Most of the companies we work with are at the ‘dipping a toe’ stage and test the xAPI waters with a small pilot project. We understand this approach, and encourage it as the first step in gaining adoption of xAPI across the organization.
But over the past year and a half, we have had the chance to do something pretty incredible — partner with a company that was willing to take a big leap and dive right into the Experience API, implementing it across an entire platform. And for those paying close attention, this meant adopting a spec that was still in beta for much of the platform development. So consider this an open Thank You note and hearty congratulations to LifeWay Christian for using xAPI- to make not a ripple, but a big splash right out of the gates.
Where it started
About 18 months ago, we started talking with LifeWay Christian about a training platform they were building, Ministry Grid. LifeWay had a vision to build an application that lets churches and organizations around the world support their leaders and members with easy to access training resources.
On the surface, Ministry Grid is a simple platform where users can access timely and relevant video based content across a wide variety of platforms and environments. On the backend, the partnership between LifeWay and Rustici Software created a complex combination of software solutions using the Experience API as the common thread to tie data from a variety of inputs.
Key Requirements:
- Deliver trackable video content accessible across multiple platforms
- Mobile compatibility and tracking usage online or offline
- Standardized data for consolidated tracking of wide variety of activities
Trackable Video
The primary use case was to deliver trackable video content. We started by identifying what LifeWay needed to know- specifically how much time a user spent viewing video content. The in depth version of what we did is here.
Going Mobile
The Ministry Grid mobile app is a key component of the overall platform. It was important to LifeWay that users have a similar experience on a mobile device — even when they may not have an internet connection. Here is more detail on the Software Developer Kits (SDKs) we created.
The Data
Ministry Grid is a collection of content from a variety of sources and inputs. Making them all talk the same language was critical to allow LifeWay to collectively view the usage data across the entire platform. The Experience API was selected as that common language due to the flexibility to track a wide variety of activities (some known, others to be defined).
“The team at Rustici helped us solve problems that we didn’t even know we had.”
For the technical details and how xAPI is working behind the scenes, check out the roadmap of the entire architecture.
To hear more about the LifeWay project, check out our recent webinar archive
