The AI Literacy and Action Lab is a structured, evidence-producing program at the University of Virginia, which builds competence and judgment through practice.
The Lab is grounded in a framework developed by Leo S. Lo, UVA’s new University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, and already adopted by peer institutions across the country. Programming in the Lab is organized around five linked competencies: technical knowledge, ethical awareness, critical thinking, practical skills and understanding AI’s societal impact.
Launched in 2026, the AI Literacy and Action Lab is a joint initiative of UVA Library and College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Pilot projects and course offerings
During spring and summer 2026, Library experts will join UVA faculty in conducting pilot projects. Those projects are:
- Pilot 1: Anton Korinek (Economics)
The Lab launched its first faculty course pilot this spring, and librarians will serve as instructional partners in an economics course on AI and the Future of Work. Three librarians, Erich Purpur, Meridith Wolnick, and Rebecca Coleman, are co-teaching alongside Anton Korinek, UVA Professor, Department of Economics and Darden School of Business, and Faculty Director of the Economics of Transformative AI (EconTAI) Initiative, across two dedicated sessions. The first is a hands-on workshop on coding with AI agents, where students gain practical experience with tools like Claude Code, Google Antigravity, and OpenAI Codex, and the second is a session focused on the critical thinking and ethics dimensions of the AI Literacy Framework (Lo, 2025). Together, these sessions address what responsible AI use looks like in practice, supporting students as they develop original group projects analyzing how artificial intelligence is reshaping employment, economic growth, and inequality. The Lab’s model pairs faculty disciplinary expertise with librarian-led AI literacy instruction tailored to the varied backgrounds and skill levels of learners across disciplines. When final projects are presented in April, students will leave with portfolio artifacts documenting their growth, the instructor will gain assessment data tracing how student thinking evolved, and the pilot will become a published case study contributing to a national evidence base for AI literacy in higher education.
- Pilot 2: Piers Gelly (English)
The Lab’s second faculty course pilot this spring extends AI literacy beyond the University walls. In UVA Assistant Professor of English Piers Gelly’s first-year writing courses, students are exploring AI’s impact on teaching and learning by developing original lesson plans for Tim Klobuchar’s AP English and English 11 classes at Monticello High School. Working across the project, students will interview the teacher, design AI-informed lessons, and reflect on what thoughtful AI integration looks like from both the student and instructor perspective. Serving as instructional partners, Lab facilitators Meridith Wolnick and Sherri Brown will lead a dedicated session that introduces the AI Literacy Framework (Lo, 2025) and focuses on two dimensions: critical thinking and ethical awareness. These dimensions were chosen deliberately to give students a focused, actionable lens within the limited class time available. Rather than adding assessment as a separate layer, it has been integrated into the course structure, keeping the experience manageable for students while still capturing meaningful data on how their thinking evolves. When the project concludes, students will leave with portfolio artifacts in the form of publishable lesson plans, the faculty member will have data on student growth across key framework dimensions, and the pilot will become a case study contributing to a national evidence base for AI literacy in higher education.
- Pilot 3: David Danks (Philosophy, School of Data Science)
The AI Literacy and Action Lab is also in early conversations with David Danks, Polk JSF Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, & Data Science, about a potential fall pilot in his Philosophy & AI course, where students will develop projects that apply philosophical ideas to real-world or potential uses of AI across society. Students will themselves use AI to create these projects, and so will need to center their critical thinking and ethical reasoning. The collaboration would draw on the critical thinking and ethics dimensions of the AI Literacy Framework (Lo, 2025), with a focus on helping students develop genuine comprehension and the cognitive skills to critically evaluate and validate AI outputs rather than rely on them uncritically. Formal planning will take shape as the Lab gathers insights from this semester’s active pilots.
- Pilot 4: Andreas Gahlmann (Chemistry, Molecular Physiology, and Biological Physics)
The Lab is also in early conversations with Andreas Gahlmann, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics, about a fall pilot that would bring the Lab’s model into STEM for the first time. Professor Gahlmann has been exploring AI-scaffolded active learning in his biochemistry course (CHEM 4410) and would be working with the Lab to train a teaching assistant alongside a librarian instructional partner to deliver structured AI literacy sessions designed from the outset as a replicable template for STEM courses. The pilot would be mapped against the AI Literacy Framework (Lo, 2025), giving the Lab a science anchor to complement its humanities and social science pilots as it builds toward broader institutional reach.
- Pilot 5: Online Education and Digital Innovation (OEDI) and AI4VA
The AI Literacy and Action Lab is partnering with AI4VA at UVA this summer in an engagement that extends the Lab's work beyond the classroom and into broader student communities. The collaboration will focus on supporting students as they build foundational AI skills, including the development of asynchronous learning resources and modules grounded in the AI literacy framework. Lab facilitators will also participate in co-hosted weekly office hours through the summer, providing students with ongoing human support as they navigate new tools and concepts. The partnership is in early planning stages and represents the Lab's first dedicated community upskilling engagement—complementing its course-based pilots with a more open, accessible pathway into AI literacy.
Fall 2026 course: “Thinking in the Age of AI: An AI Literacy Seminar”
Leo Lo, Dean of Libraries and University Librarian, Advisor to the Provost for AI Literacy and Professor of Education; co-instructors Bethany Mickel, Erich Purpur, and Erin Pappas.
Course description: AI can do your reading, start your writing, and finish your problem sets. Sometimes that saves you time. Sometimes it may cost you the learning you came here to get, and you can’t tell the difference in the moment. This course makes your own AI use the object of study. In the first week, you audit your actual AI history. By the end, you use AI to analyze what it found. You leave knowing when AI is helping you and when it might be replacing the thinking that builds your expertise.
Fall 2026 series: “AI Literacy Across the Disciplines”
AI Literacy is about knowing how to use AI in ways that encourage exploration, inspire creativity, and build knowledge. AI Literacy Across the Disciplines are 1-credit seminars that invite students to develop the capability to actively and thoughtfully use AI. Focusing on metacognition and how AI can advance genuine learning, students will explore AI as a tool for coding, as an instrument for making music, and as an interlocutor for interpreting texts and navigating archives.
Courses include:
- “Learning with AI in the Humanities: Reading and Writings with LLMs”
Professor Matthew Hedstrom, Departments of Religious Studies and American Studies Fridays at 10 a.m.
Course description: This course examines the possibilities and perils of reading and writing in collaboration with contemporary AI tools. Students develop practical AI literacy through discussion and project-based work that emphasizes ethics, social impact, and the implications of AI usage for intellectual development and the future of the humanities.
- “Learning with AI in the Sciences: Tools, Limits, and Opportunities”
Professor Paul Torrey, Department of Astronomy Wednesdays at 2 p.m.
Course description: Explores how artificial intelligence is impacting scientific discovery, workflows, and education. Students develop practical AI literacy through project-based work that emphasizes critical evaluation, responsible use, and limits of AI systems.
- “Yeou Agnt: Creative Composition, Agency, and the AI Corpus”
Professor Matthew Burtner, Department of Music Thursdays at 10:30 a.m.
Course description: In this class, students will learn to build original AI agents to serve as tools for exploring personal creative composition. The class will introduce AI tools for multimedia design and consider the input corpus as a canvas for creative exploration. Students will develop their own Yeou Agnt project, a unique corpus they create themselves. We will analyze the outputs to spark imagination and help us discover our own creative practices.
Work with the Lab
We review all submissions on a rolling basis and are committed to being in touch with everyone who expresses interest—whether for an immediate collaboration or a future one. Submit Your Lab Project now.
For more information, contact:
- Leo S. Lo, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries: leolo@virginia.edu
- Bill Ashby, Senior Associate Dean and Chief Operating Officer, Arts & Sciences: wla4f@virginia.edu
- Mira Waller, Associate University Librarian for Research and Learning Services: mpw3v@virginia.edu
More AI resources at UVA
- AI @ UVA: Information about responsible AI in research, education, and healthcare.
- AI4VA: Pairs Virginia small businesses, non-profits, and local public sector agencies with student teams to assist with AI strategy and implementation.
- “Q&A: In the age of AI, what is a library for?”: Interview with Leo S. Lo, UVA University Librarian and Dean of Libraries