ETERC introduced Ele, an AI mentor built for engineering education, at the National Society for the Study of Education Research Review Seminar at East China Normal University on September 18, 2026. The Shanghai-based research center designed Ele to give students in underserved public schools the kind of individualized guidance that overstretched teachers rarely have time to provide - without replacing the teacher's professional role.
Engineering classrooms pose a structural problem. One teacher may oversee dozens of students working on complex, open-ended projects. In rural schools, the gap widens further. Teachers with deep expertise in aerospace, robotics, or advanced engineering are scarce, and developing that expertise takes months or years. Students lose access to advanced topics in the meantime.
Ele draws on more than 12 years of ETERC's work in STEM teacher training and curriculum development. Its knowledge base includes over 5,000 hours of recorded high-quality teaching and thousands of lesson plans from educators, industry experts, and researchers. The system is designed to help students work through problems and make their own decisions rather than handing them answers.
What classroom use has shown so far
Ele has already been used in classrooms for months. That field experience let ETERC refine how the AI mentor functions alongside teachers. The system provides differentiated guidance to students and helps teachers spot where a student may need extra support - a function that becomes critical when class sizes make one-on-one attention impossible.
"We are not trying to build another chatbot for schools," said Wan Jiawei, founder of ETERC. "We are building an AI mentor grounded in real teaching practice and engineering education research. Our goal is to make individualized guidance more accessible while preserving student judgment and the teacher's professional role."
Two research frameworks underpin the work
ETERC connects Ele to two research frameworks still under development. Engineering Becoming Learning Science (EBLS) examines how engineering thinking grows through authentic problem solving and hands-on experience. Engineering Becoming Theory (EBT) investigates how students form an engineering identity - how they come to see themselves as people who can do engineering. Both remain emerging propositions that ETERC plans to test through continued classroom use.
For educators interested in how AI tools are evolving for classroom settings, AI for Teachers Courses offer structured learning paths that connect directly to the same challenges Ele addresses: scaling individualized instruction without adding to teacher workload.
How schools and companies can get involved
ETERC operates as a nonprofit focused on educational equity. It partners with global enterprises to design and run corporate social responsibility programs. Companies can sponsor Ele deployments in underserved schools, co-develop engineering content, bring real industry problems into classrooms, support teacher training, and help measure educational outcomes.
The organization is actively seeking partnerships with firms in technology, AI, semiconductors, aerospace, robotics, advanced manufacturing, energy, and mobility, as well as corporate foundations and ESG teams.
Why this matters for educators
Ele signals a shift in how AI enters the classroom. Rather than a general-purpose chatbot, it is a domain-specific tool trained on real teaching practice and tied to a defined pedagogical goal - helping students think like engineers. For teachers in under-resourced schools, tools like this could narrow the gap between the engineering education available in well-funded districts and what reaches students everywhere else. The key question will be whether the research frameworks ETERC is testing produce evidence that this approach changes outcomes - not just engagement, but durable engineering identity and skill.
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