Roadmap #1: History to Current
Hey Teachers!
Roadmap Blog #1 sets the stage for our app development here at Teacher’s PET by explaining our history, current state, and plans for 2025.
The Teacher’s PET app is a connected system where you upload your course documents once and then access many features and tools around course preparation and design.
Spoilers: my favorite so far is the rubric builder because I select my project documents, edit directly in the platform, and then import into Canvas, which saves me the most time and headaches! But we have a lot of cool tools like that coming your way.
We are building an intelligent app that works for you–not to replace your effort or to go against your workflow–when creating instructional designs. I’m going to explain our product history, where we are currently in development, and the roadmap of our Teacher’s PET tools.
Sign up for a spot in our testers and pilot program to get early access as the apps evolve. You will be among the first to use the software this summer with priority feedback on features, functions, and the future focus of our tools. Early testers also receive discounts on the digital shop and services to help your course prep now.
The History
Learn a bit more about my history with simple app development and why I was motivated to build out the Teacher’s PET software.
I created my first personalized education tech–the P E T in Teacher’s PET– in 2021 to handle frequently asked questions and simple support for my students. I wanted to set stronger boundaries on my inbox as my college students often emailed late at night or on the weekends about their work.
ANDDDD….I was getting a bit tired of answering THOSE questions, you know the ones…where the answer goes:
“it's in the syllabus under late policies”
“look at this section of the project sheet with the grading checklist”
“review your notes from the last slide deck”
The important (for student success and confidence) yet straightforward questions that drain time and energy to answer.
I used a tool through my campus productivity app suite that could build simple Q&A bots for HR and other business purposes. I had actually used this app in my prior job as a professional development and advising strategist when I built a workplace bot to update advisors on policy language while they were in meetings with students. I took the same approach to build a call-and-response bot that would index a request based on the trigger phrases.
Basically I made a list of words and phrases that someone might ask and paired each phrase with a message for the chat. I had to write in every answer myself and connect them to the keyword list.
That early version was named HAL: Hayley’s Automated Liaison…and also a nod to fellow film fans and intelligent artificial assistants. Now, HAL was not a generative, intelligent model. While it did analyze the inputs and make light predictions for context and spelling, HAL really ran on predetermined inputs and outputs (prompts and messages).
HAL required every response be written and tied to a trigger phrase.
HAL worked well for my intro-level college courses. The emails in my inbox decreased, leaving the ‘real’ questions that I could spend more time supporting. I also found HAL helpful for my own quick reference and double-checking when working on lesson plans and updating my calendars. Often I asked HAL to call up exactly when a project was due or what-not as a faster alternative to pulling up syllabus or clicking through Canvas. And that is what my students were thinking too. They wrote about PAL in their reflections and evaluations that the assistant was helpful when they needed a rapid, easy response. It was almost a win-win.
BUT, HAL was a ton of work for me to set up, maintain, and manage.
I wrote over 25 topics, each with 5-9 trigger phrases or keywords and then the series of responses HAL would give. Every message had to be updated each semester, since most of the questions were related to due dates, point totals, project names, and evolving class policies.
I also had to manually add my roster to an access list because there was no public view. That access list couldn’t sync to the roster, so if a student added or dropped my class I needed to update the list accordingly.
While HAL did save me and my students time during the semester, it added SO MUCH to my course prep. Which was NOT the vibe.
Then I showed my spouse my app.
He is a machine learning and data consultant, who said…
“We could rebuild this in a better stack to use large language modeling and make it easier to deploy.”
and I said… “huh?”
And said “I could build it with AI and make it a link for your students to access from Canvas.”
I shouted: “bet…please.”
Then OpenAI and the entire generative LLM wave washed over education, and our first app, PAL, was deployed in my class in Fall 2024.
The Current State
Understand our software status for 2025.
I’m currently an assistant teaching professor with a 4/4 load at an R2 university. I follow ungrading and universal design principles while rebuilding my courses each semester to push the learning outcomes forward while keeping my content up-to-date.
And I need tools that work WITH me and actually save me time, so that I can produce more helpful content at a higher quality. I also need tools that support the style of teaching I need to accomplish in that particular class, since an on-site general ed class has different needs and a set up than an asynchronous online advanced course.
We’ve been testing our functional prototypes and MVPs in my workflow for the past 6 months.
The chatbot is performing well under accuracy and hallucination testing, and we are preparing for more user interface development over the next 6 months. We partnered with an upper-division UX course on my campus to give students a practical experience and applied project in the Fall 2024 semester. We’ve received the student reports and recommendations to consider.
The rubric builder is near the minimal viable product stage–it does work under limited conditions–and will be ready for small-scale demos and pilot testing in Q2 of 2025.
We are also working on the centralized database and primary interface of Teacher’s PET to upload and manage files.
While the app goes through development, I’m also working on the digital shop by adding templates, teaching packs, and smaller tools for course design. You can grab tracking templates, Canvas pages, and assignment ideas right now. Those will be paired with YouTube content around teaching topics, tutorials, inspiration, and tech discussions.
The Roadmap
Plan for the future with our end-game goals and immediate development priorities.
Our down the road goal is to build Teacher’s PET into a full suite of tools to semi-automate the aspects of the course planning and adaptation process by housing an archive of materials, recommending updates, and exporting files.
Eventually, users will be guided through the course planning process, informed by whatever pedagogy or standards are selected, with the fine tuned models to create first drafts.
The dashboard of connected apps will also assist with performance review by pointing your attention to insights and helping you draft a data-driven narrative for your personnel files.
And finally, we will create a task management system tailored to the educator workflow that syncs to your course documents, for example helping you plan lessons around your exam due dates, project scaffolding, and grading deadlines.
Ultimately we want Teacher’s PET to be the app that makes you constantly say, “Another step in my course prep, done.”
To get there with all those features, we have immediate goals and plans as the priority for the rest of 2025.
In Q2 2025, we are focusing on the rubric builder:
First round alpha testing with my new Fall course prep
Early feedback from select demo and focus groups
In Q3 2025, we will focus on the chatbot:
First round beta testing with our Pilot Program users (sign up at teacherspet.tech)
Continued refinement within my Fall courses
In Q4 2025, we will collect feedback from the testing and demo process
Teacher’s PET is just me, my husband, and our dreams at the moment. We are actively pursuing grants, fellowships, and other funding opportunities. But until then, we are building the software deck in after hours as a way to improve my, and down the road all of you, teachers, course prep, class management, and semester workflow.
Have a great class!
Hayley B at Teacher’s PET