Client: Hotchalk, Inc
Project Sponsor: Nicholas Smith
Hotchalk Ember is a comprehensive educational suite offering LMS, CMS, and data analytics tools for efficient and effective learning experiences
Coding for
Learning
Edtech
Hotchalk Ember
Reimagining learning, one course at a time
Hotchalk’s solution incorporates all phases of the education life cycle to deliver Industry leading student retention and graduation rates. Hotchalk operates the largest global network of free education content on the Internet through the Hotchalk Education Network.
The company believes all people should have access to education, and is on a mission to make meaningful education outcomes available to everyone, everywhere.
The Challenge
Create a fully integrated technology suite to support Hotchalk’s online learning services.
Hotchalk’s services address a wide variety of institutional users. Students and faculty at the University partners needed a robust learning platform from which to interact with educational content and assessment tools. At the same time, instructional designers and HotChalk staff needed a content management tool to facilitate authoring and management of learning assets and their delivery to the learning platform.
Hotchalk also needed to give University leadership a real time view of students’ learning analytics. The pressure to maintain on-time graduation rates with degree programs lasting only one to two years meant that for the University to effectively meet accreditation requirements, the entire university staff needed real time student & teacher data, presented in an efficient format, to respond successfully at scale.
Hotchalk also needed to give University leadership a real time view of students’ learning analytics. Degree programs lasting only one to two years create pressure to maintain on-time graduation rates, which in turn are needed to meet accreditation requirements. This meant that the entire university staff needed real time student & teacher data, presented in an efficient format, to respond successfully at scale.
The Solution
Edify developed a tool called Hotchalk Ember Data Analytics.
Hotchalk and Edify worked together to create Hotchalk Ember, a three part application suite tailored to the unique challenges of the business.
- Hotchalk Ember LMS is a learning management system solution based on the popular open source Canvas LMS project. Ember LMS features include improved discussion boards, course sectioning and assessment functionality, and a number of SIS and authentication integrations with University partner systems.
- Hotchalk Ember CMS is a content management solution based on Common Library, Edify’s open source LCMS (Learning Content Management System.)
Ember CMS provides a space in which instructional designers can put together entire university level courses, with content versioning support, based on material authored within the system or imported through any of its content migration tools. - Hotchalk Ember Data Analytics is a web based data visualization and reporting application that provides Hotchalk and University staff with a better understanding of student and instructor performance. Information is provided via an online reporting UI, periodic email notifications and raw data exports. Edify delivered every milestone of the software from inception, R&D, pilot, to production.
Key components
Hotchalk Ember LMS
- Enhanced discussion boards for better engagement.
- Advanced course sectioning and assessment functionalities.
- Seamless SIS (Student Information System) and authentication integrations tailored for university systems.
Hotchalk Ember CMS
- Course creation tools with content versioning support.
- Integration of authored or imported materials through content migration tools.
- Built on Edify’s open-source Common Library LCMS for flexibility and scalability.
Hotchalk Ember Data Analytics
- Web-based data visualization and reporting interface.
- Insights into student and instructor performance through online reports, email notifications, and data exports.
- Comprehensive delivery from R&D to production, ensuring a robust and user-focused solution.
Technologies used
Technology Wise, the Hotchalk Ember suite employs a variety of cutting edge technologies on the server side as well as on the user interface:
- The LMS component is a Ruby on Rails 3 server application
- Fully open source stack, paired with a HTML5 / CSS / Javascript frontend that communicates with the backend through a RESTful Web API.
- The CMS and Data Analytics tools are built on Java/Groovy open source backend servers driven by Javascript Web UIs constructed on the Ember framework.
WHAT WE DID DIFFERENT
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THE IMPACT
To Hotchalk success equals the sum of people and services, supported by technology. The Ember suite’s rapidly growing user base already numbers in the thousands, as new University partners continue to come on board. With the information provided by the learning analytics tools delivered, University administrators and educators can now make rapid real time decisions about individual student success.
These numbers are obtained by performing data mining using the Data Analytics tool, and represent a sample of some of the data that is continually being used to inform and optimize Hotchalk’s processes.
4.2 of 5
student rating
92%
adjunct faculty retention
52%
of applicants enroll in an online program
“Edify provides excellent and experienced development resources that complete projects within budget, within the time provided, with little or no drama and with high quality. They have deep development knowledge and a good design ethic amongst the developers.”
Nicholas Smith
Hotchalk, Inc