Written by Annette Vee (University of Pittsburgh), Marc Watkins (University of Mississippi), and Derek Bruff (University of Virginia), The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching equips instructors with practical strategies for teaching effectively in the age of AI. AI-aware teaching means understanding how the technology impacts course goals, assignments, and students so that instructors can adapt with confidence no matter where you fall on the AI spectrum. Read an excerpt from the guide below.
WHAT IS AI-AWARE TEACHING?
AI Is Everywhere
Take out your phone and scroll through your apps. Notice a few somewhat recent changes: subtle enhancements to search functionality, better autocomplete, or automatic organization of photos. The technology behind these features is AI—artificial intelligence—and it’s everywhere. AI has been deployed in social media, searches, word processing, video conferencing, travel platforms, operating systems, even dating apps. And then, of course, there’s ChatGPT, which landed in November 2022 and upended education through its ability to generate text and images and perform other intellectual tasks through an easy and free interface. Since ChatGPT, we’ve seen generative AI quietly integrated into learning management systems, academic research databases, accessibility tools, and countless other applications that we use for operations on our campuses.
AI is changing the way we learn, write, research, and read. Students are using it to brainstorm, get feedback on their writing, answer problem sets, and explain concepts that went over their head in lecture or assigned readings. They find research articles, summarize them, and outline responses using AI. Educators are using AI to personalize learning experiences, offer quick feedback, summarize student reviews, and design immersive class activities for students. For all of us, generative AI is part of daily reality even if we don’t actively seek it out and use it.
AI-aware teaching means understanding the ways students and faculty use AI, as well as AI’s capabilities and drawbacks in educational contexts, and then using that knowledge to craft courses that meet learning objectives. The educational discourse around ChatGPT and other generative AI technology is often framed around adopting or refusing AI. But those positions are reductive and impractical without awareness of our new teaching landscape: the ways that AI is already part of our educational reality through interfaces we encounter, the need to prepare students to use AI responsibly and effectively in their future careers, and the ways that AI can enhance or diminish learning experiences. While not every course needs to integrate AI, its influence on our educational environments means we must take AI into account in order to help students learn. We believe that AI-aware teachers can make more informed, intentional course design choices about what roles AI should have in our teaching and our students’ learning.
You may wonder: Why read a guide on AI when the terrain is so rapidly changing? How AI affects teaching and learning environments in the future will be impacted by new technological developments, lawsuits, regulations, social acceptance and resistance movements, supply chains, and international politics. This guide, which goes to press in spring 2026, will inevitably reference outdated technologies or miss cutting-edge capabilities of AI by the time you are reading it. And yet, how learning works won’t change. The key principles of pedagogy are well established. You are a capable teacher, and you are teaching in a new situation. We know the general outlines of what AI can do and what it might be capable of in the future. So, this new situation doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You can use the concepts of good teaching that you already know—or that you will learn here—in order to respond effectively to this brave new world.
You may also wonder: How can I find time to keep up with all this technological change and its impact on my courses? We are keenly aware how little time many of us have to respond thoughtfully to generative AI in our teaching. That’s why we’ve designed this guide with practical and actionable steps you can take now plus concrete teaching examples you can adapt for your own context. Whether you are a graduate student teaching a course for the first time, a full professor with decades of teaching experience, or an adjunct faculty member teaching multiple sections remotely at different institutions, the strategies and examples within AI-Aware Teaching are designed for you!
This guide acknowledges the everyday reality of generative AI and affirms your agency as an instructor. We invite you to explore generative AI with both curiosity and a critical eye. We’ve set up this guide with background, context, and examples so that you can decide and embark on the best approach to generative AI with your students and in your teaching. Above all, we believe that the most impactful and powerful force in any learning environment isn’t a computer—it’s you, an engaged and informed educator.
Read the full introduction of The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, learn more about the guide, and purchase your own copy.
MEET THE AUTHORS
Annette Vee, PhD, is associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches courses in writing, pedagogy, digital composition, AI, and literacy. Dr. Vee serves on various AI initiatives at the University of Pittsburgh, facilitated Pitt’s AI across the Disciplines program, and frequently gives keynotes and workshops on AI in higher education. She is the author of Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing, co-editor of TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies, and is working on a book that examines why and how humans have sought to automate writing across history. She writes for two Substacks: Computation & Writing and AI & How We Teach Writing.
Image Credit: Courtesy of the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh
Marc Watkins, MFA, directs the AI Institute for Teachers and is an assistant director of academic innovation at the University of Mississippi, where he is a lecturer in writing and rhetoric. He has led research initiatives, exploring generative AI’s impact on student learning, training workshops for faculty on AI literacy, and several institution-wide AI institutes. His work with training faculty in AI literacy has been profiled in The Washington Post and he regularly writes about AI and education on his Substack, Rhetorica.
Image Credit: Photo by Marc Watkins
Derek Bruff, PhD, is an associate director at the University of Virginia’s Center for Teaching Excellence, where he supports faculty across the disciplines in integrating generative AI in their teaching. He is the author of Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching and Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments. He produces the Intentional Teaching podcast and blogs about teaching with technology at Agile Learning. Bruff has taught mathematics courses at Vanderbilt and Harvard Universities.
Image Credit: Photo by Katy Hill Photography based in Nashville, TN