04-20-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

Bring research and evidence into classroom products

K-12 education can benefit from AI’s synthesis of research and curriculum standards.

[Photo: Getty Images]

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of top leaders and experts who pay dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership, and more.

BY Auditi Chakravarty

How do you build products that work? We have decades of accumulated science of learning research, but it can be hard to get that research into the hands of classroom teachers.

I met with Sandra Liu Huang, Learning Commons’ president, to discuss building the infrastructure to bring learning science into product development and empower educators with better tools. We talked about making research more usable for developers and educators, why shared infrastructure matters, and how we can ensure learning science actually reaches classrooms.

Auditi: Something I have long been fascinated by is the gap between established learning science and what reaches teachers and students through classroom products. What are the biggest challenges in translating research into classroom tools?

Sandra: Let me start with the positive. We actually know a great deal about how learning happens—about the conditions needed for optimal learning and the instructional strategies that work best. The challenge is translating research into tools and materials teachers can use every day. Much of the research lives in journals and is often incremental, meaning you have to synthesize findings across decades of studies.

So we’re asking teachers to do the impossible: continuously review academic literature and determine how to integrate it into their lesson plans, while tailoring those lesson plans in real........

© Fast Company