Thoth Tech (est. 2022) is a new software development company currently building from the ground up in Melbourne Australia. Thoth Tech’s mission is to build, operate, and deploy education technologies, creating tools that enhance education outcomes by empowering students, connecting them with tutors, and facilitating personalised learning experiences. We value our people, and we value excellence: We are people-focused, aim to produce sustainable products of excellent quality, and provide frameworks that provide a safe environment for learning and support of our team.
This report is for stakeholders, investors, and employees, and will outline the company structure, charter, objectives – both short and long term, and explore each product’s goals in depth.
Within the first third of 2022, Thoth Tech has recruited approximately 92 employees including four area leads, three product leads and eleven delivery leads.
The second third of 2022 has seen Thoth Tech grow to approximately 104 employees, including five product leads and sixteen delivery leads.
There will be another recruitment phase during the last third of the year, with the potential for internships throughout the company.
Along with recruitment, Thoth Tech has taken onboard three external products, two live and well-established products – OnTrack and SplashKit – and DreamBig, a in development product which will leverage the OnTrack technology stack. Thoth Tech will also be creating our internal architecture and platform for employees throughout this third of the year, referred to as the Internal System project.
Both the OnTrack and SplashKit products have been identified as requiring extensions and additional features to improve the quality and usability of the product. OnTrack is a platform designed to facilitate student learning and reducing the pressure of achieving unrealistic grades. The focus is on providing a tailored learning experience, using tasks and a portfolio assessment. This product is live and is currently being upgraded to newer technology stacks and improving security and documentation. SplashKit is currently a 2D game development Software Development Kit used to teach object-oriented coding to beginners. It has been identified that SplashKit can be expanded to explore other areas and languages. The DreamBig product is in response to a need identified by Deakin,to provide a personalised development roadmaps to enhance students’ employability. Due to a partnership with the School of IT at Deakin University, Thoth Tech and the subsequent products are funded, supported, and leveraged by Deakin. However, all contributions by Thoth Tech members are acknowledged due to the Open-Source nature of the company. Deakin provides ground zero end-user testing and focus groups for product improvements.
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Andrew Cain,
Managing Director
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Glory Lee,
Managing Director
Table of contents
Role | Responsibilities | Skills | |
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Managing Director | The role of the managing director is to oversee the Thoth Tech company executive leadership team to ensure they are running the company effectively and value is being added to the Thoth Tech products by the projects they are supporting. |
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Product Lead | The role of the Product lead is to drive their focus on the projects of their product. They also organise, lead, guide, and support Delivery Leads to achieve their project goals. |
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Delivery Lead | The role of the Delivery lead is to lead, organise and support their project teams to ensure ongoing success. |
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Continue to grow Thoth Tech as a company in line with our mission and values.
Create a safe, supportive, and collaborative company culture that empowers our employees to learn and develop their skills.
Add value to the SplashKit Product by extending functionality and languages
Add value to Company Operations
Add value to the OnTrack Product by adding and enhancing features
Create the DreamBig prototype as a new product that adds value to the Thoth Tech company
The Thoth Tech charter is a crucial tool for guiding our team, navigating decisions, establishing boundaries, and aligning the team on how we work together. It defines how as a company we work together to achieve success.
Our charter comprises of the following:
Our mission is to build, operate and deploy world class education technologies. This is achieved by creating accessible tools that enhance education outcomes by empowering students, connecting them with tutors and facilitating personalised learning experiences.
Our values describe how we work, what we represent, and guide us to be the kind of company and team members we want to be. When we live up to these values we will:
Be people-focused
We expect the best from each other, give each other the benefit of the doubt, encourage each other to take initiative to improve ourselves and the company, and provide direct and constructive help to each other. We collaborate with kindness while being respectful of each other.
Uphold sustainable excellence
We create working, maintainable, and understandable software that is enjoyable and easy to use. We strive to do it in a way that is sustainable for our team members and for our environment.
Be inclusive and supportive
We celebrate diverse perspectives and embrace uncomfortable ideas and conversations. We facilitate an environment in which all team members feel psychologically safe enough to make requests for what they need to do their job. We learn through failures while continually working to make things better.
The Company is broken up based on product, with the product leads spread company wide. There is a tier system built into the company structure – directors, product leads, delivery leads, then team members. This structure is primarily about support, guidance, and feedback, rather than authority. Each employee has chosen their own role title based on their interests, skills, experience and what they want to develop.
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OnTrack is a platform designed to facilitate student learning by helping them achieve their unit learning outcomes and goals. It reduces pressure on achieving unrealistic grades, and importance on tailored content learning using tasks and a portfolio assessment. This approach provides students with a simple but effective way to demonstrate their achievements and learning outcomes with the assistance of teaching staff feedback throughout the unit. OnTrack is based on Doubtfire LMS and Thoth Tech is working towards creating new and enhanced features that improve the teaching and learning experience.
Product Lead: Shaine Christmas
Due to the rise in contract cheating, audio submissions to the OnTrack system need to be reviewed in order to ensure that the Speaker within the submission is the student to be submitting the work. The long term goal of this project is to implement a Voice Verification system into OnTrack Audio submissions. This will allow assessors to identify cheating where possible, and to discourage students from submitting work that is not their own.
The Aims for this Trimester are:
Short Term:
Long Term:
Delivery Lead: Shaine Christmas
Software Developers: Ha Nguyen, Devin Oshada Uvin Jayasinghe, Daniel Le, Simon Agahi, Jesse Kyle Hancock
The Objective of this project is to redesign the task view and submission process for students empowering students, connecting them with tutors and facilitating personalised learning experiences. Our goal is creating UI and software designs for a "next generation" update to tasks in OnTrack. The project effects all users of OnTrack, mainly for how students view and understand their tasks for their units, as well as how submission is handled for students and assessors.
The aims for this trimester are:
Short Term:
Long Term:
Delivery Lead: Grady Ramsay
Software Developers: Daniel Patrick Norris, Ricky Dodd, Mat Perkins
This project aims for enhance the file submission project for the OnTrack system. By increasing the types of files that can be used for submission to OnTrack, ease of submitting tasks for students and importing submissions for assessors will be increased. This project mainly effects the students, as it will reduce steps needed to submit tasks; specifically the conversion of different file types. Long term, this project aims to document accepted file types, identify file types that can be used for the OnTrack system, and implement and document any new file types added to the system.
The aims for this trimester are:
Short Term:
Long Term:
Delivery Lead: Nandini Kaushal
Software Developers: Keerat Kaur, Aaryan Sharma, Gurpartap Singh Panesar, Jayant, Yongqi Huang, Aryan Bagoria
The aim of the Security Analysis project is to understand the vulnerabilities within the OnTrack system, to aid in the implementation of security measures. Given that OnTrack has a high throughput of task submission and user data, protecting the students and assessors data is paramount for ensuring that both technical system remain secure. This will effect all users of Ontrack, as well as the ongoing development of the OnTrack system.
The aims for this trimester are:
Short Term:
Long Term:
Delivery Lead: Ereena Bagga
Developers: Ben Thomas
The overarching goal of this project is to migrate the current components, which utilise CoffeeScript and Bootstrap, to Angular framework with Typescript. CoffeeScript has outlived its usefulness and falls short of more contemporary frameworks in terms of support, functionality, and security. Developers can easily design dynamic single-page applications using Angular because to its component-based architecture. As TypeScript provides types and enables early problem identification, its use in its construction ensures improved security.
The aims for this trimester are:
Short Term:
Long Term:
Delivery Lead: Leo Luong
Software Developers: Anthony Papoutsis, Ahmed Ali, Aldy Putra Shavira, Kosta Constantinou, Nelson Lai
The Google Cloud Deployment team aims to deploy the existing OnTrack system to the Google Cloud Platform. This will aid in the interactions of the internal parts of the system, as well as scaling the system for future development of the platform. The overall goal for this project is to fully deploy and maintain the OnTrack system using the Google Cloud Platform.
The aims for this trimester are:
Short Term:
Long Term:
Delivery Lead: Harshpreet Kaur
Developers: Anshuman Bishnoi, Dan Eastaugh, Sicheng Liu, Chetan Nagar, Pratham Gupta, Xuetong Zhao
OnTrack is a growing and evolving system. OnTrack should be documented to ensure that future teams who work on the project have a starting point to understanding and making changes to the existing system. This will help all members of the OnTrack development team, current and future.
The Aims for this Trimester are:
Short Term:
Long Term:
Delivery Lead: Shaine Christmas
Documentors: Matt Clark, Jasdeep Singh, MD Fahim Mizi, Shiv Bhanu, Adrienne Gelbhauer
This project’s main goal is to identify and document the current features of OnTrack and put in place a Quality Assurance and Testing infrastructure to better maintain the quality of OnTrack and allow for more polished product. As OnTrack continues in its development, ensuring that robust testing is important for ensuring the quality of OnTrack as a system. The overarching goal of this project is to ensure that the OnTrack product is robust and completes rigorous testing.
The aims for this trimester are:
Short Term:
Long Term:
Delivery Lead: Matthew Paul Fletcher
Testers: David Kwiatkowski, Parth Aneja
SplashKit is an open-source Software Development Kit (SDK), created with the purpose of reducing the overhead required for truly technical coding and allowing students new to coding to create satisfying programs in a short period of time.
SplashKit enables beginning coders to quickly learn to construct fun and functional programs which they can be proud to showcase. SplashKit is an open-source Software Development Kit (SDK), created with the purpose of reducing the overhead required for truly technical coding which enables students new to coding to create satisfying programs in a short period of time. SplashKit enables novice coders to quickly learn to construct fun and functional programs which they can be proud to showcase. It includes a large library of functions which can be utilized by the user to experiment and apply for their own application or game.
This product is currently used by the students at Deakin University and aims to become a global educational toolkit. Currently the language used for development is C++ and the direction of the product is to improve and expand the capabilities to increase SplashKit accessibility.
Product Lead: Anthony George
The Operations team are responsible for delivering developments at a system level. This includes foundational project, installation processes ('skm'), bug fixes and solutions to ongoing system level problems.
This team has a goal of taking last trimesters existing research and extending on that to succeed in delivering an installation process that is effectively 'one-click' and compatible across all operating systems.
The team also has the objective to research and document the possibility (or lack thereof) a browser based implementation, and should one exist, design and document an approach to take to make this feasible.
The aim for this trimester is to
Short-term
Long-term
Delivery Lead: Ryan Lawrence
Developers: Ismail Hassan, Auden Vitasa, Kevin Nguyen
This trimester, the Extensions team will continue to develop the SplashKit translator Ruby application and enhance it to translate the original C++ library into Python versions > 3.8. The SplashKit Extensions project’s aim is to provide the SplashKit library interface in additional languages.
This team has a goal of taking last trimesters existing research and foundation, and extending on that to succeed in fixing the incompatibilities it encountered.
The team also has the objective to translate other languages if possible, and reserach and develop an alternative means to the use of MSYS during installation.
The aim for this trimester is to
Short-term
Long-term
Delivery Lead: Bella Chhour
Software Developers: Lachlan Cayzer, Nelson La, Nick Agiazis
This trimester, the arcade machine team has a solid foundation to build on, given the creation of a Windows application capable of cloning the games repository, and executing the games on a playable interface. The work of last trimester allows the team of this trimester to take closer steps to creating a physical arcade machine. The machine will perform similarly to a Multi-Game Arcade Machine, allowing users to select a game from a local library of games. Objectives include:
o Software which:
o The development of:
o Research of:
Additional features which may be considered later in the lifecycle of the project include the development and deployment of a website which:
o Supports the uploading of games o Stores and displays:
The aim of this trimester is to enhance the existing application to accommodate cross-platform compatibility. This will include developing methods to facilitate the compilation of games on the host machine. Access to the game library will be offered through the platform where the user can configure settings and select and play their desired game. If time permits, a physical Arcade Machine will be designed and manufactured however the software platform is the primary focus for the trimester.
Short-term
Long-term
Delivery Lead: Anthony George
Software Developers: Riley Dellios, Huy Nguyen, Richard Douglas-Denton, Lachlan Foy, Mohamed Zirufaan, Zac Brydon
This trimester, this team will collaborate as a unit to create a single game of exceptional class and quality.
The goal is to make a game so good it is worthy of commercial release game. The intension here is to showcase to the world, the power of the SplashKit SDK, and encourage developers to develop games using the engine. This trimester's student developers will aim to utilise as many methods that SplashKit has to offer in order to ‘advertise’ SplashKit’s ability as a game engine.
The long-term objectives will showcase how by using SplashKit, game development quality can be achieved such that the product created is of a high enough professional standard, the game can be made available commercially. Synchronously, the game will be showcased on the arcade machine in development.
The aim for this trimester is to
Short-term
Long-term
Delivery Lead: Morgaine Barter
Software Developers: Daniel Agbay, Lachlan Morgan, Roy Chen, Robert Osborne, Lily Lan, Jiahao Zheng
The Splashkit modules team has an exciting semester ahead of them, with each module in a position to have deliverable components completed.
The machine learning module had a working reinforcement learning agent that can play turn based games. Refactoring and code review was performed on the physics module, but external dependencies on the Box2D library has left the module requiring a major refactor. This refactor would mean that Splashkit would contain a native physics engine. The data analytics module has a structure for a dataframe, pending it passing code review and testing.
Objectives for the modules project include:
With the addition of these modules, there is potential for Splashkit to be utilised in a greater capacity within more disciplines. Building the data analytics module allows for more focused classes to be designed for data science students, rather than only using Splashkit for building games. Both the physics and machine learning modules will advance the quality and capability of games and animations built while using Splashkit.
The primary aim for this trimester is to have the reinforcement learning agent ready to use by developers and to complete the first stage of deliverables for the physics and data analytics modules. These initial deliverables are to complete the basic dataframe for data analytics and to replace the existing Box2D library uses with native methods.
Secondary aims for the semester are to create a neural network agent, develop plots and visualisations from the data in the dataframes and to begin creating methods for gravity, sinking and projectile motion.
Short-term
Long-term
Short-term
Long-term
Short-term
Long-term
Delivery Lead: Timothy Moore
Software Developers: Alex Hocking, Devesh Juggiah, Gaganjeet Singh, Harry Dentry, Jingyu Zhang, Munatsi Matipano
DreamBig is a new product innovation driven by the School of IT at Deakin. DreamBig aims to provide a personalised roadmap integrated with Ontrack to support students to develop their professional identity across their course and improve their employability after graduation. In addition, it aims to provide a platform to help set realistic expectations for students graduating into the real world. In line with this vision, it is proposed to build a prototype that can help achieve the following goals:
Product Lead: Neha Makineni
DreamBig is at its early inception. The customer needs and product requirements are gradually discovered and refined. The Prototype Technical project is an attempt to explore the technicality and possibility of the features discovered by the design team. The process includes determining Backend API functionality and preparing frontend pages to prove that, identifying underserved customer needs, UML diagram for backend DB design, database, specifying the MVP feature set, building, and testing small build components of the prototype with the customers.
Research will be conducted to investigate finalised frontend components and design the backend for them and prioritise high-value features. These will form the minimum viable product (MVP). As part of this work, the following will be established:
Short-term
Long-term
Delivery Lead: Linden Hutchinson
Software Developers: Norbert Pop, Way Yan Min
Technical Documentation Specialist: Xue Ting Jing
DreamBig Frontend design is at its early inception. The customer needs and product requirements are discovered and are being refined at every step. The Prototype Design project is an attempt to explore the product-market fit. The process includes re-determining our target customer, identifying underserved customer needs, defining the product value proposition, specifying the MVP feature set, building, and testing design the prototype with the customers.
Research will be conducted to investigate customer needs and prioritise high-value features. These will form the minimum viable product (MVP). As part of this work, the following will be established:
Short-term
Long-term
Delivery lead: Harry Liu
UI&UX designer: Adam Sawczuk, Josephine Hannah, Junhua Ma, Monica Valentina Tasmin, Wei Min Voon
DreamBig Frontend design is at its early inception. The customer needs and product requirements are discovered and are being refined at every step. The Prototype Documentation and QA project is an attempt to explore and build a standard structured framework of documentation and QA processes. The process includes and testing of design/technical prototype with company standards.
Research will be conducted to investigate possible structure and frameworks for documentations and QA testings. These will form the minimum viable product (MVP). As part of this work, the following will be established:
Short-term
Delivery lead: Neha Makineni
Technical writers: Alicia Threatt, Ashar Kamal
Quality Assurance testing specialists: Gurpreet Kaur, Tiomothy Davies
Managing company processes and operations. Keeping Thoth-Tech running. Help employees to understand the systems, equipment, people, and processes need to make the organization function.
Product Lead: Ishrat Jahan
Internal systems website will be for holding all company related documentation. This will provide the benefit of making documentation centrally locatable and easily accessible for relevant internal audiences.
Short-term:
Long-term:
Delivery Lead: Ishrat Jahan
Software Developers: Harrison Paul Allwood, Manveen Kaur Bhullar, Pratham Gupta, Sherap Thakur, Tanish Dhapola
The Company Documentation team is responsible for reviewing, managing and improving the state of documentation across the whole of the Thoth Tech company. Our goal is to review the current state of company documentation within the company to improve and expand upon this documentation. In doing so, our objectives are to streamline the quality and processes of documentation across the whole company and to create additional documentation to support the needs of the company operation as it continues to grow and change.
This trimester, the Company Documentation team aims to create, manage, maintain, and improve the state of company documentation, company policies around transition and people operation. In meeting this aim, the team will:
Short-term:
Long-term:
Delivery Lead: James Micallef
Company Documentation Members (specific roles TBA): Sarah Nicole Dyson, Ethan Graham Keirs, Durga Maya Ghallay, Charanjeet Singh, Faiq Rehman