Learners across the globe have embraced educational apps with open arms. The comprehensive systematization of knowledge has enhanced parent-teacher and student relationships.
The latest upgrades with innovative techniques have modernized education for all. Educational applications allow effective time utilization.
This is why more than 50% of teachers prefer open educational resources. The market saw a 21% compounded annual growth rate over the last 7 years between 2020-27.
The global e-learning market is said to garner a revenue of $650 billion by 2025. It is because of this that a business in eLearning is a lucrative proposition.
Education Mobile App Development is thus fundamental when setting a foot in the edtech space. However, as cumbersome as this process can be,
it requires meticulous research and streamlined efforts for assured results. This blog piece is the ultimate guide to developing learning apps and is the perfect place to start from.
Key Features of Education Apps
Interactivity and Simulation
What makes Education Apps stand out of all learning modes is their interactivity and simulating features. The functionalities incorporated in these apps are extremely simulative, motivating learners and keeping them hooked to the app. Their features include flashcards, videos and infographics as well as the cartoon animations or audio effect.
Accessibility and Feasibility
The fact that these apps are installed in mobile phones, one can learn even when on-the-go. These apps provide enhanced accessibility to the users and makes learning a more feasible process with their different options such as downloaded videos, online resource sheet and 24/7 chat support.
Economical and Time-saving
Education apps are economical and save a lot of time for users. Users don’t have to spend thousands of money on tuition fees, stationery, uniforms and accessories which they would have to buy in an offline setting.
Personalized and Gamification
Education apps enable users to learn in a personalised manner with emphasis given to subjects they lag behind in. The personal recommendations these offer to learners keep them more motivated to continue their learning.
At the same time their leaderboard helps them track their progress in respect with other fellow learners.
This gives them a competitive spirit but without the pressure of acing and helps them know their weaknesses as they work on improving them.
Different Types of Education Apps
Virtual School Apps
A decent number of virtual schools have opened up in the post-COVID years which provide formal education in a completely virtual mode to students in K-12 classes.
The conventional schools too have developed their virtual all-in-one apps to facilitate communication between parents, teachers and students.
These apps are packaged with different utilities. Some of these are
Fee Payments
Assignment Allocation
Online classes and recording database
Personal Student Report for Parents
These apps have gained widespread popularity for their ease-of-access and multi-faceted utility.
Exam preparation or Assistance Apps
Competitive exams can be difficult to prepare for without proper guidance. eLearning companies thus provide exam prep apps for providing tutoring assistance to exam takers. An extension to such eLearning applications is assignment assistance or tutoring apps for school students.
Platforms provide exclusive assignment help to school and college students where they merely have to upload their questions and tutors across the globe will furnish them with an answer. Payment is done on subscription and assignment basis.
MOOC Apps
Several short courses for professionals themed on vocational skills or specializations are made available on these course apps.
Colleges and institutes create their MOOCs which certify those taking up these courses with a particular skill.
These course apps thus give certifications to learners in skills such as digital marketing, data analytics or copywriting etc.
These apps are particularly beneficial for executives who seek to add more skills to their resume for better job roles or to switch their careers.
Language Learning Apps
These Language learning apps serve a niche purpose with a specific target audience usually the youth or the adolescents.
A language learning app creates a dedicated course structure for each language that it offers and has a set of assignments to test the existing progress of the learners.
A certification in the language may not necessarily be awarded by the application.
Apps for younger kids
Kids below 10 years of age are the mobile generation, they prefer to use mobile apps and watch youtube/OTT videos. Conventional schooling fails to grasp their interest. As a result, simulating education apps have been built with which kids can learn the basics of STEM subjects in an interactive manner.
These apps include conceptual explanation by cartoon characters, games and flashcards with simulating music and visuals.
Consider these for your afresh start in EDTECH
Before you begin to create an educational app of your own, you need to understand what it takes to build an educational app, and what are some of the considerations to start strong.
Audience
Before foraying into what functionalities to incorporate in your education app, you need to realize who your target audience is and what your market looks like. Conducting preliminary market surveys for the collection of stats will substantiate your Education Mobile App Development process.
You must not be limited to the age group for your app, but must take into consideration the communities and other demographics you wish to cater to. This will further help you in future test runs for your mobile app. When discerning your niche user group, examine their interests closely and their preferable interaction and modes.
This way you could create educational apps with better-targeted functionalities.
Personalization
One of the best ways to sell your education app is when you pay great attention to personalized learning. Personalization is one of the key features to address when working on Education Mobile App Development. Learners will prefer an app over others only if they feel their personal and individual queries are heard.
They should easily get access to pre-recorded lessons and classroom chapters or notes. The visual content should have zoom in/out, or 10-second forward and backward or subtitles feature for enhanced convenience. Similarly, multilingual support should be provided for students from different linguistic communities.
This will even lead to better scalability in future. Support for the visually impaired through audio content can also be extended. Tests and videos based on individual learning graphs and curves should be a core part of your learning app.
You must even add reminders for regular breaks for a balanced screen time or for exercise to improve user experience. While developing learning apps, you can even add functionalities for personal time management with Pomodoro techniques or timers. A UI/UX design that fits the needs of all should also be a part of the plan.
Purpose
Whenever you create educational apps, the most crucial point for consideration is the purpose of the app. You must decide what the niche of your learning app will be. Whether it will be a language learning app or a certificate course app or a schooling app with ERP integrated into the system for inter-student and teacher connectivity.
For the education app to do justice to its purpose, there must be a robust database system in place. It must be packed with all the relevant information stored in one place updated regularly and classroom recordings. There should be a possibility for students to share and interact with the teachers for quick exchange of information.
All of this depends on the purpose of your application. It can merely be an assignment help or tutoring app or be a complete education solution package. Deciding on a purpose requires you to research your audience and market very well.
Interactivity
Interactivity is another consideration to address in your education mobile app development. This encourages users to download your app and publicize it. When you build an educational app for your business, you can inculcate diagrams, graphs, tests, riddles and puzzles for greater user engagement.
Gamification through inter-user leaderboards and readable design interfaces specifically created for mobile phones are some of the other ways to increase user interaction. Another interesting way to make your applications interactive is through the integration of social media into the application.
Learners should be allowed to share their progress and success reports with their fellow friends and followers. This will give them a sense of pride and confidence encouraging them to use your app more often.
Design
You may have the most useful educational content in the world but, if you don’t know how to present it in the right way then, all of that will easily go to vain. You need to finalize your application’s configuration and design interface after deciding on the inculcated functionalities. For instance,
if the target audience for your education mobile app development is children in the age group 5-10 years then it must contain more infographics with allusions to comic cartoon characters. Similarly, the colour palette used should be brighter and friendlier than any professional college certification application.
Development Stages
The broad steps that you need to follow when developing a mobile app are listed below.
Research and Project Planning
Once you have outlined your target audience and their needs, you must narrow down your ideas to specific features and begin with project planning and execution. Create a timeline for the different phases of your development process in order of the priorities given to different functionalities.
At the same time, you must focus on developing initially a MVP - Minimum Viable Product. This can be then released for timely feedback from your audience and further improvement to the app. Project planning even includes deciding which teams will work simultaneously on what.
From Development to Testing
The development stage is further subdivided into various phases such as Wireframing, Technical Assessment, Prototyping, and Designing. Wireframing is creating a structure for your app.
Technical assessment involves checking the feasibility of your app in getting installed by the users and its minimum requirements. Education Mobile App development involves Prototyping and Designing which is creating a basic sample application with all features and then improving upon it.
It takes a long time until the results of the toil of several developers can be reaped. Testing also is done at times in stages. These stages are often called Alpha and Beta testing which involve debugging errors and mistakes in the apps in each stage.
Revenue Model and Launching
The last stage which is the task of the management team of your business is deciding on a revenue model. The pricing depends on your factor inputs as well as your user purchasing capacity.
The competition in the education world does not allow businesses to charge their users exorbitantly with heavy margins.
You need to make several considerations including all features you’ve incorporated into the app and its complexities. The payment methods commonly known to all are - Subscription model, One-time payments, Advertisement or Affiliate marketing.
Feedback
Lastly, the most significant stage which does not end ever is that of feedback received. There are two ways to receive feedback. One is direct feedback in the form of reviews or star ratings, surveys etc.
This way users can share their experiences. Another is indirect feedback collection which involves analysing user behaviour.
The number of hours they use their app, the number of users uninstall or reinstall the apps, and click frequency are some of the indirect ways to gauge user experience.
Factors Determining the cost of App Development
While the above would have given you a brief idea of how to go about with education mobile app development, it is essential to understand the factors that determine the costs of development
Resource cost
The first and foremost is the cost of your resources. Which team you work with and the expertise of the company you hire for your app development are some of the costs you need to keep in mind.
Platform and Tech Stack
Your costs are also dependent on whether you’re taking an approach of cross-platform native app development or progressive app development. These would even have an impact on your future costs for app hosting on dedicated application stores. Similarly, Mobile Development Technologies like React Native that fasten your application development add a substantial component to your costs.
UI/UX components and Third-party cloud integration
The interface your designers come up with and the add-ons your application is integrated with, say payment gateways or social media integration, also decide on the costs. Third-party and/or cloud integration means additional future payments to these APIs.
App hosting and Security
Lastly, the security features your application uses such as cryptographic key management or enforcement of encryptions for safer communication and secured database management along with the app hosting costs together significantly affect your overall app development costs.
Get Started with experts
Developing an educational app is tough. It becomes tougher when done independently without much expertise. The best eLearning App development company, helps your business sail through this difficult task of app development. It helps you integrate the best features and ace your design with regular maintenance and upgradation.
Contact Us to know more about our services and team of experts who can help you in getting the best eLearning App for your business.
