MXMART Helps to Improve Learning Experiences at Universidad IEU Through Its Upgraded AWS-Based Online Learning Platform

MXMART helps Universidad IEU in Mexico transform its online learning platform, improving the experience and engagement of students and increasing course registrations. MXMART is an AWS Partner, specializing in education and the public sector more broadly. The solution for Universidad IEU features Amazon API Gateway for backend system integrations, AWS WAF for security, and AWS Amplify for rapid development.

MXMART DE MEXICO (MXMART) is an AWS Public Sector Partner with AWS Partner status. It joined the Partner program after being an Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer for six months. Explains Darío Gómez, Chief Executive Officer at MXMART, “We saw how much more efficient AWS could make a company’s operations.” After joining the program, MXMART also realized how accreditations for AWS gave customers greater confidence. Adds Gómez, “When they see you are an AWS Select Partner, they know you’re backed by a certain level of AWS experience.” MXMART’s customers include the Universidad IEU, located in the city of Puebla, Mexico. Universidad IEU started running internet-based courses 15 years ago when it noticed how online study programs made education more accessible. As demand increased, so did the number of online study programs; and today the university offers more than 60 graduate and postgraduate courses via the internet.

Since Universidad IEU started online courses, a growing number of universities across Mexico have followed suit. With greater competition, Universidad IEU needed to differentiate its offering or risk losing students. The plan was to maintain its edge by creating a platform, called Campus Online that provided access to university resources and enabled students to pay for tuition, instead of only being a portal to online courses. The infrastructure behind Campus Online would be cloud based. Explains Christian Morales, Chief Technology Officer at Universidad IEU, “We don’t see the benefit of paying for on premises servers when the cloud is much more cost-effective, scalable, and manageable.” Before taking the project further, the university performed a value comparison of two leading cloud providers. The results were clear—AWS was less than half the cost of the competitor. Morales adds, “We also had a lot of confidence in the capabilities of AWS because we’d completed a migration of our course management system to AWS some nine months previously.”

On the recommendation of AWS, Universidad IEU engaged MXMART. “It was clear from MXMART’s experience in education that we could deliver a secure and scalable integrated solution,” states Morales. The university and MXMART then began designing the AWS architecture. To enable the platform to communicate with the university’s core systems, MXMART chose Amazon API Gateway. The fully managed service connects the platform to cloud and on-premises-based backend systems via a secure site-to-site virtual private network connection using the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) service. 

To protect the APIs, MXMART selected AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF), which allows administrators to create security rules to block attacks. Using serverless AWS Lambda functions, the platform reduced its attack surface to virtually zero. Amazon CloudFront then helped to move what remained of that attack surface away from critical infrastructure. When it came to the platform’s frontend development, MXMART opted for AWS Amplify to let developers link front-end applications to several databases in the backend using just a few lines of code. “Because of AWS Amplify, we saved 8 weeks in the development process,” says Gómez.

The university has already felt the impact of Campus Online. It’s seen greater student engagement thanks to the improved learning experience, with the number of course registrations increasing and fewer students dropping out of their study programs as a result. Morales attributes these facts to the continuing demand for online courses and that Campus Online meets students’ growing expectations. “They want a single location where they can find everything they need to manage their university career,” he says. With Campus Online, they access classes, course information, a virtual library, registration, and make payments in a few clicks. The plan is to continue adding features to the platform to help the institution maintain an edge. “We used AWS services like AWS Amplify in Campus Online so that we could quickly add new applications once a need was identified,” says Gómez. Plus, the scalability of AWS means the university can also ramp up backend resources as the number of users increases to avoid slowdowns in frontend application performance. States Morales, “We’ve already seen the scalability of AWS in action. In recent months, we’ve witnessed the number of concurrent connections to Campus Online increase from around 2,500 to almost 5,000. There was no disruption or drop off in performance because of the platform’s flexibility.”

Looking ahead, Universidad IEU plans to continue working with MXMART around the integration of analytical tools. Morales says its early days, but a goal is to use the tools to understand how students are interacting with the platform and build on this knowledge to improve the user experience. He concludes, “We’re really happy with the way the platform is evolving. It’s helping us support the many people who see online learning as a great way to further their educational development.”

MXMART has more than 15 years of experience developing and implementing IT systems. Among its expertise is rolling out lesson management systems in the education sector. It also specializes in the analysis, design, implementation, and migration of services to AWS.