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Help Evaluate an AI Career Coach for High School Students

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Express Interest in Participation

Study Overview

Leanlab is seeking 8-12 high school educators—particularly career coaches, counselors, and teachers of college and career readiness or advisory classes—to participate in a study evaluating an AI-powered career guidance tool.

Ideal participants have experience with career advising.

Participating educators will facilitate student use of Coach with their students over several weeks and provide feedback through surveys and focus groups.

Teachers will receive a $500 stipend upon completion of all research activities.

Product Description

Coach is an AI-powered career coach built by the nonprofit CareerVillage. Designed to scale career guidance for underserved students, Coach provides personalized support including career exploration, resume writing, mock interviews, step-by-step guidance toward career goals, and much more.

Co-designed with students, educators, career experts, and backed by research, Coach helps students build career confidence and take actionable next steps. Coach is free for individual students and has been used by over 65,000 learners across 30 partners worldwide.

Participant Responsibilities/ Research Activities

  • Facilitate student use of Coach (1-3 activities per week for several weeks)

  • Complete pre- and post-surveys (~15 min each)

  • Attend 1 virtual onboarding session

  • Participate in 1 end-of-study focus group (~60 min)

Assessment Required

  • Pre-Survey

  • Post-Survey

Agreements Required

  • Individual Contractor Agreements

  • Memorandum of Understanding

Ongoing Use/Cost

Coach is free for individual students.  School or district pricing can be found here: aicareercoach.org/pricing

Benefits

  • Co-design a FERPA compliant AI career guidance tool alongside researchers

  • Access free, 24/7 career coaching resources for your students

  • Actionable and insightful data on learners and their career journeys 

  • Contribute to research that will improve career support for underserved students nationwide

Compensation

  • $500 per educator upon completion of all research activities

Timeline

January-February 2026
 Recruitment and enrollment
March-June 2026 Implementation and data collection
Express Interest
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Evaluating AI Feedback in Writing Instruction

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Express Interest in Participation

Study Overview

This research partnership with Quill and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) develops standardized evaluation methods to compare AI-generated feedback against feedback from experienced educators. We're building benchmark datasets and evaluation protocols to measure how well AI systems perform in providing writing instruction feedback.

Product Description

Quill is an AI-powered writing platform that provides real-time feedback to students on their writing. Students will be completing three activities where they read an article and then complete a series of three sentence-level writing prompts. In each prompt, students build a sentence using evidence from the text.

Participant Responsibilities/ Research Activities

Schools: Provide 2-8 classrooms of 8th-9th grade students to complete 1-3 classroom activities (total of ~45 minutes per classroom). 

Teachers:

  • Attend a 30-60 min virtual onboarding session 

  • Use Quill with students (1-3 Quill activities)

  • Use Quill with 1-3 Class sections

Champions: (a school or district administrator) 

  • Coordinate with Leanlab staff around DSA and MOU completion.

  • Identify classrooms/teachers to participate 

Assessment Required

None

Agreements Required

  • Memorandum of Understanding

  • Data Sharing Agreement

  • Individual Contractor Agreements

  • Institutional Review Board

Ongoing Use/Cost

Quill.org is free for all students and teachers. Partners in the study will also receive free access to Quill Premium, which provides teachers with additional data reporting and professional development.

Benefits

  • Free, scalable writing feedback tool - Quill provides real-time AI-powered feedback to every student on their writing, addressing the gap between demand for quality feedback and teacher capacity

  • Improve student writing outcomes - Students receive immediate, actionable guidance to help them strengthen their writing skills across multiple disciplines

  • Data-driven insights - Schools gain visibility into student writing performance and progress trends

  • Contribute to AI education research - Help shape the future of AI writing tools by participating in research that improves feedback quality

  • Access to open-source protocols - Schools and educators will have access to the evaluation methods and datasets developed through this partnership, enabling broader adoption of AI writing tools

Compensation

  • Individual teacher stipend of $250

  • Individual Champion (admin) stipend of $500

  • School System unrestricted grant of $250 per participating teacher

Timeline

October - December 2025
 Recruitment and paperwork
January - March 2026 Cycle 1: Classrooms use Quill and provide data
April - June 2026
 Cycle 2: Classrooms use Quill and provide data
July - September 2026
 Cycle 3: Classrooms use Quill and provide data
Express Interest
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Evaluating AI Feedback in Writing Instruction - Annotators

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Express Interest in Participation

Study Overview

This research partnership with Quill and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) develops standardized evaluation methods to compare AI-generated feedback against feedback from experienced educators. We're building benchmark datasets and evaluation protocols to measure how well AI systems perform in providing writing instruction feedback.

Product Description

Quill is an AI-powered writing platform that provides real-time feedback to students on their writing. Students will be completing three activities where they read an article and then complete a series of three sentence-level writing prompts. In each prompt, students build a sentence using evidence from the text.

Participant Responsibilities/ Research Activities

As annotators, you will be asked to review and annotate student responses by writing 2–3 sentences of feedback on each. In this role, you’ll bring your expertise as an ELA teacher to help build a high-quality dataset that reflects authentic classroom feedback practices 

(~30 hours per teacher per evaluation cycle, $50/hr).

Annotators are NOT required to use Quill with their students or do work within school hours.

Assessment Required

None

Agreements Required

  • Individual Contractor Agreements

Ongoing Use/Cost

Quill.org is free for all students and teachers. Partners in the study will also receive free access to Quill Premium, which provides teachers with additional data reporting and professional development.

Benefits

  • Contribute to AI education research - Help shape the future of AI writing tools by participating in research that improves feedback quality

  • Access to open-source protocols - Schools and educators will have access to the evaluation methods and datasets developed through this partnership, enabling broader adoption of AI writing tools

Compensation

Teacher annotators: $50/hour (~30 hours per evaluation cycle). It is ideal if you can contribute to all 3 cycles but not required.

Timeline

October - December 2025
 Recruitment
January 2026 Onboarding
February - March 2026
 Cycle 1
April - June 2026
 Cycle 2
July - September 2026
 Cycle 3


Express Interest

Evaluating and Codesigning Generative AI-Powered Math Tutoring Solutions

Express Interest in Participation

Study Overview

Leanlab Education and NewSchools are partnering to study and support the development of promising generative AI math tutoring solutions built on specialized AI models fine-tuned for math instructional use cases. Leanlab is seeking K-12 school system evaluation partners.

Through a 2025-2026 research study, we aim to understand and address barriers to usage while catalyzing seven innovations that make high-quality, personalized math tutoring accessible to all students.

Study Details

This paid, year-long research opportunity is available to school systems that are excited to engage with emerging AI tools and support iterative development. Participating school systems will receive a $4,500 unrestricted grant.

Fall 2025

Five classroom teachers or tutors provide feedback on one genAI learning solution across several cycles of evaluation, engaging with the solution after each round of feedback is applied.

  • Mid-October through Mid-December

  • Includes usability testing, feedback cycles

  • NO classroom use 

  • ~15 hours of participation (at $50/hour)

  • $750 per teacher/tutor

Spring 2026

Ten classroom teachers or tutors provide feedback on one genAI learning solution, with a pre- and post-assessment (e.g., NWEA or i-Ready). Control groups of teachers who do not use the solution will participate in the assessments.

  • Mid-January 2026 Through April 2026 

  • Both treatment and control groups included

  • Treatment group will use solution in classroom/tutoring sessions

  • Control group will not use solution in classroom/tutoring sessions

  • Pilot with pre/post assessments

  • $1,500 per teacher/tutor

About Leanlab Education and NewSchools

Leanlab Education

Leanlab Education is a nonprofit organization specializing in codesign research with school communities. By coordinating collaboration between education communities and emerging education technologies while providing third- party research expertise, Leanlab ensure emerging innovations are evidence-based and designed in partnership with school communities.

NewSchools

NewSchools is a venture philanthropy that builds a better education system by connecting people, resources, and ideas. NewSchools supports early-stage organizations and new initiatives within existing organizations that work to improve outcomes for all students, particularly those furthest from opportunity.

System Requirements

  • Identify one school site (or more) for participation; 

  • Designate a point of contact to support coordination (Champion)

  • Support teacher onboarding and usage expectations

  • Provide de-identified data

  • Sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Data Sharing Agreement (DSA)

Agreements Required

  • Memorandum of Understanding

  • Data Sharing Agreement

  • Individual Contractor Agreements

Benefits

  • $4,500 school site grant

  • Teacher stipends starting at $750

  • Influence of tools

Apply to Participate

Questions? Contact Taylor Haun at taylorhaun@leanlabeducation.org.

Pre-Qualification Application

Help Develop an AI tool for Creating Interactive Video Lessons

Express Interest in Participation

Study Overview

Leanlab is seeking 6-8 educators from grades 6-12 to participate in a 6-8 week long study during April-June 2024 to help develop a new tool for creating interactive lessons using generative AI.

Participants must be able to:

  • use Kyron Studio (tool for creating interactive lessons using generative AI)

    • generate at least one lesson to use with students

  • provide written feedback on using the tool

  • collect feedback from students

  • participate in focus groups

Participating educators will be given a $500 stipend for their participation. All activities must be completed in order to receive full compensation.

Edtech Tool Description

The purpose of this tool is to empower educators to easily build interactive video lessons that feel like 1:1 tutoring. These lessons can be created anytime, anywhere, and in just minutes. Teachers start by dictating a lesson title, audience, and objective. Once the lesson is generated, they can edit any of the content - including modifying or replacing visuals to engage their learners - giving teachers control over the material and pedagogical approach. As students take the lesson, the AI assistant provides immediate and differentiated support to guide students towards conceptual understanding of the objectives.

Participant Requirements & Study Details

Eligibility

  • Grade Levels: 6-12

  • Subjects: ELA, Social Studies, Science

Participant Requirements

  • A school/district level MOU must be signed to participate (one per school)

  • Must be able to use the Kyron Studio tool to generate lessons for use with students

  • Make use of at least one lesson generated using Kyron Studio and use with students

  • Collect feedback from students on experience of Kyron Studio

  • Document and provide written feedback on the experience using Kyron Studio

  • Participate in 2-3 focus groups during April-June (to be scheduled)

Compensation

  • Participating educators will be given a $500 stipend for their participation. All activities must be completed in order to receive full compensation.

Timeline

Early-Mid April 
 Teacher recruitment
Paperwork and onboarding
April 15 - April 26
 Preparatory work
Implementation onboarding session
Teacher-only use of tool
May 13 - May 24
Generate lessons using Kyron Studio
Make use of lesson(s) with students
Late May - Mid June
 Participate in focus groups
Stipend distribution
Express interest in Participation