Frequently Asked Questions

What is Colleague AI?

Colleague AI is an Educational Platform where our AI assistants act as knowledgeable colleagues for educators and friendly buddies for learners. We develop technologies to foster dynamic, personalized, and collaborative educational experiences for everyone in school or after school.

Our research and development has been funded by prestigious federal awards from the Institute of Educational Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation. We bring cutting-edge, specialized AI technologies to improve work efficiency and student learning outcomes.

What is Colleague AI's background?

Colleague AI is a spin-off from the AmplifyLearn.AI Center at the University of Washington. The company originated as a research project developing algorithms and models to identify high-quality math and science lesson materials, funded by the National Science Foundation. We spun off from the university in June 2024 while maintaining a close partnership for ongoing research and evaluation of our product features’ impact on teacher efficiency and student learning outcomes.

How does Colleague AI differ from competitors?

Colleague AI isn’t just another chatbot; we’re designed to make a real difference in education:

Specialized, Cutting-Edge AI Technologies: Our technologies are purposefully designed for K-12 education, backed by rigorous research and validated by federal agencies, educational scholars, and AI experts.
Positive Impact on Student Learning: We integrate proven teaching theories with cutting-edge AI research and conduct comprehensive studies to evaluate our impact on teacher effectiveness and student achievement.
All-In-One EdTech Solution: We offer comprehensive solutions for teaching, learning, and school management in one unified platform, helping educators streamline workflows while improving institution-wide efficiency.
Designed With and For Educators: Colleague AI is built from the ground up with educators, students, school leaders, and parents at its heart through our innovative co-design framework.
Robust Training and Support: We provide comprehensive implementation support through various training options, customized professional development, and a vibrant online community of educators.

What is your stance on AI's environmental impact?

Please read Dr. Sun’s reflection on sustainable innovation in EdTech.

How do you protect student privacy?

We prioritize student and educator safety by complying with FERPA, COPPA, GDPR, and SOC 2 standards. Our Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, disclose, share, or process personally identifiable information.

Beyond basic compliance, our team of national leading researchers in GenAI brings unique expertise in ethical data science and responsible AI use. We embed best practices in our product development process and offer training materials on this topic to teachers, students, and school administrators.

We also sign data privacy agreements with schools and districts.

What AI models do you use?

We’re not tied to any single foundational AI model. Instead, we serve as an integrator of various models into one coherent platform. We regularly track and evaluate model performance to identify the most effective options for specific tasks like lesson planning, grading, podcast generation, and image creation.

Unlike simple wrappers, we add another layer on top of foundational models to embed effective teaching and learning knowledge into our platform. We also develop our own algorithms and models for quality measures of lesson materials, nudging and gamification, and student engagement level assessment, leveraging our partnership with a National R&D center in GenAI at UW.

How do you address bias, inaccuracy, and hallucination in AI?

We actively work to address potential issues through multiple strategies:

At the model development stage, we employ diverse educators to label training data and provide feedback on accuracy and usefulness across various tasks. We use this human feedback to fine-tune our models.
For AI usage, we develop training materials to guide educators in responsible AI use and critical consumption of AI-generated content. We help them pass this knowledge on to their students, emphasizing that educators remain in the driver’s seat when partnering with AI.

I'm using the Rubric Generation feature. How should I understand the rating scales provided by Colleague AI?

You can refer to the comprehensive guide of Understanding Rubric Rating Scales on Rubric Generation Function.

How will we be notified about new features?

The best way is to have an account on Colleague AI. We send information about new features through our weekly newsletter to current account users. You can also follow us on social media (LinkedIn, X, Facebook) for feature announcements.

Who can I contact for technical questions?

Current platform users can reach out within the platform using the “Share Feedback” button on the left sidebar.
Enterprise users can contact their district IT staff who will coordinate with our technical team.

How can I book a demo?

You can email info@colleague.ai or use our website’s Book a Demo link.

How do you support educators in adopting your tool and building AI competency?

We offer multiple support strategies:

Free Introduction Sessions: We provide 1-2 hour synchronous sessions to introduce Colleague AI to your faculty and school leaders. We typically recommend educators use the platform for a few months before introducing it to students, allowing them to develop sufficient AI capacity.
Free Webinars: We offer high-quality, free monthly synchronous webinars.
Built-in Guidance: Our platform incorporates unique algorithms and models that nudge teachers and guide their AI skill development.
AI Competency Badging: In collaboration with the AmplifyLearn.AI center at the University of Washington, we’re developing an Educator AI Competency badging system, with opportunities for UW-granted certification.
Self-Learning Materials: You can set up internal asynchronous learning using our webinar slides, video recordings, and video library available on our website.

What levels of technology integration does Colleague AI offer?

We offer three levels of integration depending on your licensing level:

Level 1: Single Sign-On (SSO)

We support Classlink, Clever, and will soon offer Google/Microsoft single sign-on.

Level 2: Rostering Services

For Enterprise users who need to roster students, teachers, and course information.
Supported via Classlink and Clever.
Custom code options available to directly pull information from your school/district’s Student Information System (additional costs apply).

Level 3: Content and Data Integration via LTI

Enterprise users can set up integration to pull and push information/files to SIS and LMS platforms (Google Classroom, Microsoft OneDrive, Schoology, Canvas, etc.).

We also offer a free Web extension (Chrome and Edge) to support users integrating Colleague AI on most websites where they conduct their work.

Do you plan to allow organizations to develop custom AI assistants?

See Dr. Sun’s comment on context-aware assistants.

Frequently Asked Questions

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