Vera

Project description

VERA is the short form of Vergleichsarbeiten, and they are standardized comparative assessments conducted in primary (3rd grade) and secondary (8th grade) schools in all federal states of Germany. They are designed to investigate which competencies students have achieved by certain points in their school career. The ISB conducts and analyzes these exams for all schools in Bavaria.

We developed a web application for them that provides test material to schools and captures the results after the students have completed their exams. This gives them a centralised way to access results and statistical data for all schools.

The application has hierarchical user management with 3 roles (system administrators, school principals, and teachers), granular permissions, and is fully GDPR compliant. As a result, it has gone through several penetration tests and passed with flying colors.

We paid special attention to usability, and the application, including its forms, can be navigated using only the keyboard. We made the results input more efficient with real-time validation and saving, so no data gets lost, even if the browser crashes while moving from one field to the next.

Our relationship with the ISB did not end with the project and is ongoing. Since deployment, we’ve continuously monitored and maintained the application to ensure smooth operations, regular updates, and the security of the stored data. In addition, we add new functionality to the web application on demand and advise them on all aspects of IT security and user experience (UI / UX).

Challenges

One challenge we faced with Vera was safeguarding user input in the new single-page application. The teachers using the web application could be working under less-than-ideal technical conditions, outdated browsers, unstable internet connections, and sometimes even switching devices mid-process. The risk of data loss was very real and had potential consequences, such as hours of re-entering student answers, which would be annoying for teachers, and our goal was to improve their lives, not make them worse.

We knew this from the start, and our motto when we built the frontend was “No data gets lost”. Every single answer given by every single pupil had to be accounted for. This had to be the case even if the responsible teacher took a break before hitting the save button and came back to find their computer fried. They should be able to pick up where they left off on another machine.

This meant we couldn’t use solutions like saving to local storage, but had to sync to the backend in real time without overwhelming the server or degrading performance. We achieved this by implementing a combination of debounced API calls and sending incremental updates to the backend as users progressed.

Thorough testing of this functionality was crucial. We simulated all sorts of interruptions, closing the browser mid-session, switching Wi-Fi networks, even pulling the plug, and every time, the app recovered exactly where the user left off. It was a satisfying moment when we realized that we had built something robust enough to survive real-world chaos.