Business Technology is an undergraduate programme at Manchester Metropolitan University. The programme aims to shape the technology professionals of tomorrow, equipping them with essential technical and business skills.
The cohort of the programme is very diverse in terms of skills background: some students have previous experience in industry, while others have never written a line of code. To create a level playing field, some of the technical units assume little prior knowledge and introduce students to particular concepts from first principles.
To offer students an interactive learning experience, I developed a platform internally codenamed Aileron. Aileron provides a simple interface for completing interactive coding tutorials.
Technology stack
Aileron was built using React (with the Next.js framework) and deployed on Vercel.
Using Aileron, instructors could embed pre-configured development environments into the tutorials (e.g. using StackBlitz, CodeSandbox). Allowing students to dive right in from their browser, without having to download or set anything up, meant that 89% of students engaged with the platform.
