Two new initiatives involving artificial intelligence (AI) in Cornell classrooms will encourage experimental and balanced use, while exploring ways to deploy AI that align with the teaching needs and strategies of individual academic fields.

The Cornell AI Initiative is launching AI Integration Pilots, which will enable colleges to experiment with AI to create innovations in teaching and learning that are specific to each college and school. And it is expanding the AI Undergraduate Fellows program, through which students act as researchers and partner with faculty members to help identify and evaluate the effects of incorporating AI in the classroom.

Both initiatives will focus on experimentation and will leverage AI’s benefits while responding to some of the challenges AI brings to the learning environment, said Steven Jackson, vice provost for academic innovation.

“Teaching unfolds differently, learning unfolds differently, in different academic areas, and that that’s not going to change. If anything, AI may, in fact, make it more distinct,” Jackson said. “Cornell is one of very few institutions that is taking such a deliberate and proactive approach to teaching that is focused on the nuance of using, and not using, AI in instruction and learning.”

Both initiatives are supported by a $2 million gift from the Dake family, led by William P. “Bill” Dake ’57 and Susan Law Dake, with additional support from the Office of the Provost. “Every Cornell graduate should be prepared to live a productive and responsible life,” Bill and Susan Dake said in a statement. “With the increase of available data, understanding the complexity, assets and liabilities of AI is key to achieving this goal.”

To launch the AI Integration Pilots, deans were asked to identify a core aspect of teaching in their colleges, such as a skill, area or course sequence, that could be reformed or reinvented through AI. They are now assembling project teams of three to five faculty members, including a faculty lead, that will propose changes in both what is taught and how it is taught, and propose any combination of using less or more AI. That could be the thoughtful, creative adoption of tools that build AI skills and serve learning goals, and effective avoidance of AI through modifications to assessments, assignments and course design.

The teams may implement these changes in any of three semesters: spring 2027, fall 2027 and spring 2028. A graduate student or a postdoctoral researcher will be embedded in each team for two years to support assessment, implementation and coordination across classes. Members of the Center for Teaching Innovation and AI Innovations Lab will provide pedagogical and technical support for the projects.

Then teams will assess their experiments and share results in spring or fall 2028, so others at the university can benefit from their findings.

“Pilots may emphasize bringing AI into new ways of doing pedagogy and new design of curriculum to reflect the presence of AI in these fields,” Jackson said. “These efforts are intentionally being developed within specific disciplines, recognizing that AI will affect fields in different ways. They may also involve changes in pedagogy that protect key aspects of student learning that AI developments challenge.”

Students participating in the AI Undergraduate Fellows Program will serve as embedded researchers within their classrooms, helping faculty members pinpoint ways to incorporate AI in the classroom, and then experiment with and evaluate those methods. That may include faculty efforts to redesign courses and try out new teaching methods.

They’ll also contribute to Cornell research on AI in teaching that assesses learning outcomes and student experience to inform Cornell’s broader AI and education approach.

The AI undergraduate fellows are already involved in wide-ranging studies of the effects of AI across the institution, Jackson noted.

The program is a good example of the Cornell AI Initiative’s “students-as-partners” philosophy, Jackson said.

“As in other areas of education, we think about AI as something we do with students and not just to them or for them,” he said. “Students have insights into the student experience and student needs that faculty don’t have, that staff don’t have. They can shape our thinking, and they’re playing a pretty important role in research.”

For both initiatives, Jackson said, “our goal is to draw on the best thinking and pedagogical imaginations of our faculty, university leaders and students, and turn that into AI development programs that we can really be proud of, and lead the country and the world in this area.”