New EU project TRIAD will study when AI helps learning in schools, and when it does not

From 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2029, the Horizon Europe project TRIAD (Balancing Foundational and AI Competences for Inclusive, Well-being-Oriented Education) is under way. It is funded by the European Union under call HORIZON-CL2-2025-01. The project is coordinated by Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau (Germany).

Across Europe, adolescents are growing up in a digital environment shaped by smartphones, social media and generative AI. These technologies offer opportunities for creativity, personalised learning and collaboration, but the evidence on their impact on learning and well-being remains fragmented and often lags behind practice.

TRIAD addresses four challenges:

• AI-driven skill degradation and shallow learning, with a risk of over-reliance and reduced originality;
• fragmented competence frameworks that lack operational pathways;
• uneven readiness and equity gaps that widen socio-economic and digital divides;
• ambivalent evidence on adolescents’ well-being in digitally enriched education.

Together with teachers and schools, TRIAD co-creates and tests an integrated framework that balances foundational competences, transversal competences and AI and digital literacy, while safeguarding students’ cognitive, emotional and social well-being. It focuses on learners aged 12 to 18 in secondary schools and vocational education and training, where competences are consolidated and inequality risks peak.

Classroom scenarios will be piloted with about 1,000 learners in Croatia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy and Lithuania.

The project will deliver classroom-ready designs, development pathways for students and teachers, and policy recommendations that help schools adopt AI responsibly, reduce inequalities and strengthen Europe’s human capital and resilience.

TRIAD brings together 11 partners from seven countries. In addition to the coordinator, they are Hochschule Ruhr West, ZEUS GmbH and the Berufsbildungszentrum der Kreishandwerkerschaft Märkischer Kreis (Germany), the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), Ellinogermaniki Agogi (Greece), Ghent University (Belgium), Quantia Consulting (Italy) and the Faculty of Organization and Informatics at the University of Zagreb (Croatia). Lithuania is represented by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VILNIUS TECH) and Verslo ir svetingumo profesinės karjeros centras (VESK), and pilots with learners will also take place in Lithuania.

Follow the project

Follow TRIAD news and results on the project website, by signing up for the newsletter, and on LinkedIn, YouTube and Mastodon. The project also has a Zenodo community, and its record is available in the CORDIS database.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. Grant Agreement No 101289995.