About the Founder

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Darren Karl Sapalo

Founder of Course Assistant AI

The Vision

Darren founded Course Assistant AI with one guiding conviction: educators deserve tools that respect their time, judgment, and commitment to students. After watching grading consume evenings, weekends, and entire semesters, he set out to build an assistant that lightens the load without compromising the craft of teaching.

Course Assistant AI exists to make high-quality, personalized feedback possible at scale—not by replacing educators, but by giving them the time and focus to do their best work: mentorship, research, and building relationships with students.

The Journey

Darren's background spans software engineering, learning science, and education technology—but most of his insights come from working alongside professors, TAs, and instructional teams who kept telling him the same thing: grading matters, but it's completely unsustainable at today's class sizes.

Course Assistant AI started from those conversations. It's built on real feedback from educators, practical classroom needs, and a simple belief: AI should make teaching easier, not more complicated.

The platform is designed around a few core ideas:

  • AI takes care of the repetitive, time-consuming parts
  • You stay in control and make the final calls
  • Students get more consistent, helpful feedback

This is about giving you more time and energy to actually teach.

Get in Touch

Darren is always happy to chat with professors, TAs, and anyone working in education. Whether you're dealing with grading bottlenecks, have ideas for better workflows, or just want to talk through what you're experiencing in your courses—reach out.

Your perspective helps shape where Course Assistant AI goes next.