choosing creative topics and/or topics that you are an expert in (whether that is a business, teaching, or other topic), for the best sense of the scope and limitations of the AI tool. Select your chatbot tool of choice (e.g., ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Claude) and try one or more of the following:
- Stump the AI. Select a topic that you are an expert in and prompt the chatbot for increasingly specific or obscure information.
- Brainstorm creative writing. Ask the chatbot to help you develop a fictional short story, and explore different elements of the story through conversation with the chatbot.
- Practice a foreign language. Prompt the chatbot to be your supportive language teacher in a foreign language of your choice and ask it to help you with vocabulary practice for travel in a relevant country.
- Develop a project plan. Ask the chatbot to develop a project plan for an upcoming project or an itinerary for a trip, and then ask for further details, reorganizations, or sample products.
- Try something fun. Create a recipe for a new fusion dish. Plan a themed surprise party for a special guest of honor. Play a guessing game about animals, movie stars, or another topic. Provide song recommendations based on your creative descriptions.
These and additional sample prompts are provided in Stanford Teaching Commons’ resource on exploring the pedagogical uses of AI chatbots.
For a step-by-step guide to generative AI tools in the higher education context, see Stanford Teaching Commons’ Artificial Intelligence Teaching Guide.
TLHub Support
We can offer one-on-one consultations, answers to questions via email, and even a short presentation with Q&A at your next faculty meeting. If you have questions about the impact of generative AI tools on your course and assignments, reach out to discuss your concerns or specific use case with us.
Additional Resources
Stanford Community Resources
- GSB-GPT, the GSB’s secure generative AI chatbot for GSB faculty and staff
- Faculty Showcase on Exploring AI in the GSB Classroom (event recording), GSB Teaching and Learning Hub
- Student Voices panel on Exploring AI in the GSB Classroom (event recording), GSB Teaching and Learning Hub
- Starting Small with AI in the Classroom, GSB Teaching and Learning Hub
- Course Policies on Generative AI Use, GSB Teaching and Learning Hub
- Responsible AI at Stanford, Stanford UIT
- Artificial Intelligence Teaching Guide, Stanford Teaching Commons
- Artificial Intelligence teaching resources topic, Stanford Teaching Commons
- Generative AI: Perspectives from Stanford HAI, Stanford’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Lab
Resources from Outside Institutions
- Harvard Business Publishing’s AI-focused curated collections of readings, case studies, and tutorials
- Wharton Interactive’s 5-part video series on Practical AI for Instructors and Students (length: 1 hour total)
- Elevate Your Case Prep with ChatGPT (article) or How ChatGPT and Other AI Tools Can Maximize the Learning Potential of Your Case-Based Classes (webinar), from Harvard Business School’s Professor of Management Practice Mitchell Weiss
Acknowledgements
This article draws from the Artificial Intelligence Teaching Guide, Stanford Teaching Commons.
Important Note:
Technology is changing at a rapid pace. While we make every attempt to ensure our content is updated to reflect changes to the interface and functionality, we can only guarantee the accuracy of the content on this resource page when it was written or recorded. Please be sure to check the software developer's website for the latest updates and release notes for the most up to date information. If you have questions or concerns, or need additional support, please contact us.
