Find suggestions for reframing existing coursework, incorporating short in-class activities, and more in our resource on Starting Small with AI in the Classroom.

Educators have quickly discovered many ways that students can use AI tools to improve their learning. Some of these include using AI chatbots to:

• Explain or paraphrase complex information or challenging text passages in simple terms
• Brainstorm initial ideas for an essay or project
• Generate additional examples of a problem, concept, or scenario
• Provide feedback on writing or an argument

Some AI tools have additional functionality (often limited to paid accounts) that allow the tool to:

• Summarize long or difficult text, including research articles or data sets 
• Find relevant articles for a research project
• Represent and visualize data in different ways
• Generate quantitative practice problems and see possible solutions

For more information and example educational use cases of generative AI tools, see Stanford Teaching Commons’ resource on exploring the pedagogical uses of AI chatbots.

Regardless of what tasks students may be using AI tools for, it’s important to give students guidelines for how to effectively and ethically use the tools. If you would like to encourage AI tool use, refer students to your AI use policy to let them know how and/or when to report their AI use, and provide students with suggestions for how to use AI chatbots more effectively. See the FAQs below for what to consider sharing or discussing with your students.

If you would like to encourage students’ use of AI tools, especially chatbots, here are some general tips that you might adapt to share with students:

Quick tips for chatbot prompting. 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!

Quick tips for productive and responsible AI tool use. Here are some tips for using generative AI productively and responsibly when…

• Gathering new (or reviewing) information or ideas. Information you might get from a chatbot can be helpful for reviewing the basics, hearing information in a new way, summarizing or filtering large amounts of information, or brainstorming ideas. But you should always verify the information and data that you find there. Use a chatbot interaction to find starting points, and then follow up on that information in more reliable sources (reputable journal or news articles, vetted data sets, hearing from an expert, course materials, etc.) and make sure that you avoid plagiarizing by finding out which original authors an AI tool may be drawing from. 
• Writing. Use chatbots in ways that you might get help from a writing tutor or a copyeditor — to help review your grammar and/or spelling, to find clearer ways of phrasing sentences, for help outlining or arranging ideas. But make sure that you…
  • Develop a clear idea of your goals and reasoning in the assignment before using the AI to help you write. In this academic setting, ideas and analyses that you present in your work must be fundamentally your own.
  • Get help periodically from a writing tutor, your colleagues, and/or your instructors. They can help refine and develop your writing in creative ways, and they may be able to give you more context-specific advice (discipline, job role, course assignment, etc.) than an AI tool would.
• Coding. Chatbots and other AI coding tools can write sample code, provide suggestions or instructions for writing code, and check code for errors. Use (or limit your use of) such tools in the same way as you might a human collaborator. In some courses, it’s important that you are able to develop certain code without help, or that you are able to generate code yourself but with assistance from tools or collaborators that can help you correct errors. In other courses where learning how to code or complete certain automated processes isn’t part of the course goals, you might be able to use code generation or assistance tools freely. 
• Generating charts, visuals, or audio. Chatbots and other AI tools can generate charts or visualizations based on data sets, images based on prompts, and human-like audio. If one of the goals of the course is to learn to generate such data visualizations, images, or audio yourself, avoid using AI tools or check with your instructor about ways you might be able to use AI tools while still learning key skills. In general, make sure you know how the AI tool is working to produce content (e.g., Are you able to spot-check data visualizations to make sure they’re compiling and analyzing data correctly? Can you verify that a tool isn’t using copyrighted material to produce images and/or audio? What biases in source information, such as racial or gender stereotypes, might be showing up in AI-generated content?). 

Quick tips for careful AI tool use. When using an AI chatbot (or another type of generative AI tool)…

• Avoid inputting information that you would not want to be made public. This includes personal or confidential information of your own or that others share with you, as well as proprietary or copyrighted materials (which may include case studies, data sets, assignment prompts, or other materials) that may be included in your coursework. Before making an account for an AI tool, look up the tool’s privacy statement and make sure you agree with how the tool’s creator might use your data. Be sure to review and follow the guidelines provided in Stanford IT’s resource on Responsible AI at Stanford.
• Be prepared to fact-check and critically evaluate all AI-generated information. Most AI chatbots aren’t designed to write sentences that are true — they are designed to write sentences that are plausible. Many AI tools get their training sets and information from the internet and can’t make judgements about the information they draw on. Generative AI tools can provide false information (called ‘hallucinations’), perpetuate biases and/or stereotypes, or draw on copyrighted information without proper attribution, and such problematic information is often presented very convincingly. 
• Follow your instructor’s policy on how to report AI use or cite AI-generated content.

Generative AI tools are new for students, too. If you would like to encourage students to use AI tools, here are some ideas you may want to consider:

• Most AI tools available today were not designed for educational purposes. It may help 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. You might 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.
• Stanford does not yet support any generative AI tools for use. If you encourage students to use such tools for work in your course, make sure to offer assignments that students may complete effectively if they are unable or choose not to use AI tools. This especially includes the use of paid tools, the use of tools that require personal information to make an account, or assignments that ask students to discuss personal information.

See the adoption process for new technologies if you would like to incorporate these tools into your course.

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.

See Stanford Business Insights’ Technology and AI topic for articles that highlight Stanford GSB research on AI and other cutting edge technologies.

Other business journals’ collections of AI or technology-focused articles include The Wall Street Journal’s technology section, the Harvard Business Review’s AI and machine learning topic, and MIT Sloan Management Review’s data, AI, and machine learning topic. These collections can provide up-to-date news examining AI business tools’ promising future and current limitations.

Learn more about a “human-centered approach” to AI, meant to spur innovation and economic benefits, and the cutting-edge research being done at Stanford’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Lab (HAI). HAI also offers executive education programs to explore AI technologies and their business implications.