Av-STEM Alaska teaches aviation STEM online to students of all ages. Their introduction to aviation course is the place to start, set in the wild Alaskan back country, and it is the foundation for every other course they offer. The courses now carry closed captions. The homepage also features new books by Alaskan bush missionary pilot Don Ernst, who combines lessons from the land with lessons from the Lord.
We designed and built their WordPress site and the online school behind it, and we are still on the account.
The challenge
Av-STEM Alaska set out to make aviation education available to students throughout Alaska. That meant a school where students of all ages could take part in everything Av-STEM offers, from buying a course to working through it alongside other students.
So they needed three things from us: the online school itself, the web design around it, and help running the technical parts of the website.
What we did
We built a full online school on WordPress. It was a unique build for us, and Av-STEM controls the whole course from their own login.
- E-commerce with a membership program, so only purchasers can open the courses
- Forums where students in a course talk to each other, moderated by Av-STEM
- Video playback for the courses, hosted outside the website so page load speeds stay down
- Teacher access to the answers and student quizzes, kept closed to students
- A course purchase flow that sends students the essential items they need to participate
- Emails and notifications from Av-STEM to all students, or to students grouped by course
- A custom responsive design, so the courses work on a phone as well as a laptop
We also help run the technical parts of the website.
