About
Redefining what students need to learn — and proving what works
AI changes what matters in education. But education's goals were set before AI existed, and updating them takes years. Impact-Edu.ai builds the open research, open assessments, and open tools to help the field identify new priorities and produce evidence fast.
The gap
Are we teaching the most important things?
Education's standards were designed before AI existed. The Common Core has no sense of priority — no way to say which objectives matter most. Adding new standards takes years. There is no rapid mechanism for asking: what do students need to learn now that AI can do much of what we currently teach?
Meanwhile, AI tools are being adopted faster than anyone can study their effects. Vendors make claims nobody can verify. Assessment items are locked behind proprietary licenses. The field is flying blind — on both what to teach and how to measure it.
The field needs:
- —New learning priorities — identifying what students actually need to know in an AI age, not just what we've always taught
- —Open assessments and data — items, psychometric data, and research datasets published openly, not locked behind vendor agreements
- —Research at the speed of AI — open tools for rapid evidence production: adaptive tests, AI interviews, synthetic student simulation
- —Practitioner support — so educators can make evidence-based decisions about AI, not fear-based ones
Our approach
High velocity, rigorous evidence
Impact-Edu.ai is grounded in decades of learning science research — particularly the work of Carnegie Mellon's LearnLab and the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. We bring this research tradition into the current AI moment with the speed and execution capacity of a technology organization.
We don't just study AI in education — we build the tools that make studying it possible. Adaptive assessments. AI-powered qualitative interviews. Synthetic student simulation for instant psychometric feedback. Open item banks and evaluation frameworks.
Our work already reaches 15 million students across the US and India through partnerships with Savvas Learning (US distribution) and Indian state governments (SmartPaper deployments in Rajasthan).
Structure
A program of Wisdom Frontiers
Impact-Edu.ai operates as a program of Wisdom Frontiers, a California nonprofit corporation. Independent board oversight governs all program decisions. All work products are published openly — open access, open source, Creative Commons.
Relationship to Play Power Labs
Impact-Edu.ai's Program Director is also a principal of Play Power Labs, a for-profit company that develops commercial AI-powered educational products. This relationship is disclosed, governed by Wisdom Frontiers' Conflict of Interest Policy, and managed with arm's-length transactions and recusal procedures.
Distinct missions: Play Power Labs builds commercial products. Impact-Edu.ai produces public goods — open research, open tools, free training — that benefit the entire field.
Leadership
Team
Derek Lomas, PhD
Program Director
PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University under Ken Koedinger, one of the founders of the intelligent tutoring systems field. Former Assistant Professor at TU Delft. 75+ publications spanning learning science, game design, and AI-powered education. Research has involved 70,000+ experimental subjects. Tools have reached 15 million students across the US and India.
Advisory Board
Impact-Edu.ai is convening an advisory board of leading researchers, practitioners, and policy experts. Details forthcoming.