Try to imagine it’s Monday morning… The alarm clock goes off. You’re getting ready for a new day of school: you put on clean clothes, make lunch, and go to the next room to turn on your computer. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? You’re right, it’s a kind of distance education.
COVID-19 has changed our worldview, and many people have begun to prefer online learning to offline. The story is the same with educational institutions, many of which continue to provide students with education in this format. Despite the fact that COVID-19 has already subsided in some places, online remains a convenient alternative. Modern schooling and global society are being significantly transformed by innovative educational platforms.
Today we want to tell you about an educational project that a client from the United States of America outsourced to Agiliway. What will we talk about? E-learning, or an online educational platform, is certainly aimed at a wide range of users – from teachers to students and their families.
Main Idea of the Project
The project served as a valuable educational platform, integrating several micro-products into an overall structure. The designed system had a primary emphasis on both the educational professionals and students. The platform’s features enabled instructors to establish their class preferences, monitor students’ progress, enforce access restrictions, get automated notifications on students’ academic achievements, and do many other tasks. Teachers have the option to offer home-based tasks, mostly focused on reading, which may be obtained from various sources such as libraries or downloaded from the internet. The students were provided with the chance to engage in online testing across many disciplines. They were able to access study materials online and make relevant annotations as needed.
In addition, the system included a daily mailing of student assignments and web-based tools for educational institutions to simplify the monitoring of student performance in individual disciplines.
The Project Model and its Associated Challenges
The project model that the customer wanted to see included wide scalability, functionality, and, as a result, multitasking. The system had to have a simple, clear, and intuitive structure and interface that would meet the needs of both teachers and students of different age groups. Consequently, the components of the structural platform often included a variety of evaluation tables, graphics, charts, and other visual aids to enhance the visualization and absorption of information. A bespoke Kanban board was created to provide users with specific functionalities for lesson preparation and evaluations.
To ensure the effective functioning of our team, we encountered a number of obstacles that necessitated acquiring proficiency in AWS (Amazon Web Services) and comprehending the intricacies and demands of the associated projects. In a short period of time, Agiliway developers have shown themselves to be very valuable assets to the whole project by offering technical assistance to other teams. Additionally, acquired knowledge on effectively using unfamiliar programming and collaborating with other teams.
Implementation of Solutions in the Project
There are three essential elements involved in building a web e-learning application. The back-end was developed using the .NET framework. The customer had their own local development team consisting of engineers and managers. At the time of contacting Agiliway, they began a smooth and gradual transition from the older version of .NET due to the microservice architecture of the product. Accordingly, the client needed engineers who were well-versed in .NET technologies.
The front-end development was carried out using Angular JS and Angular, as well as the corresponding libraries for graphical solutions and properly structured evaluation data. As an open-source JavaScript web framework, Angular JS was designed to simplify both the development and testing of a web application. Libraries for Angular were used:
- present information;
- permit data input;
- provide a standardized user interface;
- data regarding students.
Cloud services, such as AWS, Redshift, Amazon Lambda, and S3, were used to quickly and easily store, search, manipulate, and apply data of any format and volume. Since the e-learning project under discussion involved large amounts of data, the use of cloud technologies greatly simplified the product development process.
Delivered Value
By effectively integrating the previously mentioned development methodologies, the Agiliway engineering team successfully developed specific sub-projects and integrated various functionalities.
- User preferences
- Students’ individual achievement boards
- A system that automatically counts grades
- Information search and filtering, as well as the notification system
- Integration of ready-made front-end solutions
- Tools for the execution of skills assessments, etc.
The customer received a fully operational Education Management System (EMS) that facilitated the generation, administration, and storage of educational data. Additionally, it enabled the analysis and reporting of educational information pertaining to schools, students, instructors, and staff. The widespread worldwide use of the program may be attributed to its multifunctionality, scalability, and platform simplicity.
