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GenAI Initiatives

This page highlights programs, events, and learning opportunities the CTE has organized, supported, or participated in related to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in teaching and learning. These initiatives reflect a wide range of approaches—from integrating GenAI into classroom experiences to intentionally limiting or excluding its use. Our goal is not to promote or discourage GenAI, but to support thoughtful, informed decision-making about whether, when, and how it is used in educational contexts.

Programs

Faculty AI Guides Program

Faculty AI Guides is a program of the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost and CTE designed to advance the understanding of generative AI across Grounds and to empower faculty to make informed and intentional decisions about the role of generative AI in their teaching.

The current 2025-26 cohort consists of 27 faculty from departments and schools across Grounds, with a mix of new Guides and Guides returning from the inaugural 2024-25 cohort. They are actively exploring generative AI in their own teaching contexts and sharing what they learn with colleagues in their own and related disciplines through individual and informal consultations as well as workshops, department presentations, and lunch-and-learns.

Student AI Guides Program

Our Student AI Guides are a diverse team of undergraduate students who collaborate with educational developers, instructional designers, and faculty to co-create resources and programming that address the unique needs of students, faculty, and staff. Through workshops, learning communities, consultations, and resource development, they are helping shape how generative AI is used in classrooms and ensuring student perspectives are included in university-wide conversations.

This work is supported through a flash funding grant from the Jefferson Trust.

Learning Communities

The CTE has offered or sponsored various GenAI-related learning communities over the last academic year.

Grants

Thrive GenAI Course Development Grants

As part of a special call for academic year 2025-2026, the Office of the Provost and CTE offered Thrive course development grants to UVA and UVA Wise faculty interested in incorporating AI instruction into a new or existing undergraduate or graduate course. $26,000 in funds were distributed across 13 projects.

Events

In the past academic year, the CTE has offered or sponsored the following GenAI-related events.

Check out our prior GenAI-related events.

Resources

Teaching Hub Gallery: Generative AI in Teaching and Learning

On our Teaching Hub website, the Generative AI in Teaching and Learning gallery contains over two dozen collections of resources, curated by educators within and beyond UVA, designed to support instructors in navigating the generative AI landscape in higher education. Resources range from what generative AI is and how to learn more about it to what using it could look like within and across disciplines.

Teaching in a World with Generative AI Online Course

In Fall 2024, the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost launched Teaching in a World with Generative AI, a set of four Canvas modules designed to help instructors learn about this technology and its pedagogical implications in order to make informed decisions about whether and how to incorporate GenAI into their classes. This course features voices from UVA faculty and students across Grounds, including CTE team members Michael Palmer and Andrew Kennedy.

MegaSoTL-AI: An AI in Teaching and Learning Project

Led by three co-principal investigators—Jess Taggart (UVA Center for Teaching Excellence), Breana Bayraktar (George Mason University Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning), and Dayna Henry (James Madison University Center for Faculty Innovation)–this cross-institutional scholarship of teaching and learning (MegaSoTL) project brings together faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdocs across Virginia to explore the impact of generative AI in teaching and learning in higher education.

MegaSoTL-AI is composed of over 10 different sub-projects related to educators’ and students’ experiences with and perspectives on GenAI. In 2024, the project received funding from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) to transform the research into resources and workshops for educators across the state.

AAC&U Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum

The University of Virginia joined AAC&U’s inaugural Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum in AY24-25, an institute designed to help departments, programs, colleges, and universities respond effectively to the challenges and opportunities AI presents for courses and curricula. UVA’s team, consisting of CTE team members Andrew Kennedy and Jess Taggart, along with Emily Scida and Fang Yi (UVA Learning Design & Technology), Bethany Mickel (UVA Library), Heidi Nobles (Writing Across the Curriculum), Kim Acquaviva (Nursing), and Spyridon Simotas (French), aimed to foster AI literacy among higher education instructors by incorporating student voices into ongoing conversations about generative AI (GenAI). Its primary goals were to encourage collaboration between students and instructors in service of excellence in teaching and learning with AI; promote transparent and trust-based AI pedagogy that attends to equity, ethical, and academic integrity concerns; and establish the University of Virginia as a leader in AI pedagogy.

Through this Institute, UVA:

  1. Hired 5 undergraduate students as Consultants on Educational AI Initiatives
  2. Developed a Student Guide to GenAI open educational resource prototype
  3. Integrated undergraduate students into existing AI programs and events
  4. Launched an “AI Conversations in the Classroom” workshop
  5. Developed faculty “workshops-in-a-box” and supported related workshops
  6. Planned the 2025 Spring Institute of World Languages faculty retreat