New! Education AI Fellowship Opportunity

Application Priority Deadline is May 24th, 2024. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Young people learn in and outside of school. Teaching Lab cares about supporting student learning, anytime, anywhere. This particular Education AI Fellowship focuses on the learning young people engage in beyond school. 

We know that if you engage a person in cognitive work, they learn. So the seemingly unsolvable problem of insufficient learning in K-12 is really about insufficient cognitive engagement. We want to know — setting aside classrooms and schools for the moment — can new developments in AI enable a whole new way of attacking that problem? To this end, we seek an  extraordinary entrepreneur to explore the application of AI in driving student learning in a beyond-school context. A focus on the “beyond-school” context recognizes that schooling is not always the same as learning and includes any time that young people are learning outside of school. 

What is Teaching Lab Studio?

Teaching Lab Studio is the AI R&D department of Teaching Lab, a leading provider of educator coaching and professional learning across the U.S. We created the Studio to incubate high-impact ideas made possible by the dramatic progress in generative AI. We believe that AI-enabled supports and tools can unlock the potential of both educators and learners in ways that haven't been imagined, especially for those furthest from opportunity.

Why We Exist

Many of the AI tools introduced in the last several months produce low-quality resources, ignore learning science, or fail to understand the learning environment in and out-of-school. Furthermore, many funders don’t provide innovators with the guidance and wrap-around support to find out what really works. We solve the problem by strategically supporting innovators. This way, you can create usable tools that improve instructional coherence and employ what we know about what works in teaching and learning. 

What We Provide

  • Funding: Initial support (up to $1M) for up to 12 months of applied R&D, with potential for extensions and follow-on funding. Resources will enable the Fellow to focus on team formation, building, experimenting, and learning.

  • Expertise in learning science: Leverage Teaching Lab’s deep understanding of learning science and student engagement to accelerate prototyping and launch.

  • Strategic planning: Get world-class expert advice in areas of pedagogy, product design, machine learning, education policy and research, go-to-market strategy, fundraising, and more.

  • Team bonding and idea-sharing: In-person retreats that bring together Teaching Lab staff for innovation cross-pollination.

What You’ll Do

As a Fellow, you’ll design experiments to determine what innovative UX + AI features increase student engagement and learning in a beyond-school context.

Examples of your activities include:

  • Recruit the talent you need to pursue our thesis;

  • Identify the needs, preferences, and pain points of students via research, interviews, or observations;

  • Engage in ideation, resulting in several well-formed hypotheses around improving student engagement;

  • Design experiments to gather user feedback and measure learning;

  • Oversee the development of one or more product prototypes;

  • Test your prototype with students including other end-users you identify;

  • Continuously iterate your prototype based on the feedback you collect during your experiments;

  • Unlock follow-on capital based on your progress; and

  • Most importantly, gather learnings that will inform future hypotheses and the roadmap of your prototype(s).

Who You Are

  • You bring many ideas to improve student engagement and learning;

  • You have a strong interest in AI and the literature on learning science;

  • You’re a self-starter with a track record of driving change;

  • You’re excited to learn from testing and can iterate quickly.

If the above sounds like you, we strongly encourage you to apply. Teaching Lab is an equal-opportunity employer committed to reflecting the diversity of the students we serve. We pursue equity as both a means and an end and enthusiastically welcome candidates of all backgrounds to apply for this role. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.  Applicants must reside in the continental United States.

Commitment

Work is remote with an expectation of several week-long in-person retreats throughout the Fellowship to allow for innovation cross-pollination with team members.

Salary

The salary range for a Fellow is $125,000-$222,351. Teaching Lab offers a comprehensive benefits package for fellows, including: 100% organizational contribution for employee costs and 50% organizational contribution for dependent (spouse and children under 26) costs for the Teaching Lab reference medical, dental, and vision plans; flexible health spending accounts; generous time off, and additional perks.

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact Yefei Jin at yefei.jin@teachinglab.org

FAQ

  • Yes. The most compelling candidates should bring interesting perspectives around our thesis and the skills to experiment quickly to uncover insights and drive a technical direction. Prior experience in recruiting and leading a technical team is a plus.

  • After you submit your online application, we will reach out to candidates of interest with an initial phone screening. Afterwards, we will do interviews over Zoom. Based on these interviews, we will send instructions for an asynchronous task. If we choose to continue after reviewing your task submission, the last step are in-person interviews with our broader team.

  • May 24th, 2024.

  • We expect the entire process to take 4-6 weeks depending on the applicant pool.

  • We expect 8-12 months depending on your progress.

  • Depending on your progress and funding available, we may extend your contract or explore the possibility of spinning out the work into a separate venture. In the latter, you may have the opportunity to lead the venture and fundraise independently.