Prosocial Possibilities:
Building tech that builds students’ connections

Julia Freeland Fisher

Julia Freeland Fisher

Anna Arsenault

Anna Arsenault

Prosocial design could be the next frontier of edtech.

For much more in-depth content, outcomes, and insights, download the full report.

Download the Prosocial Possibilities Report

Read the highlights

A Critical Moment

In education and in careers, relationships drive how students get by and get ahead. That’s always been true. 

But in the age of AI, those connections could disappear—or never form in the first place. 

AI poses fundamental risks to how students form relationships:

  • Short term, AI risks replacing the real people in students’ lives—advisors, peers, mentors—with on-demand chatbot help
  • Medium term, AI risks eroding students’ comfort with and practice asking other people for help by offering a frictionless alternative
  • Long term, AI risks shrinking the networks of acquaintances and contacts students rely on to find opportunities, as students have fewer help-seeking conversations with loved ones and strangers alike

The Opportunity

The Opportunity

Within the current market dynamics that prize efficiency over connection, edtech could aid the demise of the very social capital that’s critical to students.

But what if we flipped that script and built AI-enabled edtech tools that are prosocial by design? We explored that question with 10 edtech platforms in the college & career guidance space.

What is Prosocial Tech?

What is Prosocial Tech?

Prosocial designs put tech in service of human connection, not in place of it. Prosocial tools make it easier to find, reach, and rely on others. They can draw students toward connections that help them accomplish their goals and build the networks they need to get the jobs they want.

Discovering what’s possible

Discovering What’s Possible

Researchers Julia Freeland Fisher, director of education research, and Anna Arsenault, education research consultant, set out to pilot prosocial designs with 10 college and career guidance platforms, spanning K–12 through the workforce. 

These pilots weren’t just about curbing unhealthy dependence on tech; they were about building products that help users cultivate the relationships they need to accomplish their goals.

They’re showing a path toward using AI not just as a student self-help machine but as a human-help multiplier.

And they’re showing what’s possible when we build—and demand—tech that makes students more connected, not less.

5 Musts for EdTech’s Prosocial Future

5 Musts for EdTech’s Prosocial Future

What do these 10 pilots tell us about the future of prosocial navigation technology?

We need tools that support outreach without scripting it. Prosocial edtech tools will need to evaluate how to engineer social support without atrophying social skills. 

Many students had people they could turn to like family, teachers, mentors. Fewer students knew exactly what to ask those people for or how to ask. There was a gap between “I have people who support me” and “I know what to ask them for to move forward. … Specific prompts (e.g., “ask X for Y”) are more doable.

Tiffany, Uprooted Academy

Expanding opportunities and leveling the playing field will require breakthroughs in tech that scale brokering (support warm introductions and access to community), not just skill-building. 

The depth of anxiety around cold outreach, even among confident, proactive students, validated the hypothesis that reducing the friction of professional networking is a significant unmet need for students.

Ryan, Overgrad

Prosocial AI will yield the best results inside of relationship-rich environments (where students are repeatedly exposed to the power of social capital and can put online practice and resources to use in the real world)—not in place of them.

There is a significant difference in built-in networking opportunities based on the type of school a student attends. Students from [one school] mentioned that completing an internship every year is a required part of their curriculum from 6th through 12th grade, and they are expected to be entirely independent in finding them, which provides motivation. Students from another school relied on an optional program, which operates within the community and is offered at their school, for networking and college preparation.

George, Viacela

Relationship data reveals crucial relationship opportunities—and misses. It can reveal existing assets, but also gaps in students’ mental models of who can help and how. 

Alumni and near-peer relationships are among the highest-leverage connection types for college access and career development, yet they are nearly invisible in students’ current mental maps. This points to a clear and addressable gap.

Julia, ESAI

Innovators can spur collective R&D that overcomes prosocial market failures and gaps. 

Without prosocial design, economic gaps will widen, and many will be left behind, especially in the era of AI where there are major labor market shifts and career navigation is a key life skill to get ahead. If you don’t know how to build and leverage professional relationships, you will be left behind.

Dominique Levin, Climb Together 

The Pilots

The Pilots

These designs were grounded in empirical research on social capital development and tested with student feedback. 

The goal of these prosocial features was to use online tools to support offline, authentic connection.

Prosocial AI’s job isn’t to send the text. It’s to help a student see they’re already surrounded by people worth texting.

Julia, ESAI

Our cohort of 10 edtech providers received training from our team across 6 evidence-based design principles on how young people form networks:

Circular graphic. In the center: "Whether it's working: Generate relationship data". In five sections around the center: Who students are: Align to identities & goals. Who else is out there: Broker new connections. Who they can turn to: Deepen support networks. How to reach out: Build networking skills and confidence. What they believe: Cultivate pro-social mindsets.

From there, each platform designed a new feature or functionality to support their users’ access to networks, ability to build and mobilize networks, or both. Then, they conducted rapid-cycle pilots with small cohorts of student users to understand what was working and what needed further development. 

  • Align to identities & goals
  • Build networking skills & confidence
  • Generate relationship data

Roadtrip Nation is a digital platform with videos featuring professionals describing their career journeys. As part of their new virtual roadtrip career exploration and planning tool, the Roadtrip Nation team piloted a career conversations tool that taught students about the importance of networking and provided an AI simulation for students to practice setting up and conducting a career conversation with a professional. 

6.7%

point increase in students’ self-reported confidence booking a career conversation after using the career conversations practice tool.

I learned that it’s not easy talking to someone from a certain field you’re interested in. But once you get used to it, you can be braver in your interviews.

Student from Roadtrip Nation pilot

  • Align to identities & goals
  • Deepen support networks
  • Generate relationship data

ESAI is a platform that supports students navigating the college admissions process by providing a roadmap and AI-enabled tools that help with each task. The ESAI team piloted a network-mapping feature within its existing Activity Planner tool, prompting students to identify “people in their corner” who could support their extracurricular interests and activities. 

10%

of students identified their counselor as the person in their corner.

  • Align to identities & goals
  • Broker new connections
  • Generate relationship data

Viacela is an advising platform that helps high school students explore their purpose and identify the “sparks” that interest and motivate them. The Viacela team piloted a “constellation” feature alongside a mentor directory that would allow students to reach out to and build relationships with mentors aligned to those sparks. 

33%

of students utilized the “Spark” feature.

It’s hard to start a new conversation with someone, but having an easy way to ask a question when something comes up helps.

Student from Viacela pilot

  • Deepen support networks
  • Generate relationship data

Uprooted Academy is an AI-powered college access platform designed to support first-gen college students’ wellbeing and college application journey. The Uprooted team piloted an outreach function to nudge students to identify and reach out to their support network, as well as a new data feature to ask the members of students’ support networks to identify their ‘superpowers’—i.e., the areas they think they can be especially helpful to students’ postsecondary success. 

100%

of the members of students’ support networks added their superpowers within 48 hours of receiving the text prompt.

  • Broker new connections
  • Generate relationship data

Overgrad is a college and career planning platform designed to support students through college into early career. The Overgrad team piloted an alumni directory feature designed to help schools keep track of their alumni and for current students to connect with recent alumni attending colleges or working in the industries they’re interested in. 

75%

of students reported preferring the counselor-brokered introduction model over cold outreach on LinkedIn or email.

LinkedIn sucks. Nobody actually wants to meet anybody there.

Student from Overgrad pilot

  • Build networking skills & confidence
  • Generate relationship data

Climb Together is a platform that teaches students and job seekers how to develop professional networks. The Climb Together team piloted an AI-powered voice-enabled career chat coaching tool called Goldi in different contexts to test what circumstances drove confidence and networking behaviors: (1) after sharing career stories and practicing career conversations with peers, (2) through a career-readiness program with a real-life human cohort, and (3) embedded in interview preparation programming. 

48%

of students who practiced with their peers had more confidence in connections as a job search strategy.

On Valentine’s Day, a woman complimented my jacket. Normally, I might have just said thanks, but Goldi had given me the confidence to keep the conversation going. It turned out she was a retired professor whose mentor was an anthropologist, which is exactly what I’m studying. In the weeks following, she’s loaned me some books and became my mentor for the year.

Student from Climb Together pilot

  • Broker new connections
  • Generate relationship data

InScribe is a digital community that helps institutions scale student support and build belonging to drive persistence. The InScribe team piloted a new feature called InCircle, designed to allow students to connect and follow one another’s posts on the platform, building their own networks within the broader online community. They piloted the new feature at two colleges. 

22.9%

point difference between institutional belonging (85.4%) and feeling directly connected to peers (62.5%), highlighting the need for features that strengthen peer connectedness.

  • Build networking skills & confidence
  • Generate relationship data

FutureFit AI is a career navigation and workforce platform for job seekers. The FutureFit team piloted SideBar, an AI networking coach designed to help job seekers build the confidence to activate their networks. 

90%

of users completed the primary task of reflecting on their network and reached the “outreach message” stage.

Working with this agent felt nearly stress-free compared to having a talk with an in-person mentor. I have not had a real career counselor before, but I do have a non-work-related mentor, and sometimes conversations like this would cause me anxiety in everyday life.

Student from FutureFit AI pilot

  • Align to identities & goals
  • Build networking skills & confidence
  • Generate relationship data

REACH Pathways is a platform that helps high school and college students explore careers, build real-world skills, and access internships. The REACH team piloted a social capital “quest” in which users learned the ins and outs of social capital through videos featuring other young people, mapped their own networks, and planned ways to reach out to their network. 

92%

of participants reported increased confidence reaching out to someone in their network for support or advice.

Something that surprised me was remembering connections in higher positions at their companies, with whom I only interacted once or twice.

Student from REACH Pathways pilot

  • Generate relationship data

iCouldBe is an online mentoring program that provides students with “quests” to prepare for academic and career success. The iCouldBe team conducted an original analysis of relationship data collected through the platform’s “Connections Map” feature, cross-referenced with student survey data on social capital development, networking skills, and confidence. 

48%

of the students identified that the type of support their connections provided was around academic and/or career help and advice.

For much more in-depth content, outcomes, and insights, download the full report.

Download the Prosocial Possibilities Report