Prelude

For the past year, I have been working as a UX Developer at Synergy Learning, an LMS solution expert based in Holywood, Northern Ireland.

Unless you are familiar with the Moodle universe, the above may sound like a load of new age jargon - allow me to explain why what we do at Synergy Learning is absolutely crucial in the modern world.

Our Product

The name ‘Moodle’ stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. This means that the application is built up of various moving parts - most prominently, blocks and plugins.

Following on from the education model, there is a user facing backend where teachers (referred to in the application as; admin, editing manager, teacher) can upload resources for students (student, learner) to view and complete.

Aptly described by my co-worker Chris Young, Totara is simply “Moodle on steroids”.

LMS is an abbreviation of ‘Learning Management System’ - a twist on the more widely known Content Management System.

My Role

The role of UX Developer refers to building and styling themes and additional functionality. The core skills required are not dissimilar to frontend development, with a sprinkle of PHP.

The backend functionality of both Moodle and Totara is written with PHP and Javascript, and the frontend, in our case, is developed with handlebars and SCSS.

As a UX Developer Intern, I mostly worked on application and theme support. This meant I was responsible for helping clients find their way around the application, making small theme changes to enhance accessibility and fit brand guidelines, as well as fixing bugs.

Our Clients

A little about our clients. “Moodle has been adapted for use across education, business, non-profit, government, and many other community systems of all sizes.” ethinkeducation

Thanks to the unique modular design, Moodle and Totara can be used in countless scenarios.

Our clients range from schools and colleges to the United Nations. Synergy Learning is also deeply intertwined with the local community, working with companies such as Mindwise and Belfast Trust.

The company itself employs roughly 50 people divided into the following teams;

Support Challenges

Working as a Support Technician has been one of the biggest challenges of my life to date.

Growth is uncomfortable and painful, and there have been few times when I revelled in those feelings as acutely as I have over the past 11 months.

In terms of skills, I joined Synergy Learning as a UX Designer with a background in digital art and some very basic CSS & HTML knowledge. Moodle is built on PHP, handlebars and SCSS.

As far as personal qualities go, I am a creative problem solver in the sense of design (i.e. creating branding, user flows) but never ever, have I been a round-the-clock technical problem solver.

Support Tickets

Some of the support tickets were brilliant. I had so much fun working with clients and helping out with simple configuration or adding finishing CSS/HTML touches which went such a long way in terms of usability.

At the same time, I would have two or three tickets in my queue which I knew were borderline impossible and I would have to bother everyone involved in the project to get to the bottom of what’s gone wrong and why.

This was something I found especially hard. When you are surrounded by people who are top of their game, it’s easy to rush into asking questions.

The issue is that each of these people is booked out to max capacity and despite their willingness to help,

Support Skills

doesn’t always have time to explain issues/pass on knowledge. Moreover, it’s absolutely not ok to offload the labour of learning onto someone else.

Yet, I received endless help from all my coworkers. Dave and Michael taught me everything I know about Moodle, Stephen taught me how to write code properly and Danielle was relentlessly patient, forgiving and never failed to answer every crazy question I asked.

In retrospect, I learned to spend 95% of my time researching and learning about the problem, and 5% fixing it. The steps needed to become a good technical problem solver are threefold. Learn the application, learn to Google, learn to read documentation.

Aloha

Our knowledge base is built on Confluence, internally named ‘Aloha’ after Roy’s trip to Hawaii. This is another powerful tool, it’s main feature being an extraordinarily customisable WYSIWYG with blocks containing complex elements (a little like bootstrap elements, but many also containing backend functionality) which can be styled further with css.

I wrote a lot of basic documentation such as setting up a Moodle playground on your local machine, but one of my favourite projects was building the team directory which I built out to look like a book. While working on this, I discovered a pain point in Aloha.

Aloha

Although we had a lot of great documentation, I didn’t find some of it until the last couple months of my placement. Some of it didn’t use the right keywords, but more importantly, there wasn’t a well organised index.

I used the code from the team directory project to build a core documentation directory. This is a tab switcher which brings in documentation by title according to its label. I’m hoping this will help newstarts find their way around Aloha as well as offloading senior developers. Big wins all round!

Qlik

I worked on it for about 2 months, in the first couple months of my placement. Most importantly, it’s where I learned the majority of Moodle functionality thanks to Dave. This project involved building roughly 20 static HTML sections using bootstrap; backing up and restoring content, blocks and pages; updating the immense header and footer navigation; and speaking on various calls with the client.

The biggest challenge of this project was getting on the same page with the client regarding the copy which is to go inside the layouts. What I mean by this, is that I was handed, and asked to combine all of the following items as various static html sections.

The Qlik Project

In the 8 months since this project, I thought about better ways for the client to convey this information but the biggest lesson here was that static sites just don’t do the job in a world which moves as fast as ours.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed getting to know the capabilities of bootstrap, and working with the client. I also received endless help from my team - shoutout to Kenny for one of the most reassuring pats on the back I’ve ever received!

Handlebars

It was at Synergy where I was introduced to handlebars. I very quickly saw the potential and decided to do some exploring of my own, which is how I stumbled upon Jekyll (that’s where this site was made!). I played about with liquid, json and YAML. Uncool as this may sound, I loved every second!

Life works in mysterious ways, and within 2 weeks I was contacted by a local sustainable bag company to design and develop a website. In the end we decided Shopify would be the best solution - I am thanking my lucky stars, because I had the time of my life developing for Shopify.

Perhaps I’d learned that much during my placement year, or maybe liquid and json are languages which just click with me but I was so fascinated that I couldn’t get

Backend

Feeling confident and inspired, I had a couple ideas for my final year project which would all require me to build an app. I had a little play about with xcode and noticed some of the skills I needed are those which I didn’t take full advantage of learning at Synergy Learning - namely, programming and databases.

I got on the good sides of the people who worked with the above, and got to shadow some of the amazing things they do. A big thank you is in order to Alex Paphitis who showed me lots of database basics - the hardest part is always starting out so I was incredibly lucky to have someone on that journey with me!

Terminal

I went from 0 to 100 in terms of using terminal. When I came in, I had no idea about using git from terminal, nevermind ssh, vi, vim, nano, cat, deploying, sudo and all the other functions I’ve now forgotten how to do in Finder.

I’m sure Michael Slevin has cried himself to sleep about how many times he had to fix git issues for me, but as soon as I discovered cheat sheets, I was flying.

Teamwork

Here’s something I learned about myself: I’m a collaborative worker.

I noticed while accidentally simultaneously working with Nathan on a Support ticket, that I work much better in partner programming situations with the ability to bounce ideas and just a little bit of competition. I’ve always been a strong communicator and it seems my troubleshooting abilities soar when I say my hunches out loud. That’s just a little fun fact.

Similarly, I love love love speaking to clients and selling products. I always received 4 and 5 star reviews even from the most difficult clients, and believe me, that wasn’t for my off the cuff knowledge of Moodle config.

Time Management

Managing my time this year has been a big hurdle. Rather than finding this so called work-life balance, I felt like I was walking a tightrope juggling work, family, friends, a side hustle, exercise, chronic pain and preparing for my final year of university.

I don’t think I did too bad.

I learned that the key is to set goals with good reason so that you can persevere despite obstacles. Next, create a healthy routine based on these. I had never before kept timesheets as thorough as those which we maintain at Synergy Learning, and I have found this to be incredibly beneficial in helping me identify my strengths and weaknesses. Massive shoutout to Timing App for being a great help!

Conclusion

It’s been a tough year, filled with priceless learning opportunities. By far the most educational year of my life. Most importantly, I realised the massive drop between being a student and working full time.

Thanks to Synergy Learning, I now have the skills and friends to build a bridge to the other side.