Junction Education, USA
A web and mobile application which makes it easy for professors to create courses and aggregate their content for wider consumption.
Dec 2013 – Feb 2016
Junction Education allows professors to use point and click editing to modify off-the-shelf courses or build their own. They can include high-quality video introductions supported by in-depth text, 3D charts, quizzes, activities, discussions and note-taking.
Challenges included creating a complex JavaScript frontend, using a flexible NoSQL database, and accommodating very specific sales windows.
Tech Stack
PhoneGap web & mobile app. Front-end: angular, sass, jquery, grunt, PhoneGap Backend: python (pyramid), Redis, Mongo. Other features: stripe payments, Disqus forum, 3d charts, dedicated messenger and note-taking system.
Cooperation
In fall 2013, Junction Education team asked skygate for help in the creation of an early version of their product from clickable mockups. The requirement from the Client’s CTO was to use MongoDB which seemed to be a very flexible and efficient database in that time. Back-end layer was implemented in Pyramid. The application name was Junction Education and it was aimed at universities to help professors make better and more engaging courses.
During the project, the client realized the actual unique value proposition of the platform. They were building the simplicity of editorial and creation of the courses. In our case, it required a lot of JavaScript and front-end layers. Quickly it was no longer a thin view layer but a complex situation.
Scope Of Work
For us, it was an interesting project to build from scratch. We used modern technologies like AngularJS and PhoneGap in the front-end, and Pyramid with Python 3 in the back-end. Because of the requirements, we utilized the MongoDB as the only storage layer. We also configured the application to be fully compatible with the NoSQL database.
Feedback from the current application users is very positive and they really like how fast we were able to deliver the new set of features. This client had a specific niche market and a problem that they had open sales window only 2 times a year – before the semester started, so we needed to make sure that we would have enough new features, so the sales team could show the demo to professors and they could convince the university to buy this solution.
In terms of technology, skygate managed to connect the requirements to use MongoDB as the main database with the flexibility that comes with the Python programming language. After the closing of the sales windows, we managed to come with a list of improvements and architecture chan.
