Live Institutional Platform — Built on StellarView
Dodd-Edco. The institutional learning platform for the AI era.
Pioneered computer teaching and training in the early 1980s. Now revived as the operating foundation for modern software engineering, AI, cloud, and SDLC practice — at universities and corporate IT teams. Real AWS workspaces. Cost-capped labs. Course-scoped AI. Deploy 30 students in a single sitting.
A faculty member built the platform institutions had been waiting for.
CS departments couldn't deploy 30 students into real cloud environments, instrument their work, control costs, and tear it all down at semester end. So Wilbur did, on StellarView. Dodd-Edco is the result.
Watch the Story
Six chapters · Wilbur's vision in his own words
From the Faculty
"Dodd-Edco gives colleges and universities a real platform for teaching modern software engineering, AI-augmented development, cloud infrastructure, and SDLC practice."
Five commitments: Real AWS Student Workspaces. Cost-Capped Cloud Labs. Course-Scoped AI Companion. Institutional Self-Service. FERPA-Aware Design.
Not a sandbox. Not a recorded course. The actual platform attorneys, engineers, and architects use in production — handed to students with guardrails and to faculty with controls.
— WilburRidgeline State University
The Platform
Real cloud. Real labs. Real learning.
A university-ready platform for modern software engineering education. Real AWS environments, AI-powered tools, course workflows in a single system. Purpose-built for universities — not a stripped-down sandbox.
Workspaces
Student Workspaces
Secure, isolated AWS environments provisioned per student. Real services, real consoles, real cloud — guarded by per-student budget caps.
Curriculum
Curriculum Framework
Scenarios driven by missions with clear objectives and deliverables. The platform's documentation is the curriculum — updates ship continuously.
Instructor
Instructor Tooling
Powerful controls, templates, and automation for faculty. Class deployment wizard. Cohort and section management. Role-based access.
Lifecycle
Semester Lifecycle
Plan, deploy, run, and close the semester with ease. Provisioning calendar. Auto-teardown at semester end. Clean every term, costs reset.
Analytics
Space Lake Analytics
Unified visibility into usage, engagement, and outcomes. Bronze→Silver→Gold→Vector medallion architecture, scoped per institution.
Companion
RAG Companion
Course-scoped AI assistant for students. Knows your syllabus, your materials, your jurisdiction of practice. Cites sources. No public-internet drift.
Inside the App
A live walk-through. Click any frame for full detail.
Wilbur's institution running on Dodd-Edco — Command Center across all classes, Deployment Rail orchestrating cloud, the AI Companion answering course-scoped questions, the Deploy Wizard standing up a class in minutes.
Command Center
Class dashboard · 4 active classes · 112 students · cost alerts · live activity · institution-wide view for the dean's office
Click for full detail Use arrows to walk through all 4
2
Deployment Rail
3
AI Companion
4
Deploy Wizard
AI Companion
Course-scoped AI. Not the public internet.
Every class gets its own RAG Companion — scoped to the syllabus, the materials, the prior lectures, the assigned readings. Students get help that's grounded in what they're actually learning. Faculty get assistants that don't drift off-topic.
Course-Scoped
Bounded Context
Retrieval is scoped to the course corpus. CS 4900 doesn't get answers contaminated by CS 5500. Each class is its own knowledge environment.
Mission-Aware
Grades Real Work
Mission framework checks deliverables against objectives. Auto-graded orientation. Instructor materials reviewed by AI before students see them.
Safe
Student-Safe Scaffolding
The AI helps students learn — it doesn't do the work for them. Hints, reasoning prompts, sample-by-analogy. Pedagogical guardrails by design.
Deployment
Deploy a class in minutes. Three levels of clean isolation.
A guided flow turns institutional intent into real student workspaces. Every level isolated, every cost capped, every workspace torn down clean at semester end.
I
Institution Tenant
University-wide settings: branding, SSO, budgets, academic calendar, FERPA controls, governance.
II
Class Tenant
Class-level configuration: roster, assignments, class corpus, AI companion scope, analytics window.
III
Student Workspace
Isolated Galaxy instance with scoped AWS sandbox, capped costs, mission scope. Auto-torn-down at term end.
~10 minutes
Deployment Time
From signed contract to 30 students in real AWS workspaces, ready for first class. The deploy rail is the product.
The Foundation
The full foundation is already there.
Ingestion, APIs, deployment, security, operations — all working together. Five layers integrated into one operating foundation for AI-native, cloud-native software engineering education.
Layer 1
Experience Layer
Institution Admin Console, Class Deployment Wizard, Mission Framework, Companion, Space Lake, PracticAI, Cost Dashboard.
CDN, ECS, S3, Glacier, CloudFront, SES, IAM. The substrate that's the same kit other Gang-of-5 verticals inherit.
Layer 5
Governance & Controls
Per-student budgets, FERPA-aware data handling, audit logging, monitoring & metrics. Built for institutions; trusted by deans.
Why It Works
One-sitting Onboarding
An entire institution stood up in a single session. After that, the institution self-serves: deploy classes, run them, close them.
Built With
The StellarView platform stack.
Data Layer
Space Lake
AI Retrieval
RAG Companion
Reasoning
PracticAI
Spawn
Vibe Creator
Missions
Mission Framework
Deploy
Fleet Command
Real cloud. Real labs. Real learning.
Dodd-Edco is one of five vertical SaaS products built on StellarView. Pioneered in the 80s. Revived for the AI era. Sold to colleges and corporate IT for $10K/year, hands-off.
Ridgeline State UniversityThe fictional showcase institution where Dodd-Edco is deployed. Stands in for any college or university — composite of real practitioner input.
Wilbur's VisionThe institutional learning platform for the AI era. Pioneered in the 80s. Revived now because institutions need real cloud, real costs, real teaching.
PremiseDodd-Edco gives colleges and universities a real platform for teaching modern software engineering, AI-augmented development, cloud infrastructure, and SDLC practice.
Real AWS Student WorkspacesNot a sandbox. Real AWS accounts, real services, real consoles. Students leave the course knowing how the cloud actually behaves.
Cost-Capped Cloud LabsPer-student hard budget caps enforced before resource creation. Institutions never get a surprise AWS bill.
Course-Scoped AI CompanionEach class gets its own RAG companion bounded to the course corpus. No drift, no contamination, no public-internet noise.
Institutional Self-ServiceOne-sitting onboarding. After that, the institution deploys classes, runs them, closes them — without calling support.
FERPA-Aware DesignStudent data handling built to FERPA expectations from day one. Audit logging, retention controls, consent flows — institution-grade.
WilburFaculty member, the practitioner-champion behind Dodd-Edco. Real-world counterpart preserved internally. Stands in for the CS faculty everywhere who built the course they wished had existed.
Dodd-Edco Is BuiltA university-ready platform for modern software engineering education. Not a vision deck — a deployed, working application.
Live DashboardReal institutional metrics — active classes, students, cost utilization, deployment status. The actual operational view a dean uses.
Student WorkspacesSecure, isolated AWS environments provisioned per student. Real-cloud experience, not a simulator.
Curriculum FrameworkMission-driven scenarios with clear objectives and deliverables. The platform's documentation IS the curriculum.
Instructor ToolingPowerful controls, templates, and automation for faculty. Class deployment wizard. Cohort management. Role-based access.
Space Lake AnalyticsUnified visibility into usage, engagement, and outcomes. Bronze→Silver→Gold→Vector medallion architecture, scoped per institution.
Mission FrameworkScenario-driven learning with clear objectives and gradeable deliverables. Replaces "watch a video, take a quiz" with "do the work, get assessed."
Semester LifecyclePlan, deploy, run, and close the semester with ease. Auto-teardown at term end. Costs reset every cycle.
RAG CompanionCourse-scoped AI assistant for students. Knows your syllabus, your materials, your readings. Cites sources.
FoundationReal AWS · AI Native · Deploy in Minutes · Institutional. Not aspirational claims — operational defaults.
Deploy a Class in MinutesA guided flow that turns institutional intent into real student workspaces. From class concept to provisioned cohort in roughly ten minutes.
Class Deployment WizardSix-step flow: Class Identity → Semester Configuration → Workspace Configuration → RAG Corpus → Student Roster → Review & Deploy. Faculty-driven, not IT-mediated.
Institution TenantUniversity-wide settings: branding, SSO, budgets, academic calendar, FERPA controls. The dean's-office layer.
Class TenantClass-level configuration: roster, assignments, class corpus, AI companion scope, analytics window. The faculty layer.
Student WorkspaceIsolated Galaxy with scoped AWS sandbox, capped costs, mission scope. Auto-torn-down at term end. The student layer.
Service Allow-listAWS Service Allow-List + Per-Student Cost Cap + SSO Group Sync. Three guardrails that institutions cannot live without.
~10 Minutes for 30 StudentsThe benchmark. From wizard start to first student session, roughly a coffee break. The deploy rail IS the product.
Students Learn by DoingEvery learner gets a real, isolated, cost-capped AWS workspace — not a recorded lecture, not a sandbox, not a slide deck.
Student WorkspaceThe actual learner-facing environment. Mission queue with tasks, weekly cost guard, progress tracker, recent activity. They work; the platform observes and assesses.
Snapshot SnapshotWorkspace state captured for grading and review. The instructor sees what the student actually did — not what they reported.
Mission FrameworkAuto-checks deliverables and outcomes against objectives. Less "did you turn it in?" and more "did the thing actually work?"
Real AWSNot a simulator. The same console, the same APIs, the same error messages students will face on day one of a real engineering job.
Vibe CreatorStudents spawn project starters as part of learning — well-formed structures, deployable code. Building muscle, not memorizing syntax.
Smart PromptsPedagogical patterns for assessing missions, suggesting next exercises, scaffolding student learning safely.
Auto-Graded OrientationStudents self-serve into proficiency before the first lecture. The platform verifies environment readiness before class begins.
Space Lake HistoryEvery action captured for learning, review, and reporting. Institution gets analytics; student gets a portfolio; faculty gets evidence.
Space Lake + AI CompanionAnalytics, ontology, ingestion, knowledge base, and RAG — unified for modern education. The same data substrate every Gang-of-5 vertical inherits.
Ingestion · Raw EventsStudent interactions, mission outputs, cost events, GitHub activity. Bronze tier — raw, immutable, the source of truth.
Ontology & Entity ModelCohort, Course, Student, Mission, Artifact. The shape of educational data, encoded once, queried many ways.
AnalyticsProgress scores, engagement signals, at-risk flags, retention. Silver and Gold tiers — the dashboards faculty and deans actually use.
Knowledge Base + RAGCourse corpus chunked and embedded. Vector tier. Course-scoped retrieval. Anthropic-assisted generation grounded in the syllabus.
Course-Scoped CompanionReal example: CS 4900 question — "Why is Q[2] equally to a Mission 3?" — RAG retrieves syllabus, prior lectures, instructor notes. Cites sources.
FoundationBronze · Glue Transformations · OpenSearch · Knowledge Base · Anthropic Assistance. Production patterns, not classroom toys.
The Full Foundation Is Already ThereIngestion, APIs, deployment, security, operations — all working together. Not pieces to assemble; a kit that's been integrated for production.
Layer 1 — ExperienceInstitution Admin Console, Class Deploy Wizard, Mission Framework, Companion, Space Lake, PracticAI, Cost Dashboard. The faculty- and student-facing UX.
Integrated StackEach layer's components are not assembled per-deployment — they're pre-integrated and tested. Institutions get the whole thing in one sitting.
One-Sitting · Automated · Built On StellarViewThree properties that make this real: institutions onboarded in a single session, lifecycle automation built in, and the whole thing rides on StellarView's shared deploy rail.
Closing PromiseDodd-Edco gives universities a real operating foundation for AI-native, cloud-native software engineering education. Not a course. A foundation.
