Starblack Media Academy
A full-fledged tech learning platform offering structured frontend, backend, and prompt engineering courses.
Project Goals
- Make tech education accessible and modern.
- Enable structured, self-paced, and affordable learning.
- Build a scalable course system with user accounts and progress tracking.
The Problem
Most online tech courses lack structure, certification, or real accountability. There was no centralized African-led tech learning hub with clear progression paths and integrated mentorship.
Our Solution
We built a comprehensive e-learning platform from the ground up to address these problems directly. Key features include:
- A multi-level course system covering Intro, Intermediate, and Advanced topics.
- A robust subscription model with secure payment integration.
- An intuitive student dashboard for progress tracking and course management.
- An admin dashboard to manage all aspects of the platform: courses, lessons, quizzes, and users.
- Automated certificate generation upon successful course completion.
Challenges & Solutions
Secure, On-Demand Certificate Generation
Challenge: Creating a secure and tamper-proof certificate system that could be generated instantly upon course completion.
Solution: We implemented a protected cloud function that uses PDFKit to dynamically generate personalized certificates, which are then stored securely and made available only to the authenticated student.
Scalable Course Data Structure
Challenge: Structuring the Firestore database to handle multiple courses, each with nested lessons, quizzes, and user progress, without creating complex and slow queries.
Solution: We designed a modular Firestore schema that separates course content from user progress data. This allows for efficient querying and dynamic rendering of lessons based on user enrollment and completion status.