Instructors do not need another tool that drafts lesson plans in a chat window and forgets them. They need a place where the agent's draft, the standards it pulled from, the instructor who approved it, and the timestamp on that approval are all one row. Dock is that place. The LMS owns the course and the published plan. Dock owns the interpretation layer and the review the instructor signed.
Canvas, Google Classroom, and Schoology stay the system of record for the raw data. Dock is the system of record for what the AGENT INTERPRETS. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the platform record, agent identity, decision, reviewer, and timestamp. The agent re-fetches platform data via fresh API reads when it needs current state.
The Lesson Plan Drafts surface
| Course | Unit | Objectives pulled | Standards | Draft status | Reviewer | Approved at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bio 10 (Canvas) | Cell respiration | 3 of 3 | NGSS HS-LS1-7 | Approved with edits | mr.alvarez@school.org | 2026-05-28 14:02 |
| Algebra II (Classroom) | Quadratic forms | 4 of 4 | CCSS A-REI.4 | Needs revision | ms.okafor@school.org | pending |
| World History (Schoology) | Industrial Rev. | 5 of 5 | C3 D2.His.3.9-12 | Approved as drafted | mr.tan@school.org | 2026-05-29 08:41 |
The row is the artifact. When the instructor needs to defend why an activity ran on Tuesday, the trail is one click, not a search through chat logs. This is the pattern across Dock for education and adjacent fields like Dock for research.
One worked workflow
The agent fires on a weekly schedule. For each upcoming unit, it reads learning objectives from the Canvas module, the Google Classroom topic, or the Schoology folder, cross-references the standards the course is tagged against, and drafts a 45-minute plan with a warm-up, two activities, and an exit ticket. It writes the draft to a new Dock row with pointers to the source objectives.
The instructor opens the row, edits the activities, and clicks Approve. Dock writes the approving identity and timestamp. Only then does the agent push the approved plan back to the LMS as a draft module item. If the instructor clicks Needs revision, the agent re-reads the objectives via a fresh API call and produces a new draft on the same row, preserving the prior version.
Nothing publishes without a named human approval. Nothing is approved without the objectives the agent actually read.
Why it matters
Carnegie Mellon's Eberly Center is direct: alignment among objectives, assessments, and strategies is what makes a course coherent, and "learning objectives should guide the selection of assessments" (Eberly, learning objectives). Their course-design framework treats objectives as the anchor for assessment and strategy choices (Eberly, course design).
An agent that drafts plans without surfacing which objectives it read breaks that alignment quietly. A row that names the objectives, the standards, the draft, and the reviewer keeps alignment visible and auditable, the same posture we describe in agent audit and compliance.
The instructor stays the principal. The agent is a named participant with agent identity, not a ghostwriter. The LMS stays the publishing surface. The Dock for design brief-and-review loop is the same shape: agent drafts, named human approves, platform publishes. Attribution is the substrate, which is why agent audit and compliance is load-bearing.
Start a Dock workspace for one course unit and let the agent draft against real objectives.
FAQ
Does Dock replace Canvas, Google Classroom, or Schoology? No. The LMS stays the system of record for enrollments, the gradebook, and the published lesson. Dock holds the draft and the review.
What if objectives in the LMS change after the agent drafts? The agent re-fetches on the next run or when the instructor clicks Needs revision. Stale interpretations are surfaced, not pushed.
Who is recorded as the approver? The authenticated instructor identity that clicked Approve. The agent is named separately as drafter. Both identities and the timestamp live on the row.
Can an auditor see what an agent drafted six months ago? Yes. Rows are immutable history. The auditor sees the draft, objectives, reviewer, and timestamp without asking the instructor to reconstruct anything.
