Research Assistant FAQ

​The Research Assistant is a tool designed to make Academic Leaders’ work easier by  helping you access Association resources quickly, easily, and effectively.

​The Research Assistant connects you to the resources of the Association for Academic Leaders. When you ask a question, you’ll receive a quick answer drawn from a database that includes every course, article, and resource. Then, it directs you to specific resources to find more in-depth answers. 

The Research Assistant is designed to synthesize information and direct you to the right resources. It will write an answer to a discrete question, but It’s not designed to generate extended original text. 

So will it write a sample schedule for your school? No. 
Can it outline a presentation and suggest images? Also no.
Can it draft a letter to send to families? Not one of its skills.

One of our organizational values is “Embrace iteration.” That means valuing process over product, taking risks, and avoiding perfectionism. We’re launching a 1.0 version of our Research Assistant because we believe that it's more important to get something out there and start learning from it, rather than waiting for a perfect, finished product. By launching the Research Assistant now, we can gather feedback from our users and continuously improve the platform to better serve our community of Academic Leaders.

Just ask a question! You’ll get an answer that provides you with the big ideas you need to consider, and you’ll get links to Association courses, articles, and videos that can get you the details you need. 

​Ask a question about your work: How often should my school audit our curriculum? How could I create a competency-based evaluation program for teachers? How can I be a more empathetic listener? Once the Research Assistant answers your question, you can go deeper. Take a look at the suggested questions generated on the left side of your window–you’ll find similar questions to explore. Click on a question to see the Research Assistant’s answer. You can also ask a follow-up question to keep the conversation going, or click on resource links below the answer to dive deeper.

​Nope! It’s a resource for Academic Leaders at any school. The Research Assistant pulls information from the Association for Academic Leaders, including resources and courses that are only for members. If you’re not at a member school, you may not be able to access all the resources the Research Assistant finds for you. Interested in joining? Visit our membership page or email Senior Director, Sarah Hanawald.

​The Association portal is a benefit for Academic Leaders at member schools. Not sure if your school is a member? Check our list of member schools. If you’re not a member and want more information, visit our membership page or email Senior Director, Sarah Hanawald.

If you’re at a member school but don’t have an account, click the “No account?” link on the portal login page. An Association staff member will get you set up with your own credentials.

Your portal login is your school email.

Not sure what your password is? Use the “Forgot your password?” link on the login page to request a link to reset your password.

If you’re still having problems, send us an email at support@oneschoolhouse.org.

We’ve fed all of the Association’s content to our Research Assistant. It knows all of our course content, all of our knowledge library, all of our newsletters, blogs, articles, and more. As the Association adds courses and content, it all goes into the Research Assistant’s knowledge base. 

Yes. When you ask a research assistant a question, they’re going to point you to the resources they know best: the materials in their own field of study. Our Research Assistant does the same thing.

As we roll out early versions of our Research Assistant, your questions help us review and refine the tool. If the Research Assistant tells you, “It looks like I don't have an answer in our archives,” there are two reasons your question might not have been answered: 

It’s possible that our database doesn’t have any information on the topic to answer your question. Our Research Assistant will pass your question on to the Association staff to help us understand what we need to add to our knowledge library.

The second reason is that the information is in our knowledge library, but the Research Assistant can’t find it. If this happens, Association staff will use your original question to keep training the tool so it can respond better in the future.

To get an answer to your question, there are a few tricks you may be able to try. First, look at the left side of your window. For every question you ask, the Research Assistant generates “Related Questions” to your original query. If you see a question here that’s similar to what you asked, go ahead and click it. You can also try asking your question with slightly different wording.

Our Research Assistant is a work in progress. Your questions help us understand what we need to add to our knowledge library, and how we can refine the tool.

We make sure that your Research Assistant is always up-to-date with Association content. As the Association expands its content and range of courses, we add all of our new offerings and materials into the knowledge base.  

We’ve asked the Research Assistant to generally not identify specific schools or people in its answers to your questions. Its recommendations, however, may take you resources, articles, and videos that mention or focus on specific schools and/or Academic Leaders.

Your Research Assistant won’t recommend products, platforms, or any services. We do have a great resource for you if you want to ask a group of Academic Leaders about their recommendations. Join our Listserv!

​Please email support@oneschoolhouse.org to let us know if you get odd or incorrect responses from the Research Assistant.

​If you need help, contact support@oneschoolhouse.org with your question.