Adaptive E-learning Platform Enhancement & Maintenance
Development experts from Mbicycle assured high-end maintenance and enhancement of an adaptive digital learning platform for a well-known edTech company.
Client & Context
In this project, the Mbicycle team cooperated with a well-known adaptive learning solution provider to enhance their current software. The main idea of the client’s platform is to provide their in-house learning engine that its users can further seamlessly integrate and adjust into their current ecosystems. Our client’s software helps its users deliver their existing lessons and other educational content for learners and teachers worldwide to assure a personalized learning experience.
The client looked for a reliable software development agency through their business network. Following a recommendation from one of their business partners, the client contacted Mbicycle to improve their current adaptive e-learning platform.
Challenges & Requirements
The client contacted Mbicycle to expand their in-house development team with our qualified specialists for the maintenance and enhancement of their adaptive digital learning platform. To implement this key task properly, the client defined several additional challenges for our team:
- Study out a large amount of the existing source code with a lack of necessary documentation.
- Write technical requirements and implement them further.
- Rework the components of the current UI and add new elements.
- Migrate the client’s platform to TypeScript partly — so that it doesn’t negatively affect current users.
- Proceed with partial testing of implemented features by writing unit, smoke, API, and integration tests.
- Support a legacy AngularJS-based app for those clients who still need to migrate to the updated version.
Process
To implement the project features and augment the client’s team, Mbicycle provided the following dedicated software experts:
- Two front-end developers (VueJS/TypeScript)
- Back-end developer (PHP)
- Designer
The rest of the development team included employees from the client’s company.
Our team successfully implemented new features and resolved issues we got both from the client’s management and the app users via the feedback form. Our specialists also suggested a few functionality improvements in the project.
Working on this project, we followed the Kanban development methodology with refinement meetings every Friday, where we discussed the tasks and issues to resolve during the next week.
Solution
As the client already had a full-fledged running version of their adaptive learning platform written in AngularJS with a large base of end users, we focused our work on implementing the following solutions:
- Defining and implementing potential improvements in the client’s digital learning platform’s source code and UI / UX elements.
- Migrating the current app version from AngularJS to TypeScript programming language, while maintaining the entire functionality and smooth operation of the initial version for current users.
- Testing the app functionality and eliminating emerging bugs and errors.
- Extending the current functionality of this adaptive learning software by introducing new functionality.
- Developing and integrating custom features requested by the platform clients and their end users (learners, students, tutors, etc.) via a specific feedback form in the application.
- Providing a demo version with the full-fledged platform functionality to promote this software product among potential investors and new customers.
We decided to migrate the app version from AngularJS to TypeScript, as the last one provides static typing, which reduces the runtime errors that AngularJS were causing during complex processing in our eLearning software. Moreover, using TypeScript offers better architecture, algorithms for data binding, and other useful features, including type aliases, abstract classes, function overloading, generics, etc.
Technologies & Tools
Frontend
VueJS, TypeScript
Backend
PHP
Third-party library APIs
PSQL, MySQL, PSQL Aurora
Results
As a result of collaborative work on this adaptive learning platform, the client was satisfied with the results and our teamwork, as all the scheduled features were delivered fully and on time.
The Mbicycle team refactored almost all legacy code and cleared the technical debt that existed for more than a year before our experts were involved in the project. Specialists from Mbicycle also helped with migrating the client’s platform into the up-to-date TypeScript language, which increased its overall performance.
After improving the adaptive e-learning solution together with our specialists, the client’s management committed to a significant increase in the level of the platform users’ satisfaction — by 30% in two quarters. Now we continue to maintain the platform and improve solutions for the platform’s end users. In the next year, the client plans to enlarge the project team with the Mbicycle experts and introduce new app functionality.
