Case study
Education · Miami & LATAM
Real-time insight into 20,000+ students across campuses, live in seven weeks
A group of universities serving 20,000+ students across Miami and Latin America had academic records and LMS learning events siloed across campuses. Viewnear built a governed, real-time student data pipeline on Snowflake: a governed environment, native Blackboard Data Share integration, and real-time Caliper event streaming, unifying academic and learning-activity data into one governed source.
A real engagement; the client's name is withheld at their request.
What changed
Delivered by our team. The client's name is withheld; ours isn't. Meet the leadership team →
The engagement
How Viewnear delivered for an education organization
Challenge
A group of universities serving 20,000+ students across Miami and Latin America could not see the student in real time. Academic records lived in their Anthology / Blackboard environment, while learning-activity events (Caliper) came off the LMS on their own schedule, and the two were never joined in one governed place. Across many campuses, that meant:
- No single, current view of the student. Academic and learning-activity data sat in separate systems on different refresh cycles.
- Batch, not real time. Learning events were not streamed, so questions about engagement could not be answered as they happened.
- Hard to govern at scale. Standing this up consistently across a multi-campus group needed access control, policy, and lineage designed in, not bolted on.
Solution: a real-time student data pipeline on Snowflake
Viewnear built a governed, real-time student data pipeline on Snowflake, in the group's own account:
- Governed Snowflake environment. Warehouses, roles, RBAC, network policies, and resource monitors stood up from day one, with a clear governance model.
- Native Blackboard integration. A direct connection to Anthology / Blackboard Data Share lands academic data in a RAW layer, with schema discovery and refresh, volume, and usage validation.
- Real-time Caliper events. Learning-activity events stream from the LMS through Azure Event Hub into Snowflake RAW, validated end to end from the LMS to Snowflake.
- Student analytics model. An analytics model of the student, documented and aligned to Blackboard, on top of the RAW layers.
- Documentation and knowledge transfer. Technical and functional documentation plus knowledge-transfer sessions, so the group's own team can run and extend it.
Delivery ran in two-week agile sprints with a shared backlog, demos, and a joint technical and business committee.
Governed by design
Student data is sensitive and spread across many campuses, so governance was designed in from the first table:
- Least-privilege access. Roles, RBAC, and network policies define who can reach what, by campus and function.
- Controlled consumption. Resource monitors keep compute and cost predictable across the group.
- Traceable by design. A governed RAW-to-analytics structure keeps clear lineage back to each source system, so every figure can be traced to its origin.
- Data stays in place. Everything runs in the group's own Snowflake account; no copies leave their perimeter.
What we delivered
- A governed Snowflake foundation, set up with RBAC, network policies, and resource monitors.
- Academic data from Anthology / Blackboard Data Share flowing into a stable RAW layer.
- Real-time Caliper learning events streaming end to end from the LMS into Snowflake.
- A documented student analytics model, plus knowledge transfer so the group's team can run and extend it.
- A single, governed, real-time view of the student, ready for analytics and AI on top.
The result
From raw data to confident decisions
With governed, AI-ready data in place, an education organization unlocked faster reporting, dependable pipelines, and a foundation built to scale across the Miami & LATAM market.
- 20k+: Students across Miami & LATAM
- Real-time: Caliper learning events, was batch
- 2: Core sources unified (Blackboard + Caliper)
- 7 wks: To a governed, real-time foundation
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