Courtnay Boateng
Supervisor: Dr. Peter Arthur
City: Kelowna
Occupation: AI & Education Consultant
Year: 2025
Subject:
- Curriculum
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Other
Description
The Collaborative Academic Resource Library (CARL) is an AI-powered lesson planning platform that helps BC educators design inclusive, curriculum-aligned lessons in less time. Built on the CARING Framework (Context, Affirmation, Relationship, Inclusion, Nurture, and Growth), CARL addresses a persistent challenge in education: how do teachers create equitable, engaging lessons without the time and resources to do so effectively.
CARL’s teacher-in-the-loop process keeps teachers in control throughout the lesson design process. Educators use the Lesson Plan Wizard to build BC-curriculum-aligned lessons, selecting grade levels, subjects, and learner contexts while CARL handles curriculum mapping and auto-tagging for searchability. Every AI-generated suggestion is editable and requires teacher review before implementation, positioning AI as a planning accelerator rather than an autonomous decision-maker.
CARL’s collaborative architecture allows teachers to share and remix lessons with transparent attribution and version tracking, building a growing library of inclusive, BC-aligned resources. With zero student data collection and FOIPPA compliance built in from the start, CARL demonstrates how AI can accelerate teacher planning while centering care, equity, and teacher agency.
The platform’s Learning Support Enhancement (LSE) system proactively analyzes lesson content and surfaces 2-3 actionable suggestions at key teaching moments across six support areas: UDL, Indigenous Connections, Equity & Inclusion, Social-Emotional Learning, Trauma-Informed Safeguards, and Student Voice & Choice. Unlike generic AI tools, CARL identifies opportunities educators might miss, such as flagging when a literature unit lacks diverse author representation, suggesting whose voices are missing from a historical narrative, or offering students meaningful choice in how they demonstrate learning. All suggestions include specific classroom language and respect real constraints like time and resources. Teachers can access optional deep-dive resources for comprehensive pedagogical guidance on any support area (platform live early 2026 at www.hicarl.ca).
Student Biography
Courtnay Boateng develops practical tools and frameworks that help educators use AI in human-centered, inclusive ways. She created the CARING Framework to guide how teachers integrate AI into their practice, emphasizing equity, care, and teacher agency over efficiency alone. Her work focuses on making AI accessible, ethical, and genuinely useful in real classroom contexts.