We are absolutely thrilled to share some exciting news: dfusion has been recognized with not one, but two awards in The Learning Agency’s 2026 Tools Competition. We received the Growth Prize in the Building Pathways to Post-Secondary Success Track for SocialWise, and we are also honored to be recognized in the Dataset for Education Innovation Track. This is a milestone moment for our team, our community partners, and — most importantly — autistic young adults.
What Is the Tools Competition?
The Tools Competition, organized by The Learning Agency, is one of the most exciting arenas in educational technology today. The Learning Agency is a true leader in learning engineering, bringing together researchers, innovators, and practitioners to solve some of education’s hardest problems through rigorous, evidence-based approaches. Their competitions catalyze real innovation — not just ideas, but tools that are built, tested, and proven with learners. Being recognized by this community and welcomed into the cohort of fellow winners and finalists, is both an honor and an inspiration. We can’t wait to learn from, collaborate with, and build alongside this incredible group of innovators.
Introducing SocialWise
SocialWise is an AI-enhanced conversation agent integrated into dfusion’s SkillFlix for Autistic Young Adults (AYA) platform — a streaming video library of 150+ skill-building videos designed by and for the autistic community. Socialwise is a closed AI system built and trained only with dfusion’s proprietary neuro-affirming content. While SkillFlix gives autistic young adults evidence-based content to build social, emotional, and communication skills at their own pace, SocialWise takes it a step further. It directs users to the right videos for their current situation, role-plays real-life scenarios with them, and offers personalized recommendations — so skills don’t just get learned, they get practiced and applied to real life.
For autistic post-secondary students navigating new environments, changing routines, and underdeveloped support systems at many colleges, this kind of responsive, personalized, on-demand support can be genuinely life-changing.
Why the Dataset Award Matters
Alongside SocialWise, we are proud to be recognized for our work building a benchmark dataset to support understanding autistic learning and provide neuro-affirming AI training data. This is not a small thing. Most AI systems have been trained on data that reflects neurotypical norms — and that creates tools that, at best, miss the mark for neurodivergent users, and at worst, cause harm.
We are doing something different. With meaningful community input from autistic young adults — including our advisory board, scriptwriters, actors, and research participants — we are building training data that reflects authentic autistic communication, values, and lived experience. Neuro-affirming AI is the foundation of everything SocialWise is built on. Getting this right matters enormously for the future of AI in education.
What’s Next
This recognition energizes us and deepens our commitment. We are actively building partnerships with researchers, universities, and organizations supporting autistic students in higher education — including the College Autism Network. If you are working at the intersection of autism, education, and technology, we would love to connect. We are conducting short user experience interviews with autistic young adults please complete the online screener to see if you are eligible to participate.
We are also recruiting autistic young adults for our community advisory board for the project. Please complete the interest form to apply.
The future of learning should work for every learner. We’re building it — together.
Interested in learning more about SocialWise or SkillFlix AYA? Reach out at dfusion@dfusion.com or connect with us on LinkedIn.