Dedicated web platform for a company offering modern educational services.
We have created and are constantly developing a dedicated ‘Bears' Station’ platform for a client from the EdTech industry that supports the development, maintenance and management of clients and educational products.
WWW
Backend
Frontend
DevOps
Customer description
Edu Bears is a company offering modern educational solutions. The client's flagship brand is the licensed Teddy Eddie method – unconventional English for children aged 2-7, well-tried in several hundred schools in Europe, by tens of thousands of students. For older students, the Savvy Ed method is offered, which is an English language teaching program for slightly more advanced students aged 7-10. Teenagers, on the other hand, can learn using the Edward's League method. The three methods create an ambitious, very effective educational path that is correlated with the Cambridge English exams. With interesting and fun content, engaging activities,
Edu Bears materials effectively motivate students to work in class. Thanks to applications full of humour and attractive games, each student has everyday contact with the English language at home.
Edu Bears' ambition is to provide the best language education to children; and to its partners, i.e. licensees and their employees, to provide tools, services, synergy and support that will exceed their expectations.
The aim of the project
The aim of the project was to digitize, support and further improve the process of managing clients and educational products offered by Edu Bears. The client needed a tool that would meet the dynamic development of the company and the planned expansion.
Which technologies we used
The front-end uses Angular - an open framework and platform for creating SPAs, written in TypeScript and supported and developed by Google. The back-end was created using Laravel - a framework for web applications written in PHP.
The system was created based on a distributed architecture (microservices) and Docker containers that combine everything into one. The project is focused on constant development and expansion, therefore an advanced CI/CD process has been implemented from the very beginning, consisting in continuous and automatic checking, testing and implementation of the code for production.
PHP 
Laravel
Angular
MySql
Main challenges
In the initial phase, the biggest challenge was to take over the project at an advanced stage of development. It was necessary to fully understand the architecture of the project and how it works. Our task was to take over the programming work, optimize and refine the existing system, and then maintain and further develop it in accordance with the planned development roadmap.
We quickly encountered problems with the performance of individual elements of the system. The lack of technical documentation did not help either. Fortunately, we received a lot of substantive support from the client who, which is not always obvious, knew the system very well.
Everything is well planned. All priorities are correctly assessed, and they are always up to every task. Great work organization allows to achieve our goals.
The product
The answer to the client's needs was and still is( we have been constantly developing the project since we took it over in 2019) a dedicated web platform ‘Bears' Station’, which has become a kind of command center.
It can be said that it is an extensive CRM system for managing something like a franchise, supporting sales, marketing and satellite products of the client, with a built-in CRM system for language schools that cooperate with our client.
The system gives schools access to a number of tools and enables education management using proprietary methods developed by Edu Bears.
Functionalities of the platform
Over the years, the ‘Bears' Station’ platform has evolved and is still developing. During that time, apart from ensuring stability, ongoing customer support and many smaller changes, we implemented several large modules related to e.g. support for conferences, workshops or support for further teaching method, such as Edward's League.
We also implemented advanced monitoring of the entire system, using tools such as Zabbix and Sentry, which ensures effective monitoring of applications in the production environment and detection of errors that are difficult to detect during testing.
The platform is currently an extensive system with many functionalities. The most important of them include:
- Extended users’ module, allowing you to manage all users and advanced access assignment, which is an advanced access control mechanism (RBAC).
- Partners - managing partners and assigning them and their employees access to appropriate resources (e.g. teaching methods).
- Coordinators - a module that allows one to manage the tasks of methodologists, a digital timeline, that supports high teaching quality assurance of Edu Bears methods (Teddy Eddie, Savvy Ed, Edward's League) at partner schools.
- Conferences and workshops - modules that allow users to sign up for conferences and workshops organized by Edu Bears, as well as manage them, communicate with participants, or generate certificates.
- Playground, Savvy Quest, Homework Site – modules dedicated to the applications offered by the client (which are external systems connected with Bears' Station via REST API), which allow to manage access to the application for various groups of users, track students' homework progress (downloading statistics from the application), send messages (integration with an external tool for mass mailings) and issue credits (sending data to the application).
- Cloud - integrated with an external AWS cloud to store various files and teaching materials, with various built-in functionalities, such as file access and management of access.
- Reports - a module used to generate reports for parents of children studying at schools.
- Communication - a module offering the functions of a newsletter (integration with an external tool for mass mailings) and notifications for platform users, with the option of sending content dedicated to various user groups, in various language versions, to various markets served by the client.
Let's talk
If you need a similar project, please do not hesitate to write to us.
The project team
On a daily basis, work is carried out by a permanent design team that knows the entire system perfectly. Due to the specific nature of the project, we sometimes need greater flexibility and periodic extension of the team to complete a larger stage or meet urgent deadlines. From the beginning of cooperation, a total of 12 members of the WebMakers crew were involved in supporting the client and achieving their business goals.
Realization process
- Getting to know and accepting the project
- Analysis and clarification of objectives of the projects
- Development
- Testing
- Audit, infrastructure refinement and production implementation
- Permanent maintenance and further development
- Let's talkIf you need a similar project, please do not hesitate to write to us.Book a meeting
Project effects
Before
- lack of digitization of a significant part of the process
- performance problems and bugs hindering the use of the system
- lack of system and infrastructure monitoring
After
- a stable tool, ideally suited to business needs and supporting the company's development and foreign expansion
- satisfaction of company employees and platform users
- full monitoring of the system and infrastructure enabling a quick response to potential problems
What the company has gained
From the beginning of our cooperation with Edu Bears, we focused on evolution instead of revolution. We developed the software in small steps to meet real business needs and to be a stable tool supporting the company's development and foreign expansion. We have also significantly increased the reliability coefficients of the entire system. Together with the client, we developed a way to enable the continuous development of the ‘Bears' Station’ platform, while maintaining high flexibility in the approach to the tasks performed. Edu Bears has gained a technology partner that it can always count on.
Review
"The cooperation so far, which was characterized by reliability and professional approach to fulfilled duties, means that we can recommend the WebMakers company to others without any doubt."
Elżbieta Berka
Edu Bears Deputy CEO, IT Project Manager