Generative AI took center stage when more than 300 educators and administrators gathered to explore, learn, and share best practices in teaching and learning at Harvard’s annual Professional and Lifelong Learning Summit, held in early March.
Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Bharat Anand, the keynote speaker, centered his conversation on a topic that has surfaced repeatedly over the past year: generative AI and how it is being used across the University to support teaching and learning.
“We’re not seeing faculty use GenAI to replace their expertise. They’re using it most often to streamline routine tasks that often take up valuable time.”
Bharat Anand
“This isn’t just about AI getting smarter,” Anand said. “What changed with ChatGPT is that it became universally accessible. With a simple text box, anyone — not just coders — can now harness the power of these tools.”
That accessibility is prompting experimentation and reflection across Harvard’s classrooms. “We don’t need to wait for institutional directives or for things to be perfect,” Anand said. “Every person can use these tools since the distance between human and computer is shrinking. That’s why we’re seeing so many people start to test, explore, and adapt.”
When tools like ChatGPT first entered the public domain, faculty responses varied.
“In fall 2023, we saw both excitement and real apprehension amongst our community,” Anand noted.
To support exploration, Harvard University Information Technology, with input from the University-wide Generative AI Teaching and Learning working group, launched a secure GenAI sandbox for Harvard. The aim was simple: give faculty, staff, and students a space to play, prototype, and learn together.
The result? A growing set of grassroots innovations — and a new way to share them.
Learning from one another
Observing this interest in experimentation among faculty motivated Anand and his team to connect with faculty across Harvard’s Schools later in the academic year to understand the ways they’d used GenAI in their classrooms. One of the most visible efforts to emerge from this experimentation is the GenAI Faculty Voices Video Library. The project collects short interviews with faculty across the University who have integrated GenAI into their teaching.
“We wanted something useful and practical,” said Melissa Tarr, assistant director of programs at VPAL’s Harvard Institute for Learning and Teaching. “These videos offer concrete examples — quick hits that educators can learn from right away.”
The team asked each participating faculty member to identify a challenge they’d faced, a way GenAI was used to address this, and what they’d learned. Course planning, revising assessments, class discussions, grant editing, and student projects all surfaced as areas of early innovation.
“The faculty we interviewed were open-minded and thoughtful,” said Mary Godfrey, director of multimedia at VPAL. “They used GenAI to stretch their assignments and to test its boundaries. A number also deliberately showed students where the tools failed, as a way to sharpen critical thinking.”
It’s about augmentation, not substitution
Use cases include generating practice questions, building tutor bots, providing timely student feedback, or helping students learn prompt engineering.
Anand highlighted an important takeaway: “We’re not seeing faculty use GenAI to replace their expertise. They’re using it most often to streamline routine tasks that often take up valuable time. Whether it’s summarizing student responses, answering questions after hours, or drafting new practice problems, the goal is to free up energy for higher-impact teaching. This mirrors what we’re seeing in other sectors. The real value lies not in outperforming humans, but in ‘automating the mundane’: in saving time on things we already do — or don’t do — because they take too long.”
This ethos — of curiosity, reflection, and shared discovery — has come to define Harvard’s approach. Working groups have been in operation across the University, exploring the role of GenAI in research, administration, and pedagogy. The Teaching and Learning working group, chaired by Anand, continues to develop resources and track developments both inside Harvard and beyond.
“The video library is just one piece, and we’ll continue to add to it,” Anand said. “We’re trying to support thoughtful experimentation. At the same time, there is a strong need for GenAI literacy across the University, continued discussion on the ethics of its uses, and engaging in a more strategic conversation about what this all means for the role of educators.”
Examples from the Faculty Voices Library include:
“The Faculty Voices Video Library illustrates the depth and breadth of creativity unfolding across Harvard’s campus,” said Provost John Manning. “I’m excited to see what further innovation lies ahead.”
Looking ahead: A campus-wide conversation
On May 13, Harvard will host its first University-wide symposium on the future of generative AI and its implications for the various activities of the University: research, teaching and learning, operations, and administration. Held at Harvard Business School’s Klarman Hall and sponsored by a coalition of University offices — including VPAL, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, HUIT, the Harvard Library, and FAS — the half-day event will surface ideas and questions from across disciplines and schools.
“We’ve seen real momentum,” said Anand. “Now is a good time to take stock — to learn from each other, to ask hard questions, and to shape a path forward.”
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