California Community Colleges & Nectir Announce Pilot Expansion to Bring Educational AI Assistants to 2.1 million students

Sacramento, CA – WEBWIRE – Monday, October 6, 2025

Today, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (Chancellor’s Office) and Nectir announced a systemwide partnership that will make Nectir’s FERPA-compliant AI learning assistants available to students and staff across the system’s 116 campuses. The California Community Colleges are the nation’s largest higher education system, making this partnership the world’s largest quantifiable study of AI in education.

Strong Results from a Year-Long Pilot Program

The partnership follows a year-long pilot program and research study during the 2024-2025 school year. During the pilot, 260 instructors across 84 California Community College campuses used Nectir with over 8,000 students, generating evidence that will guide teaching and learning for years to come. Student outcomes data is currently being analyzed and will be released soon, though early analyses conducted by some participating faculty are showing a strong positive impact on student learning. Other results from the initial pilot program are also promising with 86% of faculty rating their experience as excellent or very good, and nearly half of faculty gave Nectir AI a 10/10 recommendation. Building on this momentum, the Chancellor’s Office is now expanding the pilot.

“Our goal is simple: give every instructor and student a safe, course-aware assistant that drives better learning outcomes,” said Kavitta Ghai, Co-Founder and CEO of Nectir. “The California Community Colleges partnership proves this can be done at a statewide scale while supporting educational equity, data privacy, and academic integrity.”

“This pilot represents a thoughtful step forward in exploring how AI might support increases in equitable learning in a way that is scalable across our system,” said Craig Hayward, Visiting Executive of Strategic Research and Innovative Design at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. “We’re encouraged by early signals of engagement and impact and remain committed to rigorous evaluation. The data will guide our next steps. We’re studying both the qualitative instructor and student experiences and the potential impact on quantitative outcomes like grade points earned, withdrawals, and pass rates very closely.”

“Based on my experience and the feedback of my students, I see Nectir AI as a valuable tool for helping students approach complex historical texts with confidence and critical awareness. It gave them a way to question both the sources and the AI itself, which is an important skill for their academic work and beyond,” said Professor Diana Ortiz of Palomar College, a participating faculty member from the 2024-2025 Nectir AI pilot and study. “Expanding access to Nectir across community colleges would allow instructors in many fields to shape AI to their own curriculum, making it a resource for accuracy, equity, and critical engagement.”

Starting now, Nectir is available to the entire California Community Colleges system and includes:

• Options to choose among premium AI large language models, including GPT-4.1, Claude Sonnet 4, and Gemini 2.5 Pro, with strong safety, security, and educational safeguards
• Unlimited AI Assistant creation for courses, departments, programs, or personal use
• Full LMS integration and support center with comprehensive help documentation
• AI literacy resources, best practices guides, and templates
• Comprehensive training, onboarding, and ongoing support
• Regular ongoing feedback sessions with the Nectir educator community

Nectir AI is available to all students, faculty, and administrators of California Community Colleges and will be deployed in a gradual rollout. Learn more at www.nectir.io.

About Nectir

Founded by two students at UC Santa Barbara, Nectir is on a mission to reinvent how we teach and learn with AI. Its platform is already used by around 80,000 students across 100 leading schools and is backed by leading investors, including Long Journey Ventures, Entrada Ventures, Precursor Ventures, and Behind Genius Ventures. Nectir AI provides FERPA-compliant, LMS-integrated conversational AI infrastructure that empowers educators and students to build customizable AI Assistants. Learn more at www.nectir.io.

About the California Community Colleges

The California Community Colleges is the largest system of higher education in the nation, composed of 73 districts and 116 colleges serving 2.1 million students per year. California community colleges provide career education and workforce training; guaranteed transfer to four-year universities; and degree and certificate pathways. As the state’s engine for social and economic mobility, the California Community Colleges supports the Vision 2030, a strategic plan designed to improve student success, our communities and our planet. For more information, please visit the California Community Colleges website or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).

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Full press release on WebWire.