Try Wonders for free
"It's incredibly refreshing to see students get around literature more independently and with greater clarity."
— Andy Riggle, Associate Vice President, Office of Graduate Studies
About National University
National University is one of the largest private nonprofit universities in the United States, serving a diverse student body with a strong emphasis on adult and graduate education. With over 5,000 doctoral students across multiple campuses and online programs, NU is a leader in supporting advanced research and professional scholarship.
Facing the accelerating risks and opportunities around generative AI, National University sought a structured, academically rigorous solution that would enhance — not undermine — scholarly work.
Executive summary
Wonders is the only research workspace that builds students' skills, improves outcomes, and keeps every part of the process in one shared space. In contrast to the generative-AI tools students adopt informally, Wonders provides an ethical, transparent, and guided alternative. National University chose Wonders to empower its doctoral students — resulting in faster topic discovery, improved citation quality, and significantly less oversight burden for faculty.
The use case: doctoral dissertation research
Students at National University were in their prospectus seminar, developing dissertations from early topic exploration through chapter writing. Wonders was deployed to support that seminar, with the expectation of improvements across several axes — from time and autonomy to resource quality.
Our measured pilots consistently show that both top students and those who struggle benefit from modern, safe AI tools — discovering faster and spending less time wrangling sources, citations, and bibliographies.
"I'm not gonna say I'm flying through it, but I'm learning FAST. Without Wonders, I wouldn't have been this far into my draft this soon."
— Terrell H., Doctoral Candidate
How it works
Unlike other AI tools, Wonders doesn't do the work for students. It guides them, offers encouragement and real-time feedback, and leaves the researcher in full control of the process — and fully responsible for the quality of the output.
Wonders supports every key step of desk research — from hypothesis generation through topic exploration, retrieval, highlighting, extraction, and synthesis — in a single, efficient view. When the work is done, students export to PDF, DOCX, and LaTeX with a compatible bibliography that slots into the rest of their editing workflow.
Wonders is the only comprehensive tool positioned to both accelerate research and teach students research while doing it. Faculty-collected feedback bears this out: "there was less need for literature-review tutoring from the librarians and the Academic Support Center," says Dr. David Hildebrandt, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs.
Continuous collaboration and service
We provide extensive support and work closely with our customers. When National University expressed a need for more advanced search, we developed the world's first hybrid Boolean-and-semantic search — allowing unmatched precision and control in AI-powered retrieval.
Wonders supports rollout with robust training: an extensive knowledge base, ongoing 1:1 help, and a Masterclass series that helps students master the research process. As one researcher put it, it's this "closely involved support process that enables Wonders to create an ever-improving offering."
"After a little experimentation, I gained a significant boost in productivity. Getting to the benefits needed no more than a few hours of learning."
— Frank Appunn, Professor & Program Director
Student outcomes
Faster topic refinement
Students explored dissertation topics faster through AI-guided features. One described the main early-stage benefit as how Wonders "helped explore topics in ways they didn't think about."
Discovery beyond the library
"I found articles that just didn't show up in the school search," as Andrew J. described — a common experience. Wonders' library of 540M+ resources, spanning top-ranking journals, technical literature, and patents with near-complete geographic and domain coverage, complements traditional library services and significantly expands the breadth of inquiry.
A less overwhelming process
Perhaps the most valued capability is building out research projects like a living document — persistent searches, personal notes, and full articles in one place. Wonders boards make it easy to pick up where you left off, whether that's the next day or a month later.
"The ability to summarize and aggregate many sources with a single query, and to save and build on the output, is the perfect vehicle for dissertation research — which may span months of work."
— John H., Doctoral Candidate, Cybersecurity
Quantified impact
9 hours — saved weekly on research tasks. (Self-reported after six months of use, March 2025.)
100 — Net Promoter Score from students and faculty. (Collected via post-deployment survey, March 2025.)
"Simply: easy, quick, more research power!"
— Andrew J., Doctoral Candidate
Strategic value for institutions
The role of AI in higher education is no longer theoretical. Students are using it. Institutions are reacting — but not all are responding with clarity, and there are dozens of tools of questionable quality and ethical alignment.
Wonders helps academic leaders get ahead of the curve by:
- Giving students structured, transparent AI tools aligned with academic values
- Reducing faculty load without sacrificing research depth
- Expanding library reach without additional licenses
- Making research workflows visible, accountable, and easy to support
"For any academic, grant-funded, or general research, Wonders enabled better research outcomes in less time — not only an improved set of resources, but making sense of the details and implications through an easy process."
— Frank Appunn, Professor & Program Director
Why now?
Generative AI isn't going away. The real question is: who owns the framework for how students use it? Institutions that provide guidance will build confident, AI-literate researchers. Institutions that don't will lose visibility, control, and credibility.
Wonders is the only platform that combines cutting-edge AI, full process coverage, and academic accountability for rigorous research — as at National University.
