Coursemojo
Disclaimer: Instruction Partners supported several school systems using Coursemojo in their middle schools during the 2024–25 and 2025–26 school years. We supported both the core curriculum implementation and Coursemojo use. A combination of grant funding and school system paid contracts funded the work; Instruction Partners did not receive any money or other compensation from the product company. To ensure the integrity of the information shared as part of the AI in Action Learning Tour, all user interviews were conducted and the profile below was written by staff who have not supported Coursemojo schools and no interviewees were from school systems that received our implementation support.
Coursemojo is an ELA tool that supports Tier 1 instruction, within a school system’s high-quality instructional materials. It helps students work through the most challenging part of each lesson and gives teachers a live picture of what their students understand and where they are stuck.
What it looks like in action
What the students do:
Students talk through a question from the lesson, often in pairs or small groups, then each student types their own response into Coursemojo. The tool gives feedback, and students revise and resubmit, getting up to three rounds of feedback to strengthen their answer before moving on. Students can also ask Coursemojo a question or use the embedded dictionary to look up what a word means. Students use accommodations enabled for them by the teacher: read-aloud text, use of voice-to-text, language translation, or adjusting the display for easier reading. At the end of the lesson, students independently complete the “target task” to give teachers a clear view of student performance on the core objectives of the lesson.
What the AI does:
Coursemojo works inside the assignments from a school's ELA curriculum, specifically the most challenging 20–25 minute part of most lessons. When a student submits a response, the AI evaluates it against question-specific rubric criteria, determining whether the answer meets all, some, or none of them, and returns feedback matched to that result. The rubrics and feedback are written in advance by Coursemojo's content team and built around the curriculum's specific texts and questions, so students get guidance tied to the text in front of them rather than generic AI responses. The AI also works to diagnose the likely student misconception based on an ELA-specific list of common misconceptions (tied to both ELA standards and dimensions of text complexity) to generate the feedback that points the students back to the text or in the right direction (e.g. defining an academic term that they may not understand, redirecting them to a part of the question that they did not address, prompting them to chunk a complex sentence for meaning). Based on that misconception, the AI asks a follow-up question to push a student's thinking further, often directing the student back to a specific portion of text to re-read and dig deeper. After 12–15 minutes of partner work, when prompted by the teacher, Coursemojo analyzes all the student work in real time to surface the two most common misconceptions across the class and suggests two full-class discussion questions for the teacher (one based on each misconception). Coursemojo also tracks each student's engagement in real time.
What the teacher does:
The teacher teaches the opening of the lesson as written in the curriculum, then launches Coursemojo when they reach the “hardest-thinking” part of the lesson. During that time, the teacher uses the dashboard to conference with students who the tool flags as disengaged or struggling. Read-aloud and voice-to-text are teacher-controlled and are only for students who should receive those accommodations. The teacher can pause individual work time to address misconceptions surfaced by the AI. The teacher can override any score the AI gives, choose which suggested discussion questions to use, and review the dashboard data after class to decide what to reteach (Mojo provides a suggested Do Now for the next day).
What the leaders do:
Leaders adopt Coursemojo and set the scope of its use across a school or school system, tying it to the curriculum the system already uses and setting expectations for how often teachers use it. Leaders can access dashboard data to see how students are progressing across classrooms and grades, identify where students are struggling, and target coaching and professional learning around implementation.
Reach
~63,000
Students
1050
Teachers
470
Schools
77
School systems
Use
Recommended use
Embedded in ELA instruction, approximately two to three times per week, ~25 minutes per session with 12–15 minutes in pairs or small groups, followed by five to eight minutes of class discussion based on the misconceptions, and eight minutes on an individual exit ticket.
Actual use
Approximately one or two days per week, on roughly half the weeks of the year, averaging 42 activities total (about one per day of use)
Note: The impact data Coursemojo has is tied to use: approximately twice a week, 25 minutes each session. The independent studies found the effect depended on frequency: students using Coursemojo two and a half or more days per week (on the weeks it was used) outperformed their peers; less frequent use showed little or no benefit.
Product dimensions
Subject
ELA
Grade span
3–10
Curriculum alignment
Curriculum-embedded: Coursemojo embeds within a school system’s specific curriculum, reflecting its actual texts, questions, and scope and sequence. It is aligned to several high-quality ELA instructional materials: Amplify ELA and CKLA, EL Education, ELA Guidebooks, Fishtank ELA, HMH Into Literature, myPerspectives, Novel ELA, Study Sync, and Wit & Wisdom/Arts & Letters.
Design scope
Specific instructional job
The way AI interacts with students
- Both students and AI asks questions
- Rubric-scored or written feedback (beyond right/wrong)
- AI gives feedback directly to students
Teacher guidance
Nudges specific teacher actions (e.g., dashboard prompts during use)
Social vs. solo use
Mixed (platform)—some uses social, some solo
Teacher override
Teacher can override the AI scoring
Product adoption
System partnership (districts or organizations buy and deploy across classrooms)
Dashboard scope
Teacher and leader dashboards available
Dosage recommendations
Provides dosage recommendations
Users' take on wins and limitations
There are clear trends in what users (i.e., teachers, students, instructional leaders) see as the wins and limitations of each product. For each trend below, we've included one illustrative quote from our user interviews.
Wins
Coursemojo won't accept a surface-level response and move on. It guides students as they respond, pointing them back to the text and giving more support each round, so students work toward showing their thinking, not just their answer.
"Coursemojo doesn’t let you give an answer and be done—right or wrong. It really has three rounds of feedback. It might be something like, ‘use your own words’ or ‘go back and read paragraph nine.’ And then it might give a more targeted question or a sentence stem. It scaffolds to get them there."
— District Literacy Leader
Coursemojo will read the text and questions aloud, take a spoken answer, and replay a passage as many times as a student wants (as long as these accommodations are allowed for that student), so students who need more support complete the same assignment rather than an easier or different one.
"There's individualized assistance for each child. No matter what, if they have an IEP or if they are on or above grade level. If you are not able to type, you can talk into the computer, and it will type it for you. Or if you're not a fluent reader, it will read it for you, and then you can always go back and listen to it multiple times. Every student can still show what they understood about the text."
— Teacher, 6th Grade ELA
Coursemojo checks whether a response was copied from the text, pasted from a search, or written in language above what the student usually produces, and sends it back asking for the student's own words.
"I had some kids that were using another AI to answer the AI….Now they have the feature where it will flag me if it [student response] has been copied and pasted. And if it sounds too advanced, like on a collegiate level, it'll flag them as well so I can hold students accountable for doing the thinking work.”
— Teacher, 5th Grade ELA
Limitations
When Coursemojo marks an answer incomplete, it does not always name what is missing or name it in a way that students understand. Sometimes, students who believe they answered fully do not know what to change, so the teacher has to read the exchange and decide for themselves.
"Students would get frustrated if they did something and then Mojo gave them feedback and marked it incomplete without saying how to fix it, even after they’ve restated, cited, and elaborated. They flag it for me. I have to review the transcript to see what specifically they need to address."
— Teacher, 6th Grade ELA
Coursemojo can take longer than the part of the lesson it replaces/enhances—both in how it is planned and in how it runs—since students now have multiple attempts at a question if they need it, so teachers have to find the extra minutes somewhere else in the block.
"The friction point has been ‘how do I pace my lesson?’ because sometimes the Coursemojo component will take longer...than the component provided for our curriculum’s lesson. I have teachers ask me to just go through the lessons and tell them where they should borrow time."
— District Literacy Leader
To err on the side of caution, Coursemojo can flag a word that may be inappropriate out of context but appropriate to what students are reading about, which the teacher then has to override.
"[Our curriculum] is a theme-based curriculum, so we're doing Native American culture. Of course you're going to talk about how some animals were killed for different resources like food, clothing, tools. But if they write the word ‘kill’ in the response, it gets marked incorrect or flagged as inappropriate."
— Teacher, 5th Grade ELA
Our instructional take
Instructional wins
- Students learn more from immediate feedback with the chance to apply it and try again rather than delayed feedback. Coursemojo shrinks the time between the first attempt, feedback, and the next attempt in a way that would be impossible for teachers to deliver to all students at the same time.
- Coursemojo focuses on the hardest part of each lesson in the curriculum which ensures that students get more practice and feedback on the most important thinking questions. Coursemojo holds high expectations for student responses and scaffolds and supports without giving the answer away.
- When used socially as designed, Coursemojo significantly increases student talk time and allows students to integrate oral and written language practice.
- Coursemojo is thoughtful about what teachers should be doing while students are using Coursemojo and builds active prompts into the teacher dashboard to encourage those key actions.
- Coursemojo is deeply integrated into the existing curriculum the school is already using so it does not add an additional element or additional activities—it supports the core materials.
Instructional limitations
- Coursemojo focuses on vocabulary, comprehension, and writing about both literary and informational texts, but it does not address decoding and fluency practice. It addresses some strands of the reading rope, but it does not attend to several strands that also matter significantly for students’ reading success.
- Students with significant learning gaps will likely need more support from teachers to get to mastery.
- Coursemojo does not push students beyond the expected response in the curriculum, so advanced students may not be pushed as much as they could.
- Coursemojo requires active teacher monitoring to ensure that students are engaging and to address whole-class misconceptions. It does not function as an independent tutor—the learning comes from the tool and the teacher working together, so if the teacher steps back, students get less out of it.
Implementation considerations
- Coursemojo shares the standard school-based implementation considerations: scheduling (within the class schedule and the scope and sequence for instruction), teacher and leader training, tech set up, and expectations for use.
- Leaders need to consider whether to treat Coursemojo assignments as formative or include in grades.
- Leaders need to make sure that teachers know which parts of the current curriculum they are using Coursemojo to support and ensure that teachers don’t inadvertently double dose an activity.
- Teachers and leaders need to decide in what circumstances they will override Coursemojo’s scoring.
Evidence of Impact
Available evidence
Published
There is independent, causal evidence of impact on student outcomes.
Coursemojo contracted LXD Research to evaluate its impact on 6th-grade ELA achievement. Two quasi-experimental studies of the 2024–25 school year, one in a Tennessee school system and one in a Texas school system, are certified at ESSA Level 2, moderate evidence.
In the Tennessee study, which compared 1,017 students using Coursemojo to 1,186 comparison students across 12 schools, Coursemojo students scored eight points higher on the state test (TCAP), a statistically significant difference, with 49% of Coursemojo students reaching grade level compared with 39.5% statewide. For students with disabilities, the historical gap narrowed by two-thirds from 16 points to five. For economically-disadvantaged students, it narrowed almost half, from 17 points to eight. The Texas study, which compared 541 students in two schools to 2,786 comparison students in 11 schools, found the same pattern on the STAAR: Coursemojo students scored 10.5 points higher, with 70% reaching passing compared with 60%; additionally, 55% of emergent bilingual students reached passing compared with 45%.
Note on limitations: Outcome evidence to date is concentrated in the middle grades, so its effect at the elementary and high-school levels, where the product is now expanding, is not yet established.
From the developer
From
Coursemojo
The following was written by the team at Coursemojo and has been edited for clarity and tone by Instruction Partners.
We have progressed from supporting individual teacher efficacy to also supporting teams of teachers (PLCs) and coaches/leaders. We provide better learning insights than standard interim assessments by taking daily student work and surfacing ongoing trends at the student, class, and grade levels, grounded in the Science of Reading (including both state-specific standards and dimensions of text complexity). Instead of recommending isolated skill practice, we recommend next steps grounded in the school system’s high-quality instructional materials, identifying when to insert a mini-lesson to better support students and providing draft materials for that mini-lesson. Mojo also pulls student work to facilitate teams’ Looking at Student Work (LASW) protocols.
Aligned with TNTP’s Coherence by Design, we are also piloting Tier 2 intervention activities that are aligned with the Tier 1 curriculum and texts, working with struggling readers on fluency, vocabulary, literal comprehension, and complex sentences to ensure they are ready to be successful in Tier 1.
Product website: https://coursemojo.com/
Hear from the developer
Instruction Partners' CEO Emily Freitag spoke with Dacia Toll from Coursemojo to understand what problems they're trying to solve, how the tool works, and what they're still figuring out.