AI in Education: Approaches and Strategies for Educators

Key takeaways

• Best practices for using artificial intelligence (AI) in education include maintaining strong educator-learner relationships, keeping your strategy cohesive across your educational system, and staying up to date on the latest research and developments in both education and AI.

• Benefits of AI in education include automating routine tasks, assisting with research and brainstorming, and enabling personalization.

• AI in higher education is common, with 90 percent of higher education professionals using AI for professional work [1] and 57 percent of college students using AI in their weekly coursework [2].

Educators use AI to quickly create classroom materials such as quizzes, assignments, and rubrics, and to serve as a study aid or homework helper for learners. Below, explore some suggestions on approaching AI in education, including beneficial use cases and potential challenges, and learn how you might use AI in your education programs with AI tools and prompting strategies.

Afterward, if you want to learn even more, consider enrolling in Vanderbilt University's Generative AI for Educators & Teachers Specialization. You’ll have the opportunity to build skills in AI-powered creativity, game design, prompt patterns, and more in as little as 12 weeks.

What is AI?

AI is the development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that historically required human intelligence, such as recognizing speech, making decisions, and identifying patterns. This umbrella term encompasses several technologies, such as machine learning, which uses algorithms, and deep learning, which uses neural networks modeled after the human brain.

As you incorporate AI into your teaching processes, you’ll likely use generative AI (GenAI). GenAI allows you to input prompts to generate new content, such as text, images, code, and other media.

GenAI tools tend to use natural language processing (NLP), enabling them to interpret and respond to standard human language, making them user-friendly. ChatGPT and DALL-E are two examples of popular GenAI tools. Thanks to NLP, you don’t need to know all of the inner workings of AI to benefit from AI tools.

Learn more: Deep Learning vs. Machine Learning: A Beginner’s Guide

How to approach AI in education

As you move toward incorporating AI into your workflow, remember that these tools are meant to supplement and augment your current processes, not replace them. Maintaining strong teacher-learner relationships, developing a cohesive AI strategy, and remaining up to date on the latest research in both education and AI development can all help to support you as you approach AI as a tool for education.

Consider these four principles for approaching AI in an educational setting in more detail:

1. The relationship between educators and learners is important for success, and current technologies can’t replicate it. Remember to check your AI tool’s work, incorporate your expertise, and personalize your processes.

2. Develop a cohesive approach to AI throughout the educational system. When boards, administrators, and teachers align on an AI strategy, you can better prepare to benefit from AI’s potential while safeguarding your learners and school system from the potential pitfalls of AI.

3. Continue to incorporate modern teaching and learning principles into your educational practices. AI learns from the data it receives and may not always have the most up-to-date information. It is important to continue blending the research you do and the perspective you bring as an experienced educator with AI use.

4. Stay up-to-date on the latest AI developments. When you’re working with rapidly developing technology, it’s important to remain aware of the changes that may occur with each application update or new tool release. Pay attention to the latest AI and GenAI news to ensure you use your tools effectively.

AI in higher education

According to a 2025 UNESCO survey on AI adoption in higher education, 90 percent of respondents, who are higher education professionals, reported using AI tools for professional work, such as writing and research, while nearly 50 percent reported using them for teaching tasks [1]. As for college students, research from 2026 finds that 57 percent use AI in their coursework at least weekly, with 21 percent reporting daily use [2].

Why should AI be used in education? Benefits of AI in education

In the same way that AI has benefited other areas of society, including task automation, brainstorming, and personalization, using AI in education can also have a positive impact. Explore the following beneficial ways you might use AI in education:

• Automate or semi-automate administrative tasks: You can use AI to assist with some of your more routine administrative tasks, such as creating schedules, designating groups of learners for projects, or completing simple grading procedures. You can also use AI tools to draft lesson plans, worksheets, and emails.

• Assist with research and brainstorming tasks: You can use AI as a thought partner during the research process or when brainstorming new ideas. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to generate several variations of essay questions on a designated topic. Similarly, learners can ask ChatGPT to clarify their questions on a specific research topic or generate ideas for further investigation.

• Personalize learning experiences: You can use AI to track learner progress and identify areas where they may need additional support. You can then create learning plans and assignments tailored to learners’ individual needs.

Potential challenges of AI

Alongside the benefits of AI come challenges and risks related to bias, privacy, and overreliance, among other concerns. The following areas of potential concern are worth being aware of before you start using AI in your classrooms:

• Ethical concerns and bias: Regardless of the type of AI, all start with human-fed data and design. This means that AI can potentially inherit some of the same biases humans experience. It’s important to research the AI ethics that guide the tools you plan to use and to be aware of the potential for bias as you review any AI output you plan to incorporate into your teaching and learning plans.

• Privacy concerns: Some types of AI store and analyze inputs, often to tailor future outputs. For this reason, exercise caution when entering sensitive or personal information pertaining to both educators and learners. As with all new technologies, before you begin using any AI tool in your educational workflow, be sure to review the company’s data and privacy policies to learn what information they may be storing, how it’s used, and whether you can opt out of data storage.

• Cheating or dependence concerns: While AI offers productive learning benefits, it’s possible to rely too heavily on AI tools. AI technologies can hinder learning if they’re used in place of critical thinking skills. As an educator, it’s worth considering how you can continue to foster critical thinking, given that learners can access GenAI tools as they write essays and complete homework assignments.

How to use AI in education

Developing your AI strategy will involve selecting tools that align with your education system and learning effective prompting skills as you determine which use cases are appropriate for AI integration.

GenAI text tools for education:

AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, CoPilot, and Claude offer educators options for personalizing lessons, collaborating, and quickly creating classroom materials such as exams, quizzes, assignments, and rubrics. Learners can use these AI tools as study aids or homework helpers or to get feedback on coursework, reinforce learning, improve their writing, and more. Explore the following details to learn more about each of these tools.

• ChatGPT: OpenAI’s application was the first tool of its kind to receive wide public attention upon its launch. The company hosts ChatGPT for Teachers as a secure workspace for educators and school leaders, and also provides a special “study mode” for learners.

• Gemini: Google’s application is comparable to ChatGPT, but users tend to describe it as a more user-friendly interface with a more casual tone than OpenAI’s app. Gemini offers Gemini for Education, tailored to educators, learners, and staff.

• Microsoft 365 Copilot: Microsoft’s application acts similarly to Gemini and ChatGPT but leverages OpenAI’s generative technology, which may enhance its performance. Copilot in education offers the Study & Learn Agent for learners and the Microsoft 365 Copilot App for educators.

• Claude: Anthropic’s generative AI application is capable of producing high word-count inputs and outputs. The company also recently introduced Claude for Teachers, which is a program designed specifically for educators.

New GenAI tools are developed, released, and updated frequently. To decide which of these text-generation tools is suitable for your educational environment, test the user experience and output of each, and consider the privacy and ethical considerations guiding each tool’s development.

AI prompting for educators.

To use text-generation tools, you’ll need to write prompts that guide the application toward your desired output. Including the following information in your prompts can impact the accuracy, relevance, and clarity of the output you receive from the AI:

1. The tool’s role

2. Your project description

3. Project context

4. Output specifications

5. Rules and constraints

6. Output examples

For example, you may prompt:

You are a writing teacher speaking to a student with a fourth-grade reading level. You want to teach a lesson about metaphors and symbolism. Create a lesson plan with definitions of both concepts, bullet points comparing and contrasting metaphors and symbolism, and an example of each. Do not reference similes. Then, write three questions to ask the student that will demonstrate their comprehension of both concepts.

Keep learning about AI with our free resources

Get tips to help you navigate rapidly evolving technology like AI by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Then, explore the following free resources to guide you in learning more about AI:

• Watch on YouTube: What Can Generative AI Really Do?

• Read our Career Chat issue: 3 GenAI Prompting Methods Worth Trying

• Take a quiz: Which AI Course Should You Take? Find Out in 1 Minute

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