Driven by digitization, internet penetration, and technological advancements, online education is rapidly growing. Analysts at Facts & Factors predict that the worldwide e-learning market will rise from $144 billion in 2019 to $374.3 billion by 2026, progressing at a CAGR of 14.6% during the indicated period.
Companies are developing custom e-learning platforms like Coursera to connect providers of training services—tutors, schools, universities, etc.—with students. These software solutions allow businesses and institutions to train customers remotely, monitor performance, and boost their engagement.
According to some studies, online education can reduce the time to study by 25%–60% in comparison with traditional methods while 95% of students are likely to recommend it to other people.
With an online education marketplace, an organization doesn’t have to take care of the workplace and equipment, as well as set up a schedule that will be convenient for all participants. Thanks to these factors, the e-learning industry was experiencing a climb during the COVID-19 pandemic while many sectors were sustaining losses.
In this article, we will consider how to create an e-learning platform like Coursera, including the time and budget required to implement basic functionality. Let’s get started.
Design of a custom e-learning platform like Coursera
A design of an online education marketplace has to comply with the following requirements:
A seamless UX — When developing custom e-learning software, you should design an intuitive user interface, so that customers can interact with a platform even without thinking. This involves a convenient menu structure and content search.
Responsiveness — An e-learning application has to look and work as intended on devices and platforms. Before launching a product, make sure it is compatible with all modern browsers.
A unique branding theme — To make the app recognizable and stand out from competitors, an e-learning software development company should create a unique branding style. For this purpose, UI/UX experts should not use a template as there is a risk that other platforms will have similar designs.
The time required for making software design of an e-learning platform like Coursera depends on project size and complexity. At Arateg, we need an average of 180 hours for this e-learning software development stage.
Time: 180 hours
Explore 7 key principles of creating an amazing UI/UX design
Key 10 features of an e-learning marketplace like Coursera
1. User registration and authorization
When developing an e-learning platform like Coursera, it is crucial to enable users to quickly and easily sign up or sign in to their accounts. To improve user experience, you should provide customers with the possibility to register and authorize in different ways, for example, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or/and email.
The more integrations software engineers make, the more time is required for adding these features. The article indicates an average number of hours necessary to implement basic functionality.
Time: 50-60 hours
2. User profile
Depending on its business goals, a company can create various user profiles. A student profile can contain personal data, information about purchases, active and completed courses, earned points, as well as certificates. A teacher profile generally includes contacts, qualifications, and other related data. You should also allow trainers to submit their lessons and courses.
Time: 120 hours
3. Search
During e-learning marketplace development, it is important to add a search feature to provide users with the ability to easily find the necessary courses using filters. There can be numerous filters such as topic, difficulty level, duration, and rating.
Time: 100-120 hours
4. Course page
Each course page of an e-learning marketplace should contain details such as program description, schedule, price, duration, language, and qualification of instructors. You can also provide lecturers with the ability to publish introduction videos to increase student credibility. When developing a platform like Coursera, you should add a review section, so that customers can read user testimonials and take informed decisions.
Time: 120 hours
5. Course creation and editing
To maintain a competitive posture, e-learning software solutions need to allow teachers to create and update their courses. Custom e-learning software should provide course-building tools enabling instructors to develop a course structure, publish tests and exercises, insert links, upload materials, including text, audio, and video files.
Time: 300 hours
6. Payment gateway integration
When building custom e-learning software, it is important to integrate a payment gateway like Stripe, PayPal, Square, Braintree, or Amazon Pay. As a result, you will enable various payment methods, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Union Pay.
All popular providers of payment systems support 3D secure, undertake payment data protection, and contribute to fraud prevention.
Time: 120 hours
7. Dashboard and analytics
A dashboard for instructors and data analytics are among the top-priority features that should be added during the development of a platform like Coursera. Thanks to this functionality, teachers can monitor student performance according to numerous indicators such as evaluation for completed tests and course attendance.
What’s more, you can collect and analyze data, including the number of students, session length, and conversion rate. To facilitate the work of tutors, it is reasonable to provide report generation and data visualization in a custom e-learning platform. As a result, the time required for educators to identify the best trainees will be reduced. This feature will also increase teacher job satisfaction and overall engagement.
To enable data analytics, software developers make the integration with one or several services such as Moxpanel, Kissmetrics, Google Analytics, Zoho Pagesense, or Woopra.
Time: 300 hours
8. Notifications
An online course marketplace should inform customers about course updates, lesson start, etc. via emails or messages coming to smartphones. You can also enable browser notifications to deliver a superior user experience. To add this feature, software engineers integrate an API, for example, Firebase.
Time: 160-200 hours
9. Admin panel (app inside a platform)
An admin panel is an essential feature of online education marketplaces. With this module, it is possible to manage content, verify new courses, add and remove users. Furthermore, administrators can assign access permissions and change subscription plans.
Before creating an e-learning platform like Coursera, you should consider a range of issues to deliver the best quality and meet the expectations of end users.
Time: 2000-2500 hours
10. Multi-language support
Aiming to serve millions of users worldwide, an online education marketplace like Coursera has to provide support for numerous languages. This will help you reach a wider audience, expand influence in the market, and increase profit.
Time: 160 hours
How much time do you need to make an e-learning marketplace?
Such an approach insures the business owner from the lack of demand for the final product and the loss of resources spent on the development.As a rule, MVP has only one function that solves a specific consumer problem.
This is such a version of a future project that allows you to collect maximum practical data on how customers interact with it at minimal cost.In order to succeed with minimal risks and costs under the conditions where 92% of launched startups close, each project should be started with the launch of a minimally viable product.Tasks That MVP SolvesMinimum Viable Product is created not for technologies testing, but to check in practice whether users need such a product, or whether the hypotheses underlying the business model are true.
The main goal of MVP is to minimize the time and effort spent testing the market reaction to the idea.MVP allows you to attract real users to the project as guides that will help you adjust the future product business model and basic characteristics, outline development directions and plan the roadmap for updates.
Positive results at the MVP stage give green light for the development of the product’s full version.It is worth remembering that: it’s not the lack of money that underlies MVP, it is rationality.
Therefore, you need to perceive it not as the consequences of a lack of budget for a “normal” product, but as a way to quickly check what the market really needs and save money.Thus, a minimally viable product allows you to solve the following tasks:confirm the idea’s viability and test the product hypotheses using real data;reduce large financial losses risks in case of the product launch failure;reduce development costs by prioritizing important functions and identifying non-demanded ones;speed up the errors search and internal product testing;build a user base before full launch;occupy a market niche and attract investors earlier than business competitors.During the MVP development process, it is crucial to use one of the iterative development approaches.
Lean, Scrum, Kanban, extreme programming - all of them allow you to establish a regular release of updates, improve the product "on the go" as feedback is received.Tips to NoteNow that you understand what MVP is and why you need it, here are a few tips that you will find useful in the process of such work.1.
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