Curriculum Advances was founded by David Lefevre, a seasoned EdTech leader and innovator. He's the Professor of Practice in Digital Innovation at Imperial College Business School, where he founded and led their award-winning EdTech Lab, responsible for launching 220+ online modules and Imperial’s first online degree programs. With a PhD in education, David combines deep academic expertise with entrepreneurial experience.

With several ventures and multiple successful exits in the startup education space (Insendi, Tutello), David self-funded Curriculum Advances as a new project to address curriculum gaps in MBA programs. He came to us with a strong concept and drafted courses, but with no product built. He needed a team to bring his vision to life.

Many MBA programs lack internal resources to deliver supplemental but essential content. David identified a need for foundational and topical subjects, often overlooked, such as statistics, plagiarism detection and awareness, and generative AI, to be delivered in a more modern and engaging way.

His goal was to create a scalable, interactive platform that universities could easily adopt, either as pre-MBA assessments, optional and supplemental MBA coursework, or as standalone graded modules.

Lecturers often focus on core business topics, leaving areas such as math foundations and AI basics underserved. These subjects are traditionally delivered through dated formats (slides, PDFs) that fail to engage students and end up being treated as more of an afterthought.

Universities also face technical hurdles in integrating third-party tools. For Curriculum Advances to succeed, it had to:

• Seamlessly integrate with major LMS platforms (e.g., Moodle, Blackboard)
  
• Provide a dynamic, intuitive student experience
• Allow non-technical course content creators to build and manage courses

We built Curriculum Advances from the ground up over six months, delivering a production-ready MVP by the targeted launch at the Association of MBAs (AMBA) Conference, a main global accreditation body in business education and the world's impartial authority on postgraduate management education.

Our team consisted of a product lead, tech lead, UI/UX designer, two software engineers, and a quality assurance engineer.

The MVP included:‍

Interactive Course Framework

‍A flexible system supporting different course types, such as formula and graph-intensive mathematics, or Gen AI knowledge modules.

LMS Integration

‍Using the LTI standard, we integrated with Moodle and other platforms, ensuring seamless student access and grade syncing.

Content Parser

‍An innovative solution we built utilizing a Word document to allow quick editing and course content control. Tags were used to define elements like screen transitions, correct/incorrect answers, context formatting, and glossary references. The system parsed these tagged documents into the software platform, enabling customized course delivery.

Demo Infrastructure

‍Personalized demo environments were set up for 150+ target universities.

Analytics via Looker Studio

‍Enabled usage tracking and licensing transparency.‍

Marketing Website

‍Conference-ready site with live demo access.