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
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| January - March 2026 | Cycle 1: Classrooms use Quill and provide data |
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| April - June 2026 |
Cycle 2: Classrooms use Quill and provide data| July - September 2026 |
Cycle 3: Classrooms use Quill and provide data | |