Co-Creating AI Solutions Through Stakeholder Engagement

Project Evident is pleased to share a new case in our Equitable AI Adoption series: “Co-Creating AI Tools That Meet Practitioner Needs: Aurora Public Schools and TalkingPoints Collaboration on AI Tool Development.”

This case explores how Aurora Public Schools, one of Colorado’s largest and most diverse districts, worked with TalkingPoints — a nonprofit that connects families and schools to support student success — to develop an AI-powered solution to address chronic absenteeism. 

Teachers, families, and district staff didn’t just provide feedback — their real-world experiences and challenges directly shaped the tool’s design, resulting in a 15–24% reduction in absenteeism, with the strongest gains among historically marginalized students.

You’ll learn:

• How APS and TalkingPoints identified attendance tracking as an AI-shaped problem through practitioners’ everyday experience;
• How TalkingPoints uses multiple engagement channels (advisory groups, user testing, surveys, and usage data) to ensure diverse stakeholder input;
• How iterative, participatory design practices shaped specific features while the tool was being built, not just after launch;
• What it means to preserve human expertise and judgment in AI-enabled tools, even while automating workflows; and
• Practical steps for nonprofits and districts to center user voice throughout AI tool development.

Project Evident’s Equitable AI Adoption series is supported by the Gates Foundation and designed to equip social sector leaders with tools, insights, and a peer learning community to responsibly and effectively adopt AI to advance their missions.