EdTech is a Learning Management System (LMS) platform designed to streamline course management and provide an engaging, interactive learning experience. Our platform caters to educators and students, offering a suite of tools for course creation, student progress tracking, and interactive content delivery.
Tech Stack
Frontend
I chose to build the frontend of our application with Next.js due to its robust capabilities for server-side rendering and dynamic page generation. Next.js, with its React-based approach and built-in features like static site generation, enables us to create fast, interactive user interfaces that ensure optimal performance and SEO.
Backend
For the backend, I leveraged Next.js API routes to manage data and handle business logic, ensuring a cohesive and integrated solution. This approach simplifies the architecture and reduces overhead, allowing us to focus on developing features rather than managing a separate backend infrastructure.
Database
For data storage, EdTech uses MongoDB due to its flexibility and cloud-based capabilities. The non-relational nature of MongoDB suits the diverse and dynamic data requirements of an LMS platform, allowing for easy storage and retrieval of user information, course materials, and progress data.
Styling
To style our application, I utilized Tailwind CSS for its utility-first approach and ease of customization. Tailwind CSS allows us to apply styles directly in the markup using utility classes, speeding up development and ensuring a consistent look and feel across our UI.
Deployment and Hosting
For deployment and hosting, I chose Vercel, which offers seamless integration with Next.js. Vercel provides automated deployment pipelines, scalability, and performance optimizations out of the box, ensuring our platform remains fast and reliable.
Challenges Faced
Dynamic Course Content and User Progress Tracking
One of the main challenges was implementing dynamic course content creation and tracking user progress. EdTech allows educators to create and manage courses with unique content and assessments, requiring a flexible system to handle dynamic data.
To address this, I developed a dynamic routing mechanism to fetch course data from the database based on the requested URL. This involved setting up dynamic routes in Next.js and querying the database to fetch the corresponding course content. Additionally, I implemented a progress tracking system that records user interactions and updates their progress in real-time.
Secure Authentication and Role-Based Access Control
Ensuring secure authentication and implementing role-based access control was another significant challenge. EdTech requires robust security measures to protect user data and ensure that only authorized users can access certain features.
I implemented authentication using JWT (JSON Web Tokens) and set up protected routes that require users to authenticate before accessing restricted content. This involved integrating authentication middleware into backend API routes and implementing role-based access control to differentiate between students, educators, and administrators. User authentication flows, such as sign-up, login, and logout, were also developed to provide a seamless user experience while maintaining security.
Interactive Quizzes and Assessments
Creating interactive quizzes and assessments posed a technical challenge due to the need for real-time feedback and varied question types. EdTech supports multiple question formats, including multiple-choice, short answer, and drag-and-drop, requiring a flexible and intuitive interface for both creation and completion.
I developed a quiz and assessment module that supports various question types, with real-time validation and feedback. This involved building dynamic form components with React Hook Form and Zod for validation, and integrating with Axios for API calls to handle quiz submissions and store results in the database.