Accelerating Online Learning Platform Development for West Michigan College

Custom Software

A West Michigan institution known for its commitment to classical liberal arts education, faced challenges as the demand for features and content on their online learning platform surpassed their internal team’s capacity. Seeking to serve the educational needs of up to 10 million students over the next decade, the university required a development partner to accelerate the creation of a world-class online learning platform.

Business Problem

A West Michigan college known for its commitment to classical liberal arts education faced challenges as the demand for features and content on their online learning platform surpassed their internal team’s capacity. Seeking to serve the educational needs of up to 10 million students over the next decade, this college required a development partner to accelerate the creation of a world-class online learning platform. Pain points included issues with software quality, testing practices, code reviews, onboarding processes, and technical expertise.

Approach

Mutually Human collaborated with this college’s IT Team to address their pain points and accelerate the development of the online learning platform. Their team emphasized an Agile development process, working in one-week sprints. The college expected its development partner to enhance this process for quicker feature delivery, greater test coverage, fewer defects, fault tolerance, and efficient deployment mechanisms. They sought a partner with expertise in development, automated testing, UX, security design, performance management, and overall development process improvement. Key features included:

Implementing feature changes and additions
Assisting with running tests and coverage of the Checkr application
Conducting bug fixes for the Checkr application
Documenting missing steps in the onboarding process
Transitioning hosting to AWS for improved portability
Providing suggestions for branching strategies and CI/CD pipelines
Ensuring continuous feature delivery and integration for pipelines
Offering developer onboarding and project setup support
Facilitating hosting platform transitions
Providing development strategy and process suggestions

Benefits and Results

Mutually Human’s collaboration with this West Michigan college exceeded their expectations and positioned them to effectively serve a growing number of students with a robust and efficient online learning platform. A highlight of benefits includes:

Rapid development of a more modern and capable online learning platform
Improved overall development process efficiency through the adoption of best-practices
Enhanced test coverage and application security
Streamlined onboarding processes and hosting transitions
Continuous feature delivery and integration, meeting the school’s high-volume development capacity requirements
Collaborative partnership fostering innovation and process improvement

25%

Less Workforce Expenses

3X

Increased Efficiency

100%

System Remote Access

Self-service sign up

In the past, companies looking to purchase the uMap™ tool had to talk to the BU sales team. Now, companies ready to use this powerful tool can purchase the uMap™ tool online. The software walks the purchasers through an easy onboarding process to get them from purchase to up-and-running in very little time!

Companies are able to view and select a plan
Seamless integration with a recurring billing system
Intuitive step-by-step onboarding process
Companies can apply their own branding to the uMap™
Company admins can easily invite and manage their team

Create a unique uMap™

Creating a uMap™ is simple, yet very informative and inspiring. Each employee is guided through a series of questions that tap into both their professional and personal self.

Thrive365™

The uMap™ software comes complete with features allowing managers to complete a review process using each employee’s unique uMap™.

Gain insight through reports

When employees fill out a uMap™ there is a lot of information that could be very beneficial to their company. What training do their employees need? Who are the influencers in the organization?