According to a news release from Anthropic, the board is tasked with ensuring that AI “strengthens rather than undermines learning and critical thinking skills” through policies and products that support academic integrity and student privacy.
As teachers adapt to AI, ed-tech leaders have called for educators to play an active role in aligning AI to educational standards.
“Teachers and educators and administrators should be in the decision-making seat at every critical decision-making point when AI is being used in education,” Isabella Zachariah, formerly a fellow at the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology, said at the EDUCAUSE conference in October 2024. The Office of Educational Technology has since been shuttered by the Trump administration.
To this end, advisory boards or councils involving educators have emerged in recent years among ed-tech companies and institutions seeking to ground AI deployments in classroom experiences. For example, the K-12 software company Otus formed an AI advisory board earlier this year with teachers, principals, instructional technology specialists and district administrators representing more than 20 school districts across 11 states. Similarly, software company Frontline Education launched an AI advisory council last month to allow district leaders to participate in pilots and influence product design choices.
The Anthropic board taps experts in the education, nonprofit and technology sectors, including two former university presidents and three campus technology leaders. Rick Levin, former president of Yale University and CEO of Coursera, will serve as board chair. Other members include:
- David Leebron, former president of Rice University
- James DeVaney, associate vice provost for academic innovation at the University of Michigan
- Julie Schell, assistant vice provost of academic technology at the University of Texas at Austin
- Matthew Rascoff, vice provost for digital education at Stanford University
- Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of Complete College America
The board contributed to a recent trio of AI fluency courses for colleges and universities, according to the news release. The online courses aim to give students and faculty a foundation in the function, limitations and potential uses of large language models in academic settings.
Schell said she joined the advisory board to explore how technology can address persistent challenges in learning.
“Sometimes we forget how cognitively taxing it is to really learn something deeply and meaningfully,” she said. “Throughout my career, I’ve been excited about the different ways that technology can help accentuate best practices in teaching or pedagogy. My mantra has always been pedagogy first, technology second.”
In her work at UT Austin, Schell has focused on responsible use of AI and engaged with faculty, staff, students and the general public to develop guiding principles. She said she hopes to bring the feedback from the community, as well as education science, to regular meetings. She said she participated in vetting existing Anthropic ed-tech tools, like Claude Learning mode, with this in mind.
In the weeks since the board’s announcement, the group has met once, Schell said, and expects to meet regularly in the future.
“I think it’s important to have informed people who understand teaching and learning advising responsible adoption of AI for teaching and learning,” Schell said. “It might look different than other industries.”
