18 March, 2026 - Last week in TI

• Rahul Subramaniam
• Releases
• March 18, 2026

Listen to the release podcast

Athena Applets: Strong Quality Metrics & Multi-Grade Expansion

8 new lessons generated, 1 lesson approved this week, and the current review queue holds 161 lessons.

• Production output – 8 new lessons generated and 1 lesson approved this week.
• Learning app improvements – Added debug mode in the UI to help reviewers see feedback answers without going through all cases, plus a skip button to cross the interaction without always needing to solve the questions for faster and smoother reviews.
• Efficient iteration cycle – 1 total iteration completed in the past 7 days (0 feedback rounds, 1 approval) with an average of 0 comments per lesson (0 total comments).
• Multi-grade coverage – Lessons approved in Grade 4 TEKS (1 lesson), with a review queue of 161 lessons ready for validation (Grade 3: 59, Grade 3 Supporting: 17, Grade 4: 4, Grade 4 TEKS: 14, Grade 5 TEKS: 1, Grade 6: 60, Grade 6 TEKS: 2, Grade 7: 4).
• New lessons by grade – Grade 3: 6 lessons, Grade 5 TEKS: 1 lesson, Grade 6: 1 lesson.
• Complete lesson catalog – See the full list of all uploaded lessons across grades in this lesson catalog with direct links to each lesson.

Try it out

EduPaid v2.22.0: Multi-State ESA, Redesigned Admin Pages & Developer Tools

Arizona and New Hampshire ESA management now available across both portals, redesigned admin Students/Parents pages with richer details, direct student funding, and centralized provider developer tools hub.

• Admin ESA management for Arizona and New Hampshire: Expanded state coverage with Arizona and New Hampshire ESA workflows in consistent experience, including New Hampshire automation for order workflows, improving multi-state operations and scalability.
• Redesigned admin Students and Parents pages: Richer details in clearer layout with key records easier to review quickly, improved structure for faster workflows helping admin teams move through daily tasks more efficiently.
• Admin add funds from student page: Add funds directly from student record in guided flow without switching to separate Add Funds page or collecting extra details in multiple places, keeping funding actions in one screen for support and operations teams.
• Provider developer tools hub: Centralized Developer Tools page brings API keys, webhooks, and test environment together for easier integration setup with built-in testing support to validate workflows and API calls from one location before production.
• Provider ESA management for Arizona and New Hampshire: Dedicated state views for Arizona and New Hampshire ESA/ClassWallet activity with state-based order handling and clearer visibility into order status and assignment for teams working across multiple states.

Learn More

BrainTrust: Platform Enhancements & Expanded Coverage

Comprehensive updates across BrainTrust including infrastructure improvements, expanded real estate coverage, and enhanced finance automation capabilities.

• Finance Agent Improvements – We’re continuing to iterate with the finance team, and in this latest iteration, we’ve added support for reconciling intercompany accounts, which is one of the most time-consuming processes for the team.
• Updated Seed and Map Coverage for 7 New NJ Districts – Expanded coverage to include 7 additional New Jersey districts, providing more comprehensive zoning data and analysis capabilities for real estate professionals working across the state.
• Modernized Cron Job Scheduling – Backend for cron job schedules migrated from EventBridge Schedule Rules to AWS Schedules for improved reliability and better job handling, leveraging AWS’s recommended scheduling service.

Try it out

QTI SDK Tailored for Athena’s Player

This release pivots the SDK to target Athena’s own QTI player — the same player Alpha is already integrating for Athena’s content delivery. The model and XML generators have been customized to leverage the player’s proprietary extensions, resulting in richer question rendering out of the box. PCI math modules, media interactions, and custom grading hooks round out the update.

• Player-Specific Extensions – The SDK now emits QTI that takes full advantage of Athena’s player capabilities: math keyboard activation, configurable text-box sizing, document-based question layouts, step-by-step solution reveals, and stacked choice/match styling. Generators can also supply raw HTML alongside or instead of Markdown when finer control over presentation is needed.
• Custom API Grading – Generators can now register their own API-based graders for questions that require domain-specific scoring logic beyond what standard QTI response processing supports.
• PCI Math Modules – The SDK fully supports four Portable Custom Interaction modules for math questions (e.g., equation entry, graphing). The PCI architecture is modular, so additional modules can be added with minimal effort.
• Media Interaction Support – Added qti-media-interaction as a first-class interaction type, enabling tracked media playback and finer control over audio/video within assessment items.
• Media Sizing Fix – Image and video dimensions are now applied correctly in generated XML, resolving display issues where media appeared unsized or distorted.
• Generator Markdown Guide – Published specific markdown authoring guidance for generator teams, documenting how to structure content for optimal rendering on Athena’s QTI player.
• Known Issues – Template variables within LaTeX expressions and response processing for certain item types have a rendering issue that is being worked on. Text-to-Speech is not yet functional in production.
• Next Steps – Get Text-to-Speech working end-to-end in production. Build curriculum sync utility to keep Incept curriculum aligned with Timeback. Begin using actual generator-produced questions and get generator team sign-off. Collaborate on identified renderer UX improvements. Evaluate feasibility of interactive feedback/adaptive content (currently display-only, pending renderer changes).

Try Qti Player

Marauders Map: Stabilised Furniture Detection, Context-Aware NLQ Chat & UniFi Camera Integration

Marauders Map delivers flicker-free furniture tracking with spatial clustering and lifecycle management, a conversational chat interface for querying building activity in plain English, and full UniFi Protect camera support for on-premise deployments.

• Stabilised Furniture Detection with Spatial Clustering - A custom clustering algorithm groups chairs with nearby tables, merges adjacent tables into composite layouts (double, 8-chair, conference), and locks cluster type, position, and orientation after maturity — combined with a backend ledger (pending → stable → dying states), EMA position smoothing, and 10-second frontend snapshot scheduling to eliminate flicker and keep furniture pinned on the floorplan.
• Context-Aware NLQ Chat with Session Memory - A new ‘Ask the Map’ chat panel lets users query the building in plain English with multi-turn conversation support. The engine tracks subjects across turns, resolves pronouns automatically (‘Where did she spend most time?’), enriches queries with school-specific people/locations and timezone-aware time references, and generates validated SQL against Timestream — returning concise natural-language answers with follow-up suggestions.
• UniFi Protect Camera Integration - A complete UniFi integration layer supports both cloud access (via api.ui.com API key) and direct local NVR connections, with snapshot polling and clip-export capture modes, a built-in MJPEG live preview server, and a full CLI for camera discovery, connectivity testing, and recording — enabling Marauders Map to run on-premise without Rhombus hardware.

Learn More

Try it out

EduLLM Social Studies

EduLLM Social Studies retains its crown on the leaderboard for Social Studies for another week. Both leading generators are now at 99% pass rates across all four grades, while work continues on accuracy improvements, codebase unification, and article generation.

• Improving factual accuracy checks: Currently working on improving the factual accuracy evaluation in InceptBench — Gemini does not capture factual errors properly. Once resolved, generators will hit true 99% across the board.
• Merging both generators: Actively unifying the two codebases; expected to be complete by EOD.
• Article generation underway: Started working on generating articles and their evaluations as a new content type.

Learn More