California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office

AI Should Be
Built by the People
Doing the Work

Playlab exists to democratize access to AI — putting the power to build, not just use, AI tools into the hands of educators, counselors, and administrators across all 116 California Community Colleges. This is what the Chancellor's Office and Vision 2030 look like in practice.

116
Colleges with System Access
2.5M+
Students Served System-Wide
No-Code
Platform — No Coding Required
Free
For CCC Faculty, Staff & Admins
Vision 2030
"The California Community Colleges system is committed to ensuring that all students, faculty, and staff have equitable access to the transformative potential of artificial intelligence."
— California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, Vision 2030

Vision 2030 calls California's community colleges to lead on equity, innovation, and student success. That means closing gaps — not just in outcomes, but in who gets to shape the systems that produce those outcomes.

The collaboration between the Chancellor's Office and Playlab is a direct answer to that call. Playlab was founded on the belief that AI should be accessible to everyone — not just engineers and tech companies. Together, we're putting that belief into practice at the largest system of higher education in the nation.

When a counselor at a rural community college can build a student support tool in an afternoon — that's what democratized AI looks like. That's Vision 2030.

What is Playlab

AI Access Isn't Enough. You Need the Power to Build.

Playlab's mission is to democratize access to AI — not just as a tool to consume, but as a medium to create. The platform gives educators, counselors, and administrators the ability to design, build, and deploy AI solutions for the specific challenges they face every day. The technology is the means. The mission is equity.

No-Code AI Construction

Build AI tools through prompt engineering and no-code tool construction — no programming required. If you can articulate a problem, you can build the solution.

Your College's Own Space

Every CCC campus has a private, secure workspace. Build and share tools within your community — and keep your institution's data exactly where it belongs.

Equity as a Design Principle

Playlab was built for the margins first — for multilingual learners, first-generation students, and the programs that serve them. Equity isn't a feature; it's the foundation.

Build Once, Impact Thousands

Share what you build across your college or the entire CCC system. One well-designed tool, deployed at scale, can transform the experience of thousands of students.

Featured Program

Chancellor's Innovators Program

A structured, cohort-based program for CCC faculty and staff ready to go deep — building real AI tools while developing transferable skills for their college. Participants receive a modest honorarium in recognition of their work.

Two Tracks. One Mission.

The Chancellor's Innovators Program puts CCC faculty and staff at the forefront of leading the future of teaching, learning, and innovation in higher education — in the AI era, on their own terms, for their own communities.

Two focused tracks — one for faculty building discipline-embedded AI literacy, one for administrators and staff driving operational transformation. Both culminate in a working AI tool deployed at your college. Participants receive a modest honorarium for their contribution.

Track A

Faculty — AI Literacy in Discipline

For instructors across all disciplines ready to become the pioneers defining what AI fluency looks like in their field. You are not reacting to AI — you are shaping how your students, your department, and your institution understand it.

  • Develop discipline-specific AI literacy frameworks grounded in critical inquiry
  • Construct student-facing tools aligned to critical inquiry and learning outcomes
  • Explore responsible AI use, academic integrity, and equity at the disciplinary level
  • Collaborate with faculty peers leading the same work across the CCC system
  • Culminating project: deployed AI tool in your course
Track B

Admin & Staff — AI for Operations & Scale

For administrators and classified professionals who see the operational challenges clearly — and are ready to lead the institution into a new era of efficiency, communication, and student support at scale.

  • Map high-effort operational workflows that AI can support or automate
  • Explore Agentic AI to automate institutional workflows and student support at scale
  • Build tools for internal communications, reporting, and student services
  • Implement AI responsibly within institutional, legal, and equity constraints
  • Connect with a cross-institutional network of operational innovators
  • Culminating project: deployed AI tool in your department
Leadership Pathway

T3: Train the Trainer

For Campus Leaders & Champions

Grow Local AI Capacity at Your College

T3 is for experienced Playlab users who are ready to take the next step — becoming AI champions and trainers within their own college communities. T3 participants leave with the facilitation skills, resources, and network to lead professional development at their campus. Participants receive a modest honorarium for their work.

T3 is a selective pathway. If you've completed foundational Playlab training and are interested in expanding AI capacity at your college, reach out to learn more.

Interested? Email Dr. C (Christyna Serrano, Head of Community Learning & Growth at Playlab, Hartnell College Alumna, and Berkeley Changemaker Professor) directly: christyna@playlab.ai

What T3 Participants Gain

  • Deep facilitation and coaching skills for adult AI learners
  • Ready-to-use workshop curriculum and training materials
  • A peer network of T3 trainers across the CCC system
  • Ongoing support from the Playlab and Chancellor's Office teams
  • Recognition as an official CCC AI Champion
  • Tools to run onboarding, 101, and 201 sessions at your college
Contribution Opportunity

AI Solutions Studio:
Playlab Database Pilot

The AI Solutions Studio — currently active as the Playlab Database Pilot — is a crowdsourced solutioning initiative led by Dr. Tiffany Kuo at Mt. SAC.

The mission: build a shared, open-access library of AI tools and prompts purpose-built for the California Community Colleges context — searchable, remixable, and credited to the people who created them. Every contribution becomes a resource available to all 116 colleges.

This is distributed leadership in practice. Contributors receive full authorship attribution, demonstrating their leadership across the CCC system.

Who Should Contribute

Faculty, Staff & Administrators

If you've built a Playlab tool that's working — for a course, a department, a student-facing service — contribute it to the Studio. Your solution may be exactly what another college has been searching for.

Join the Effort

Your expertise, your authorship, your impact — at scale. Projects are ongoing and welcome new contributors throughout the year.

Contribute to the Studio →
Live & Async Training

Join a Training Session

All sessions are offered at no cost. New to Playlab? Completing an onboarding session (live or async) is required before you can access your college's workspace. Already have a Playlab account? You can connect directly to your college workspace via Playlab CCC Connect — just log in with your existing account (don't create a new one, or you'll receive an error).

Get Started

Two Ways to Get Started

Access to Playlab for CCC requires connecting to your college's workspace and completing an onboarding session.

Playlab CCC Connect

Every CCC college already has a private Playlab workspace. CCC Connect is how you join yours — connect to your college's workspace and start building AI tools with your colleagues.

Already have a Playlab account? Just log in with your existing credentials. Don't create a new account — doing so will result in an error. If you're new to Playlab, complete an onboarding session first (see below), then connect.

Open CCC Connect

Available to all CCC faculty, staff, and administrators. Use your college email address.

@One Canvas Onboarding Course

New to Playlab? The @One Canvas onboarding course walks you through everything you need to get up and running — at your own pace, on your own schedule.

Completing an onboarding session (live or async) is required for new users before accessing your college workspace. The Canvas course fully satisfies this requirement.

Start Canvas Course

Available to CCC employees through the @One professional development catalog.

Planning Student AI Literacy Work?

If you're planning to have your students build in Playlab — for coursework, projects, or AI literacy initiatives — please reach out to Dr. C at christyna@playlab.ai first. We'll set up student-specific configured workspaces for your course to ensure data privacy and an appropriate learning environment.

Why This Matters

What You Build Here Is Yours — and It Lasts

Partnerships evolve, contracts renew, priorities shift. But Playlab was built on a promise: access. Everything you create on Playlab will always be available to you for as long as the platform exists — regardless of the status of any institutional partnership.

That means the AI tool you build this spring, the workflow you automate this semester, the student resource you design this year — those are yours. They belong to you and your institution. They will serve your students long after any single initiative concludes.

But this is about more than tools. You are building AI capacity — the skills, the frameworks, the institutional knowledge — that will shape how your college navigates the era ahead. You are not a passive receiver of technology. You are a changemaker defining the future of teaching, learning, and student support in higher education. That is the real investment, and it belongs to you entirely.

Resources

Learn, Explore & Connect

Everything you need to grow as a builder — from your first session to your most ambitious tool.

Playlab Learn

Guides, tutorials, and walkthroughs for building in Playlab — from getting your account set up to designing multi-step AI tools for your classroom or department.

Visit Learn

Explore

Browse tools and projects built by Playlab users around the world. Find something useful, remix it for your context, and see what's possible when educators build.

Explore Playlab

Questions? Email Dr. C

Need help beyond what's in these resources — or want to learn more about the Innovators Program, T3, or the AI Solutions Studio? Reach out directly.

christyna@playlab.ai