Part 1: Feasibility

Background

We've been tasked with designing a Learning Management System (LMS) to manage high school student information and courses.

Core Features:

Account creation and authentication
Course subscription system based on grade and subject

Non-Functional Requirements:

Secure, scalable, and maintainable infrastructure

Team

Faceman Peck (Front-end developer)
Hannibal Smith (Back-end developer #1)
B.A. Baracus (Back-end developer #1)
Murdock (Junior Full-stack developer)

Feasibility Assessment

Timeline Expectations (if only 1-2 days):

Completing a barebones user interface with little to some functionality in 1-2 days is possible, but completing an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in 1-2 days may be unrealistic. The plan below assumes that I could successfully twist the CEO's arm for another day, so our appetite for this project is 3 days.

Shape the Work

(Inspired by Shape Up)

Solution to be built:

A single page for login/signup
A course dashboard with clickable subscription actions
An API to retrieve and manage course enrollments

Work Sequence:

Build and integrate authentication
Create a single end-to-end flow for subscribing to one course
Expand to cover all predefined courses

Mitigate risks of not meeting timeline:

Predefine course categories and a simple UI for subscription, no dynamic course creation
Use an established library for authentication to eliminate rabbit holes
Solve Unknowns First: Finalize decisions on framework selection, authentication library and database schemas

Part 2: Scope Creep

Your CEO just came across Siyavula and realised that its algorithmic practice is perfect in every single way and must be added to the LMS for the project to be successful, he also muttered something about unicorns and hockey sticks. Luckily, Siyavula provides an API to integrate their practice experience into third-party applications.

Go to Part 3: Design

Part 3: Design

The back-end architecture design is detailed below.

Requirements

Basic account management (account creation and authentication).
Users can be assigned to a course.
User account integration with Siyavula accounts via the API.
Siyavula activity integration specifically practice:

Design

Stack

Framework: Flask
Authentication: Flask-Login
Data Validation: Pydantic
ORM: SQLAlchemy
API Communication: httpx
Dependency Management: uv

Architecture

Database Design

Tables:

Users
- id
- email: Unique, for authentication
- name
- surname
- password_hash
- grade
- country
- curriculum
- siyavula_account_id: To link to Siyavula account
- role: Either "Learner" or "Teacher".
- created_at: Timestamp
Courses
- id
- name: 'maths', 'science', 'physics' or 'chemistry'
- created_at: Timestamp
UserCourses
- id:
- user_id
- course_id
- assigned_at: Timestamp

Flask Blueprint Structure

users: user authentication and account creation.
courses: course assignments
siyavula: Siyavula API integration

API Workflow

Account Management:
- /user POST and GET endpoints
  - Flask + SQLAlchemy + Flask-Login
Course Management:
- List Courses for User: /assignment (GET)
- Assign Users to Courses: /assignment (POST)
Siyavula Integration:
- Activity Creation:
  - GET /siyavula/activity
  - Siyavula API
- Answer Submission:
  - POST /siyavula/activity/answer
  - Siyavula API
- Next Question:
  - GET /siyavula/activity/question
  - Siyavula API
- Retry Question:
  - GET /siyavula/activity/retry
  - Siyavula API

Future-Proofing:

Scalability: Use an SQL database (e.g., PostgreSQL)
Cost-Effectiveness: Host on a minimal AWS/GCP/Fly.io instance
Strict Pydantic models for API payloads

Example Pydantic Model:

from pydantic import BaseModel

class SiyavulaUser(BaseModel):
    external_user_id: str
    uuid: str
    role: str
    name: str
    surname: str
    grade: int
    country: str
    curriculum: str
    email: str
    dialling_code: Optional[str]
    telephone: Optional[str]
    created_at: str
    updated_at: str

Part 4: Implementation

See "How do I run this?" on github.com/dvdl16/ed4all-lms

Evaluation Criteria

⬜ Basic requirements have been met.
⬜ The code is Pythonic, clean, well-considered and extensible.
⬜ Creativity and pragmatism.

LMS Project Documentation