Published on March 22nd, 2023
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many colleges and schools around the world have been shut down in recent years. During that period, the entire educational system moved to online learning. E-learning platforms are used by both students and professors for their courses and studies. You want to know how to make an e-learning platform that connects students and teachers digitally.
These virtual learning platforms don’t just apply to online courses. Online courses are being used by businesses to train employees. Some reports and surveys have shown that online education will be worth $300 billion. The next question is how do you build an e-learning platform. What are the advantages of an e-education platform and what steps should you take to build a virtual learning platform?
Let’s first define eLearning platforms. E-learning, as the name suggests, is a digital teaching method that uses electronic devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops, and tablets. This method does not require students to be present in class. They can come from any location. They can also learn at their own pace. There are many learning options available today, including MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), video streaming platforms, and discussion forums. Let’s now take a look at how to build an e-learning platform.
How to Build an e-Learning Website
It is not an easy task to build an e-learning platform. There are many steps involved. It can be difficult to create an online education platform if you don’t have any knowledge of coding. These are the steps to creating an education platform.
1. Get Your Idea
To create a virtual learning platform you need to first come up with a solution that addresses a problem and benefits people. To find your idea, you can refer to a variety of reports and analyses. According to many reports, the global eLearning market will reach $300 billion in 2025. To be successful in the virtual learning industry, your product must be both affordable and effective. It is possible to discuss your problems with other virtual learners and come up with a solution. This will help you to better understand your target audience, and how they will react to your idea.
2. Research Your Niche
After you have created a solution for a problem, it is time to identify your niche. You can gain a better understanding of your niche by analyzing your idea. You can focus on the most popular areas such as business, entrepreneurship, health, fitness, personal growth, and arts and crafts. You can use the demographic information of your learners (age, gender, sales details, etc.) to help you. You will have an advantage as the platform evolves by getting a better understanding of your target users’ age, gender, education, and background.
This will allow you to understand your audience’s age and gender, so you can tailor your content to their needs to increase your sales and attract their attention. It is also important to consider their learning preferences and key objectives. All of these factors can help you validate your idea and find your niche.
3. Choose a Business Model
First, you need to decide on a business model before choosing a development approach. The business model will determine how your learning platform generates revenue. Below are some examples of popular business models.
- Subscription-Based – In this model, users pay a monthly or annual subscription which gives them unlimited access and content on the website.
- Affiliate Model – This business model allows you to offer integrated affiliate links in addition to the courses. You can also share the course with others. They can also earn a commission if someone uses their links to join the platform.
- Paid Certificates – In this model of business, certificates can be issued to users upon completion of courses. It has been observed that users pay for platform-verified certificates.
- Corporate Partnership – This business model allows you to work with businesses to create customized courses and then charge them accordingly.
- Paid Courses – This business model allows you to offer paid courses. The students pay for the course and then the instructor and website owner receives the money.
These are the most popular business models. These will help you increase your revenue and make your online business profitable.
4. Choose the Development Approach
Planning, frameworks, and technology are key to developing a virtual learning platform that is successful. These platforms can be developed using two methods. One is Ready-Made software, while the other is Custom Software. Let’s discuss them in more detail.
If you need to provide specialized features to large numbers of people, custom software development is the best choice. This method allows you to modify or edit something more quickly, but it also makes it easy to scale the functionality.
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Ready Made Development
Ready-Made Development is the second option. Moodle, Joomla, and Canvas are examples of ready-made or open-source software that includes basic student administration tools as well as a large number of plugins. These methods can be challenging to implement a particular feature or import custom themes. You must choose the most innovative technology and design features to make your website stand out from the rest. This will grab the attention of users and make our website stand out from other websites. In UI (User Interface), and UX (User experience), simplicity is key. It should be easy to use and navigate the eLearning website. Because mobile devices are so integral to our daily lives, the learning program must be adaptable to all devices.
5. Interesting Features
A practical eLearning platform is built on a number of qualities. There are three types of students, instructors, or admin panel. It is an excellent way to prove the utility of your idea to real-world users by creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
The basic features of each category are:
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Features for Students
Search and Filter: These are the basic options that allow you to search for specific keywords and courses, sorted by price, subject, and experience level.
Suggestions: This feature will show the most appropriate courses based on the user’s interests or the history of courses that the student has already taken.
Simple Payment Options: Student profiles should be linked with a payment gateway to make it easy and secure to purchase. Other than that, every profile should contain basic information about the person, their purchase history, as well as the profile settings.
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Teachers Profile Features
Teachers Dashboard: This basic feature allows teachers to track the courses they have uploaded and the participation of others. It also includes a discussion panel that allows students to discuss the course with the teacher. Modification and updating of courses – Instructors should have the ability to make changes and update their courses at any time.
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Admin Profile Features
An admin should have the basic properties of adding, editing, removing courses, statistics reports, and managing notifications. Sending subscribers push and email notifications about new courses or events, as well as recommendations, is a good idea. These are the most important things for admins of courses.
6. Share Your Ideas With Users
These are just a few of the many things you need to do to make your brand more visible. It is not easy to acquire your first customer. However, you can attract students and teachers by having a plan and executing it well. Feedback from your first customers is another important aspect of product testing. This will help you determine what works well for your customers, and where there are potential improvements. This information will help you to scale up your platform, make it stand out, and respond effectively to learners’ needs. We now move on to the last step.
7. Engage with Your Users
Engage with your customers about their experiences with your products. You can provide guides or tutorials to help your users use the program. This will improve your customer relationship and help you share your positive reviews with others.
8. Get Feedbacks to Improve Your Product
You can improve your product by getting feedback from users. This will help you keep your product current to meet the needs of your users. Your product will be more prominent in the marketplace if you implement the points according to the users.
The Benefits of Creating an E-Learning Platform
The search engines reported that there was a steady increase in searches for terms such as digital schooling, education platform, and MOOCs all around the globe after the addition of covid. Students learning is greatly affected by the evolution of the teaching environment from a traditional learning environment to one that is digital. There are many benefits to online learning. Here are some:
- Flexibility: You can combine work and learn with eLearning. Your options are endless. Online classes would allow students to attend classes from anywhere.
- You can learn at your own pace: This is a great feature of virtual learning platforms. Logging in to the courses you want is easy. You can go back to previous lectures or classes to clarify any mistakes.
- Research: Students taking digital classes can learn at their own pace, and are able to acquire five times as much material than students who take traditional courses, according to IBM.
- Time efficiency: Brandon Hall says that online teaching takes 40-60% less time than traditional classes.
- High retention rates: It is not easy for teachers to keep students interested in a course. According to the Research Institute of America (RIA), eLearning has increased student retention rates by 25-60 percent, compared with traditional teaching which had retention rates of between 8-10% and 10%.
These are just a few of the many benefits of virtual teaching platforms, apps, and the growing demand for them. They are sure to spark the interest of budding entrepreneurs, and businesses. Let’s now discuss common questions you might have while building a virtual learning platform. What is the average time it takes to create an eLearning platform? What is web-based learning? Why should you partner with us to build your online teaching app?
Related Article: An Ultimate Guide To Develop An e-learning Mobile App
Do You Want to Build An E-Learning Website From iTechnolabs?
The market for virtual learning platforms is steadily growing due to the increased demand for online education. There are many app development options available that can be tailored to your business strategy. Virtual learning MVP app development tools can be more cost-effective, easier to build, and ready to market.
While other e-learning apps are more powerful, more tech-savvy, and offer more functionality, they also cost more. Your app development strategy will determine the type of e-learning application that you create. You will have more opportunities to monetize your virtual learning app if it is more user-friendly. iTechnolab’s programming team’s ability to create virtual learning apps that are successful is equally important.
