Web app for e-learning - Liber digital learning materials

Together with Liber we have developed an application that gives traditional books new life - still with the same high quality of content, upgraded with smart features that make learning more fun for the student and smoother for the teachers.

Liber is one of the Nordics' largest educational publishers and has a wide range of publications from primary and secondary school to higher education and adult education. The catalogue consists of numerous series across different subject areas for different ages.

Digitizing each textbook series individually would be unreasonable from a time and cost perspective, so Liber contacted us and asked if we could help them develop an application that can handle virtually any title, as long as they are imported in a structured way. Of course we said yes!

Focus areas in the project were

• High quality UX and design
• Stable and flexible technical platform
• Ongoing deliveries for continuous user testing
• Agile working method with MVP process (Minimum Viable Product)

Liber has high quality standards for its printed publications and the same applies to their digital teaching materials. An important aspect of the user experience is good UX and design, and before the project started Liber had carried out thorough preparatory work with different user types and scenarios, which was a good foundation for us going into the UX work Fast One guiding principle in the work was "fast". It should be quick to get started, pages should load quickly, the teacher should be able to grade assignments quickly, the student should quickly return to where they left off, and so on We chose to build the solution with modern technology (React JS) to achieve a fast interface that does not require interruptions and wait times in the form of page loads. The UX focused on creating quick and intuitive paths into the extensive material users will work with. The app also remembers where the user last was and can quickly link them back there. The student's results are saved in a database according to schools' industry standard xAPI so they can easily integrate with the schools' LRS (Learning Record Store) Teachers have a large number of assignments to grade, and in cases where the application itself can determine whether an answer is correct or incorrect, it does so. When the teacher needs to make their own level assessment, it can be set with a single click Flexible Another guiding principle was flexibility. The application should work for many different teaching materials with varying amounts of content. In addition, the teacher should be able to plan the material themselves, for example change the order, turn chapters, sections and exercises on or off, and lock them To ensure the application always feels unique and tailored to the title currently in use, the interface's color scheme adapts to that of the physical book and, of course, all images and illustrations are included An advantage of digital teaching materials is that Liber has the ability to revise the content continuously. The world changes and what was correct yesterday may not be today. Now Liber can upload a new version of the teaching material themselves and quickly deliver correct and relevant information to their users

Working methods

The digitization of learning materials brings many new opportunities for teaching and learning. So where do you draw the line when planning a project? How long should the rope be?

We decided early in the project to work according to the MVP principle - minimal viable product. That is to say, build the smallest we need to have a functioning product and then build on that. In an MVP process the question is rather "how short can the rope be" and still be valuable.

We started by developing a simple interface prototype in two intensive sprints. The prototype was used for user tests and was also valuable for the project team, which quickly gained a clear picture of what would be built.

In parallel we conducted a feasibility study to map out what a good technical architecture would look like in order both to be able to import large amounts of data in different versions and to handle individual results generated through the use of the digital learning material.

With insights from the early user tests we further developed the prototype and began work on connecting the interface to the underlying systems. A few months later the application was ready for an ALPHA release and specially invited schools were given the opportunity to test it on their own in their classrooms. Again we received valuable feedback from real users, which we could bring into the continued work.

Just under a year after project start and just in time for the start of school in autumn 2018 the application was ready to be launched to paying customers.

Thanks to the project's MVP focus we have a product with many great features that can quickly generate revenue, but we also have a clear picture of how the application can become even better and ideas for features that will add even more value. The rapid iterations and the quick market entry also gave us valuable feedback from the most important stakeholders - the teachers and students who will work with the application.

Key factors for succeeding in agile projects and with an MVP are having an engaged and active product owner and a tight, dedicated project team that understands both the long-term vision and the short-term goals. In this project Liber's digital business developer Maja Åström acted with engagement, expertise and pragmatism, which was a prerequisite for the project's success.

 

Read more about how we work with MVP

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