ELEVATE

Awardees: Jessica Ball (HGSE) and Ralph Johnson Jr (HBS)

Summary: ELEVATE seeks to create an online learning platform that leverages adaptive teaching to scale effective, personalized professional development in large, urban districts. Our team’s hunch is that if we want teachers to create rigorous classrooms, they must first have a deep understanding of the content and have opportunities to practice their understanding of the content before they teach students. The problem, however, is that there are not enough hours in the day for teachers to deepen their personal knowledge base and prepare to lead students through the content. Thus, our team seeks to create an online learning platform that uses adaptive technology to accelerate and deepen teacher’s personal knowledge so that they may offer rigorous lessons to students.