A project that began as a struggle to find good study materials for a business class has blossomed into an Edtech startup aimed at helping students and teachers alike. Kavin Seralathan, a junior information systems major in Cohort 44, has created a software program called Puddle. Seralathan’s program uses artificial intelligence to generate practice problems based directly on teacher’s materials from their learning management systems (like Canvas). Not only that, but the software also gives feedback to teachers on what students are struggling with and allows them to fine tune their teaching. 

In an interview with Seralathan, he talked about how he came up with the idea for the startup. “One of my classes was this business class right? And I wasn’t getting practice questions to prepare for the exams,” he said. “You want to get practice questions to do well on an exam. And you know, it was bad because the only thing the professor told us to do was read the textbook.” Because he couldn’t get help from his professor, he decided to create his own custom GPT to create practice questions based on the textbook. This led to him getting some of the best exam grades in the class, and many of his peers asked him how he did it. 

With this initial interest from his classmates and the improvements on his own grades from using the custom GPT, he began wondering how this service could be expanded and improved. He started asking how he could create a service that would also benefit the teachers creating these courses. While there are other Edtech AI tools that can be used by students for studying, Puddle is unique in that it also gives teachers feedback on what their students are struggling with. It allows teachers to better understand their students, and as Seralathan shared “put the ‘why’ behind the grade and improve student learning through practice and deep insights.” The program analyzes what students are getting wrong and allows teachers to understand why they might be struggling in class overall. In the end, it only helps to get students practicing while also showing teachers what they can emphasize better in class.

Puddle is currently going to be implemented in multiple different private schools in the next couple of weeks. Seralathan has worked with 32 different teachers gathering feedback and insight into his program and has been using the qualitative data collected to improve Puddle. Some teachers are eager to implement the program, and there will be continued work on the program to further improve and tailor it to students and educators. 

Seralathan hopes to see Puddle continue to grow and improve over the next couple of years. He hopes that it can join the likes of Quizlet and Khan Academy as one of the biggest resources for studying with the added benefit of also actively engaging educators within the program. Puddle is meant to be a tool with practice problems and creates a better learning environment, integrating both teacher and students into its program. This way, students get practice and teachers can understand students’ grades more thoroughly. Puddle has only just begun making ripples in the sea of new Edtech advancements, and it shows no signs of slowing.

If you’re at all inspired by Kavin’s story or have an interest in educational technology, Kavin is always happy to connect. As he works to grow Puddle, he’s actively seeking a technical cofounder to continue improvement. Feel free to reach out to him at kseralat@terpmail.umd.edu to learn more or explore ways to get involved.