Challenge
The client is a Columbia-based product company with multiple software offerings across various sectors. The client envisioned developing a product catering to the needs of the education and e-learning sector. This product would educate multiple people across the globe by leveraging the application and expanding their knowledge and skillset.
With the evolving needs of e-learning space, students and teachers look up to interactive and informational online platforms that are easily accessible worldwide. The platform is aimed to offer multitudes of educational and informative materials helpful in accomplishing learning objectives. Working professionals can also access this platform to enhance their existing skills and earn money by publishing effective content on the website.
The client with its unique requirements approached sysgenpro to assist them in launching an eLearning website for students & teachers to interact and share information on courses, exchange ideas, and discuss queries on any trending topic. As one of the top web development company, sysgenpro created some of the industry-first features.
The client’s “E-Learning Website” is aimed to have multiple features. Enlisted are unique client’s requirements.
- Provide an online & interactive platform for students and professors for knowledge sharing on different topics.
- A platform for teachers to create resources, share and earn.
- Secure login to students/professors for viewing their course materials and profile details.
- Open forum for Q&A section to improve communication between professors and students
- Online digital payment platforms like PayPal for students to purchase different courses and materials
- A platform which supports bi-lingual content such as English & Spanish
- Integration of different technologies such as PHP and Java that allows the large variety of functionalities for students and professors
Expertise
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Tools & Technology
PHP • Laravel • MySQL • Visual Studio Code • Sphinx • Vimeo • YouTube • Microsoft Azure
Solution
After considering the unique requirements of the client, sysgenpro developed the “E-Learning website” - An online education ecosystem that simplifies the process of planning, creating, operating online courses, and allowing a high-quality education. PHP was a perfect fit for the platform given its extensive usage in the web development industry. It is inclusive of specialized tools and options for teachers and students to share knowledge and improve career graphs.
Major features/modules of the web application are as below:
1. Courses Module:
With assigned accessibility, the professors can create different course modules with specialized creation of chapters and subchapters under the career section. Each chapter and subchapter has multiple materials in the form of text, images, PowerPoint presentations, videos, course descriptions, and more. Professors are also rightful to set courses as “Free Courses” or “Paid Courses”.
Track courses
The platform allows users to enrol themselves as professors and create a course on any trending category. Professor can track courses and progress of his/her students.
Accounting
This module is incorporated mainly for data that are used in the other modules like the end of the day transaction, A/R invoices, credit card transactions, accounting periods
Course catalogue
In the course catalogue section, one can apply necessary filters like category, education level, and type of course, free or paid one. Hundreds of options are available to choose from various courses from industry-leading professors.
Course details
With this feature, one gets detailed information on selected courses like author information, reviews, course structure, and so on. Ratings and reviews help students choose the best course as per their needs.
Certification
On finishing the course students are awarded a certificate. The students can directly share the certificates on social media to keep everyone informed about their achievements.
2. Chapter Features:
The students have an inbuilt option to take personal notes. Online discussion with classmates and professor via the medium of forums and wikis provides liveliness of a physical classroom along with the convenience of remote learning.
Students have the convenience of going back to a chapter more than one time by bookmarking it. The facility to report inappropriate/improper content to the professor is also helpful to improve overall course quality.
Students can get to know about their classmate in classmate’s section. They can listen to audios, check out the videos, and give exams at the end of the chapter to make sure that they have understood it properly.
3. Progress reports
Professors can take tests on multiple course types. Students can take these tests and get the results shared on social media platforms if they wish to.
4. Video Recorder Module
The video recorder module is a desktop-based plugin developed in Java which allows professors to record audio and video. We, as an experienced JAVA Development Company, offered different functionalities such as video editing which allows the user to cut, trim, or edit the video, manage video frames, select different microphones, and webcam facilities using Xuggler API. Users can save the video and audio in their local desktop and can also upload to the server which would show the video and audio in their user profile.
5. Admin Module
Admin can approve different courses created by the professor and can also check whether the user is allowed to be logged in a professor or not. Admin also monitors different activities such as student’s user profile, forums, progress report section, and total revenue generated through different courses. Payment made by the students on any course purchase goes to the admin who then forwards the royalty to the respective professor.
6. Additional Power
If logged in as a professor then there are numerous rights such as access to multiple courses and enrolled student profiles. A professor can invite their colleagues to the platform as author or tutor and share the responsibility with them to take exams or classes.
It has few additional features like Sphinx- for faster search, Video/YouTube, APIs to show the respective videos as elements of the classroom, Uploads on S3 bucket and use of CDN, Video upload to YouTube channel, Carabineer to compress JS, CSS for faster website performance.
7. Statistics
Real-time statistical update on which course is popular, how many students are enrolled in each course, what is the progress of each student and similar information about your student/course in the reports section is available with an option to download and share in multiple formats.
8. Notifications
The notifications, which will make sure that you don't forget anything and keeps you updated with all changes.
9. Company
Option to enrol yourself as a company and invite all your employees in one place. Buy the courses in a bulk quantity for them and track their progress.
Result
The client gained a tremendous amount of benefits by partnering with and utilizing sysgenpro’s end-to-end PHP development services. This platform gave a boost to the client's business and saved the majority of their costs. The client’s agenda was to provide a self-learning platform for students to learn and professors to earn. With the huge success of the web application, the client decided to enhance this web application into a SaaS-based product so that it can be utilized by several educational units, universities, and colleges.