The full case study
E-learning platform for business schools, step by step
On this page · 9 sections
About the business
The client approached us with a distinctive e-learning platform that was being used in universities and business schools in the UK. Its purpose was to aid students in generating business ideas, validating them, and receiving feedback.
The platform required students to provide all the necessary information and answer probing questions that would help stimulate their creativity and generate business ideas. After that, the platform enabled them to build a business model canvas, test their ideas, and receive feedback from their teachers and peers. Finally, the results were automatically generated as a customizable and aesthetically pleasing portfolio.
While the original platform had great potential, it was seldom used by students. Our client realized this and decided to audit and redesign the platform to make it a more user-friendly and engaging solution for all students. This is where our collaboration began.
Project tasks
- Complete platform audit and perform a user research to understand how to improve the platform’s experience and expand feature set.
- Improve e-learning platform usability and UX.
- Implement engaging features including Team Play experience to attract more potential users (students and business schools).
Project team
- Project Manager
- Business Analyst
- 2 UX/UI designers
- 2 Front-end developers
- Back-end engineer
- QA engineer
- DevOps specialist
3 month for Discovery & Design
4 months for Development & Testing
Platform features
Brainstorming
A platform has a set of templates that help users boost creativity and generate 6+ business ideas on the go.
Testing ideas
Users can validate business assumptions and get feedback using built-in Lean Startup methodology tool.
Canvas builder
It’s a powerful tool used to create business model canvas to visualize and validate any startup idea.
Portfolio creation
Platform helps users create and curate a customizable portfolio by providing a questionnaire.
Admin panel for teachers
We created an advanced admin panel with dashboards and in-depth insights for the business teachers and lecturers.
Now they can easily perform a lot of actions:
- monitor students activity and their progress
- generate various reports
- perform in-depth analysis of created ideas, business canvases
- see percentage of completed tests.
These insights will help teachers and lecturers to understand if their students making and progress, and on what areas they should focus.
Builder of business model canvas
Our goal was to implement a smart tool helping students to easily visualize startup ideas and create business development plan.
Canvas builder is an interactive tool that guides students through the process and helps them define key business aspects such as:
- possible partners
- customer segment
- value proposition
- key activities etc.
As students input information, the tool dynamically generates and updates the business model canvas in real-time. This helps them see the immediate impact of their decisions on the overall business model.
We also included some templates and examples to provide students with clear guidance and inspiration. This ensures that students have a clear understanding of each section’s purpose and how it contributes to the overall business model.
Forecasting tool
Forecasting tool is crucial as it provides students with insights into the development and potential success of their startup ideas.
While developing this tool we added to it a bunch of options:
- Data Input – users can add variables related to their startup such as revenue, expenses, growth rate, and market trends.
- Financial Modeling – the tool automatically performs calculations based on the provided data, creating financial models of startup performance over time.
- Scenarios – students can create and compare multiple scenarios, exploring best-case, worst-case, and expected outcomes.
- Dynamic data update – as students make changes to their startup strategy or input new data, the forecasting tool updates the projections in real-time.
- Visualization – the tool generates graphs and charts to visually represent the forecasted data. It is designed to scale with the growing volume of video data and adapt to changes in the surveillance environment.
Development approach
Our goal was to implement a set of new features and ensure high performance and easy maintenance of the e-learning platform. So the tech stack was selected with these aspects in mind and included:
- TypeScript for both front-end (React) and back-end development to ensure that the source code is stable and future maintenance costs will be low.
- Amazon AWS was selected as the main cloud service provider since it is the most cost-effective and scalable solution on the market.
- Swagger was used for effective API documentation and testing.
- REST API was created by our team as the main communication gateway between product parts.
- PostgreSQL and MongoDB were used to store and process a lot of different data types.
Outcome
Our team performed a complex redesign of the e-learning platform and made it more engaging, user-friendly and functional. We implemented a bunch of new features that delivered value to both – students and teachers.
As of now, the e-learning platform is successfully launched and tested by thousands of business school students. We received only positive feedback from users and great news from the client. He informed us that several big business schools are planning to integrate this software into the educational process.
