Deeper Learning, Less Admin: Spring 2026 Impact Report

Spring 2026

Every educator knows the tension of modern higher education: you want to challenge your students with higher-order thinking, but the sheer operational weight of managing large college courses can quickly consume your week. Between preparing students, managing TAs, answering student questions via email  and manually handling extension requests, the actual teaching part of the job is under constant pressure.

At Catalyst Education, we believe technology should strengthen, not replace, instructor expertise. It should handle the operational trenches to reduce administrative burden for professors so you can focus on meaningful instruction.

As we look back at the Spring 2026 term, here is how our platform and support teams helped faculty deliver deeper learning at scale without sacrificing course control or increasing their workloads.

Delivering Deeper Learning at Scale

Scaling education shouldn't mean diluting its quality. This past spring, Catalyst supported instructors in delivering rigorous, high-quality course experiences across the country:

533 instructors utilized the platform to guide their courses.

109,000 students were positively impacted throughout the semester.

Students engaged deeply with course resources, watching ~115,000 hours of educational videos provided by Catalyst in their courses to arrive at their lectures and labs fully prepared.

Decreasing Administrative Friction

The real barrier to deeper teaching isn't a lack of faculty dedication; it’s an abundance of administrative friction. When students get stuck on logistics, their default reaction is to email their professor or TA. To make sure students get the most out of the system without turning faculty into full time tech support, our digital support systems stepped in:

Our "Ask Labflow / Ask Spark" features directly resolved 5,609 student questions.

By providing immediate, targeted support to students when they needed it most, we saved faculty and teaching assistants from an estimated 2,800 manual emails.

Automated Student Exception Management: The Token Economy in Action

Modern students face intense pressures, burnout, packed schedules, and academic anxiety. This often results in a flood of last-minute email requests for extensions. Catalyst addresses this by providing structured flexibility, giving students autonomy without lowering academic standards or throwing out course structure.

This spring, Catalyst automated student exception management by automatically granting 551,850 extensions and retries via our token economy. That's half a million moments of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty around grades and deadlines that our token framework helped ease for students.

Because the system handles these logistics automatically based on boundaries set by the instructor, this workflow saved faculty from reading, evaluating, and replying to 551,850 manual requests.

The impact on faculty well-being was immediate. As one professor shared during the semester, the token system was quite literally "a lifesaver." Another instructor recounted telling their department head: "Tokens. Saved. My. Life."

Built by Educators, For Educators

Catalyst is an educator-built company. We don't believe in "set-it-and-forget-it" automation or generic AI tools that try to replace human judgment. We are driven by a simple mission: lowering the cost of high-quality materials, supporting academic integrity, and reducing the repetitive admin work that makes modern teaching harder than it should be.

Thank you to the hundreds of instructors who trusted us to be their teaching partner this semester. We look forward to continuing to build on your foundation as we step into Summer 2026 and beyond.