Collaborative AI to Bring Active Learning to Every Classroom
Unlock Deep Connection and Learn Better Together.
Simple setup,
big results
- Frictionless, one-time classroom setup that works every session
- Seamless integration with any lecture style, content, or approach
- Built for where education is going, not where it's been
In-class insights and engagement tools
- Live captions and key topics, surfaced by AI as you teach
- AI-native polls drafted from your lecture, answered in students' own words
- Fine-grained data and insights for instructors and institutions
After-class takeaways to create better outcomes
- Collaborative study guide extends social engagement beyond the classroom
- Analytics to fine-tune lessons and teaching approach
- Measurable engagement without the overhead
Realtime connection in the classroom
Students stay connected to the lecture, and to each other, through realtime topics, shared questions, and collective signals that make every class feel like active learning.
Realtime visibility into student comprehension gives instructors the feedback they've never had — and gives institutions the engagement data they need to improve outcomes at scale.
The AI listens, organizes what it hears, and hands the room back to you. The teaching stays yours, and the thinking stays theirs.
Why is it necessary to simplify instructions?
All models are wrong, but some are useful — the first mathematical, the second graphical, the third intuitive.
Each captures something the others miss; together they let us reason about complex systems.
Knowing when each model applies — and when it stops being useful — is most of the work.
Live poll In your own words, why does a combustion equation have to balance?
What breaks if you change a subscript instead of a coefficient?
In your own words, why does a combustion equation have to balance?
Your response is anonymous. Hang tight while the rest of the class answers.
In your own words, why does a combustion equation have to balance?
Why does a combustion equation have to balance?
Polls written in the moment, with zero prep
Colaj listens to your lecture and drafts poll questions from what you just said. Send one in a tap — no slide prep, no question bank, no breaking your stride.
Students answer in their own words, not by picking A, B, or C. Colaj clusters those answers into comprehension bands and surfaces the misconception hiding inside them — so you know what to re-teach before you move on.
What was actually discovered during those 2,000 years of alchemy?
Every class becomes study material
The class ends. But the conversation doesn't have to. Colaj automatically generates a study guide from each session: a structured synthesis of what was covered, the questions that came up, and the key concepts worth revisiting.
For the instructor, it hands them a ready-made bridge into the next class. Open with what confused people last time. Build on what landed. The learning cycle isn't a series of isolated sessions. Colaj helps make it feel like one continuous conversation.
Every session adds to the picture
The instructor dashboard turns each class into a trend line. Participation, questions, confusion, and likes — session over session, in plain language rather than a wall of charts.
These are the signals learning science points to as leading indicators of how a class is going, so you can act on a trend rather than a hunch.
19
questions students asked you last session
↑ 5 more than your usual session
3
students flagged something as confusing
↓ 3 fewer than your usual session
28
likes on the ideas you covered
↑ 8 more than your usual session
42 of the 46 students in the room last session did something — asked, liked, or flagged confusion. Every point on the line is one session.
None of this is new pedagogy — the overhead is what we removed
Active learning, retrieval practice, and formative assessment are among the most studied ideas in education. In a review of 225 studies, students in traditional lectures were 1.5× more likely to fail than those in active-learning sections. What keeps those methods out of most classes is the cost of preparing and running them.
Freeman et al., 2014
Captions are a learning aid
Across 2,100 students at 15 universities, 75% used captions as a learning aid — only 13% were registered with disability services. A review of more than 100 studies found captions benefit comprehension and memory, not only for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.
Linder, Oregon State, 2016 · Gernsbacher, 2015
Anonymity changes who speaks
Given an anonymous channel, participation jumped to nearly the whole room and answers got more honest. In large intro biology, men’s voices dominated whole-class discussion even where women performed equally.
Stowell & Nelson, 2007 · Eddy, Brownell & Wenderoth, 2014
Writing the question is the learning
Generating your own question is constructive rather than passive — a full level above listening. Across 26 studies, teaching students to generate questions reliably improved comprehension.
Chi & Wylie, 2014 · Rosenshine, Meister & Chapman, 1996
Checking while you can still act
Formative assessment — checking understanding during instruction and adjusting to it — is among the most robust interventions studied. Across ten years of data, pausing to check conceptual understanding and respond roughly doubled learning gains in physics.
Black & Wiliam, 1998 · Crouch & Mazur, 2001
Answering beats re-reading
Being tested on material beats studying it again — a week later, tested students retain far more. Of ten study techniques reviewed, only practice testing and spaced practice earned the top rating. Colaj automates both, with zero authoring.
Roediger & Karpicke, 2006 · Dunlosky et al., 2013
Belonging and structure close gaps
A one-hour intervention showing students that worries about fitting in are normal and shared raised GPA over three years and halved the minority achievement gap. Adding regular low-stakes engagement helped everyone, and roughly halved the achievement gap for Black students.
Walton & Cohen, 2011 · Eddy & Hogan, 2014
Colaj is engineered around these mechanisms, and we're piloting now with instructors and universities to show the links hold in their classrooms.
Built for innovative educators
Students deserve to feel connected to what they're learning. Colaj puts AI in service of that connection: the instructor still teaches, the student still thinks, and Colaj carries everything in between. It lowers the barrier to speaking up, so every voice in the room can reach the front of it.
Colaj was launched by SOSO, an MIT-founded design studio with 20 years of experience creating connection and engagement through digital experience.
