PLUS is a human-AI math tutoring initiative led by Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, in partnership with Carnegie Learning and Stanford University. PLUS's mission is to double math learning gains for 10,000 middle school students by 2027, focusing on students from low-income families.

Research shows that math practice software is highly effective, however, many students lack the motivation and self-regulation to regularly use the software, and that is where human tutors play a key role by providing engagement and motivation.

PLUS Tutoring combines human tutors with advanced math practice software to give students the right support at the right time. PLUS tutors are recruited from higher education institutions and trained with the PLUS Training system based on our SMART competency framework. Tutors provide support to middle school students during the school day remotely. As students work on math practice software, PLUS Toolkit collects data on their effort and progress and relays this to tutors along with recommendations on the next steps.

PLUS was founded by Prof. Ken Koedinger and builds upon the Personalized Learning^2 (PL2) project that was also housed at CMU.

Shiv Gupta (METALS ‘19) leads the overall project team with Dr. Danielle Thomas - the research team, Dr. Erin Gatz - the partnerships team, Cindy Tipper is our lead software developer, and Bill Guo (BHCI ‘23) is our lead product designer.

180+ tutors from CMU and 34 staff members support PLUS.

Equity is at the heart of the work we do at PLUS. PLUS is committed to providing high-impact tutoring services to students who typically lack access to these educational resources.

A significant majority of the students we serve, over 80%, come from low-income families. In addition, we are proud to support a diverse student body, with more than 90% of our students being from Black or Hispanic/Latino communities.