eLearning Cloud Platform for Council Expert Training

Business challenge

IFB is a leading German institute for council workers that cooperates with over 600 industry experts and has already provided an engaging learning experience for over 55,000 trainees. It offers a wide spectrum of seminars and online courses ranging from legal topics to economics and everything related to council operations. For more than 25 years, IFB has been equipping learners with the knowledge that makes them informed leaders in local government.

Our client had experienced problems with their existing eLearning cloud software performance and support for multi-user access. The project was time-critical since it needed to be launched before council elections. During the months preceding those elections, seminars for council workers would be at their peak. IFB needed a highly responsive online eLearning cloud platform with a precise user focus to strengthen their position among Germany’s leading education cloud computing companies and educational institutions for council workers. Also, IFB required to improve and personalize the experience for their end users.

The main difficulty of this cloud computing eLearning project lay in the uninterrupted migration of all data to the new eLearning cloud platform in order to provide business continuity of all activities related to the existing base of speakers and thousands of annual seminar attendees. Intellias expertise in cloud development and experience with cloud based eLearning solutions were decisive in IFB selecting our company as their software engineering partner for this eLearning cloud software project.

Technology solution

Together, we started designing and developing a data- and domain-driven eLearning cloud platform for council workers with customer relationship management features and third-party systems integration as well as migrating data step by step from Microsoft SQL to the new Azure cloud based eLearning platform, which had to be available 24/7 via RESTful services.

User endpoints were the key features of this education cloud computing project. Previously, our client had used a complicated algorithm to transfer data, relying on integration services that obtain information from one database and store it in another.

After analyzing the data, we started creating a web API to serve the consumer endpoints provided via the IFB website and app. Our engineering team joined our client’s ASP.NET Web API project, using C# for backend development. The eLearning cloud software that we jointly developed uses a SQL server based on the Entity Framework. The team also created OData controllers for more flexibility in terms of data querying and extending entities.

The core features of the eLearning cloud platform developed by Intellias:

• Flexible cloud infrastructure to withstand peaks of users activity during seminars for newly elected council workers
• Portal to allow users to generate their own educational content available for all council experts
• Event management and planning functionality to organize blended learning process both online on at educational facilities
• Authoring and publication tools to create custom courses and deliver a personalized learning experience to users
• Licensing module to ensure courses developed on the platform’s tools are complying with industry and governmental requirements

The newly developed education cloud computing system has successfully solved our client’s problems with performance and multi-user sessions, resulting in an easier-to-use application. The educational council portal provides a comprehensive seminar program, a great variety of last-minute offers, a kit of service tools, and a forum for discussions. The eLearning cloud platform also enables easy data and event management, publication of courses, and custom script writing with incorporated accounting and robust reporting functionality.

Business outcome

We’re still growing our cooperation with IFB through new eLearning cloud projects and custom platform solutions. And after the discovery phase, proof-of-concept, and implementation of deliverables, we’ve proceeded to the testing phase for the Azure-based cloud computing eLearning solution. Intellias is maintaining IFB’s web app and testing the user endpoints created previously, looking at performance issues related to the Azure setup.

The next phase of our partnership will revolve around the community side of the eLearning cloud software to strengthen the IFB position among the leading education cloud computing companies. Ultimately, the education cloud platform will let users contribute their own materials and will empower developers to create new scripts based on a comprehensive SDK. Once end customers are registered on the portal, they can purchase seminars, acquire new council licenses, and participate in course development.