Due to advancements in technology today the educational app development companies are on the rise. You may talk about SimpliLearn, Udemy or others. This is the most sought after business these days. At one stage or the other, we all have been lectured in schools or colleges on some subject. However, it was boring sometimes and nice at others. Sometimes you would even tend to leave the class but could not. This is where these educational or e-learning apps score. You can start learning when you want, pause it and take some rest, and continue when you want to. Even age is no bar today.
Well, that’s a lot of praising these apps. Before this all happens, the apps need to exist somewhere, they need to be created. To start this education app development, we need to follow the below-given steps:
Why we need this app?
First of all, we need to answer the most fundamental question “Why we need this app?”. It’s not because our company feels like doing it as everyone else is doing it, not also because my manager said: “go ahead and do it as you are told to”. No, the answer has to exist. The answer to this question lies in the interviews or surveys you might conduct. Ask the people around you, some of your friends, or put up a survey on social media. You will get an answer. This answer will plan the design of your app.
Every problem is not solved by providing e-Learning as a solution. An unsatisfied customer might not be satisfied even if you give them an e-Learning course. The analysis performed at this stage takes you to the core of the problem much faster.
Know your audience
This happens quite often. You might download content in a language you are not even vaguely familiar with. It’s not your fault. It’s the app developers fault. They did not specify any option for the language. The app, for example, was developed in Arabic. How could an Italian understand it? Misunderstanding. Knowing your customers and their needs are very important. If the customer wants an e-learning course in Computer Science and you have it, but without any practical, how do you suggest the customer buy that course? Such things have to be noted down at a very early stage. The developers must know their customers and their requirements close to heart. Also, know the level of your customers understanding. A beginner cannot be offered a high-end or advanced course.
Analyze your content
Once you are clear about why you are developing the app, and for whom you are doing so, you need to analyze the content. You might have a very good course design that seems to be perfect with text, audio, video, and even animation, but it might just fail if the customer does not value it. You need to find more information regarding the app you are about to develop. You need to know whether the app falls into the declarative, procedural or situated category. Also, the type of content that you have needs to be known. Is it a fact, concept, process, procedure, principles, interpersonal skills, or attitudes that the content is about. Finally, you also need to have a structure for the app i.e. how the various modules in the app are linked to each other.
Plan the learning objectives
What is it that you want your learners to achieve from this app or the modules within are the learning objectives. It is the job of the developers to ask questions regarding the app content and discuss whether the results from the said app are desired by the customers or not. The developers can, to begin with, have 3-4 objectives. These objectives must always be SMART.
Specific: Ensures that the developers know who their audience is and what the app accomplishes
Measurable: It should be ensured that the objectives can be measured on some scale else just forego such objectives
Achievable: Measuring objectives is not enough if they cannot be achieved. Achievable objectives target genuine goals in an accurate time frame.
Relevant: Ensure that your objectives mean something to your customers. You know of the impact your objectives are going to have on the customers.
Time-Sensitive: The objectives that you have set must be achieved within a specified time-frame. Customers must have learned something by the time they reach the end of the course.
Also, the developers must ensure that the learning objectives and the business objectives tally with each other else the business might be going one way and the app the other.
Teaching Strategy
The teaching strategy is an important point the developers will need to concern. It is this that is going to attract the customers more than anything. If it is not properly handled, then your customers might come once, but not again. We have moved far ahead from books and PDFs now. Engage your customers with video, audio, animation, and infographic. There are hundreds of infographic websites available today where you can do your designing. The animation is yet another resource that you can use to design your strategy. Just look out on Amazon Web Services. Even their free content is so well presented through animation and infographic that one cannot stop visiting that site again and again.
Use Storyboarding Techniques
Like I just suggested animation on the AWS site being used, you could also use certain storyboarding techniques. Such a technique helps in the placement of text, images, and videos on your page and provides you a preview of what your page will look like even before you have it published. But before placing the content on the board, get it approved. There is no point in putting unapproved content and later getting it removed as the customers didn’t want it.
Technology to Use
This is one of the most important and difficult decisions, the developers of the e-learning app will have to make. The developer needs to peek at the reviews from other designers/developers, cost, features, and most important of all what suits best for the developing company. According to an economist “habits, tastes, and fashions ranges according to personality and location”. Today it could be changed to suit our needs. It could be “Needs vary from one organization to another” as the same tools might not work for all organizations. Things to take into consideration include:
Number of people accessing the app must be known to avoid downtime
Hardware, servers, the database must be up to the mark
Where will the course be accessed from must be known from a security point of view
Is the help of extra applications required?
The amount of bandwidth required
Information backup plans
Security
Server Maintenance
Support Systems
Prototype the modules
This the time to start building your app. Make an app without publishing it, and test the working of the app. Ensure you have critics sitting around you to provide with good as well as negative feedback. Negative feedback are the ones that are going to help you. These are the areas where your app needs to improve. Once a prototype is ready it becomes easier to create newer versions from the existing prototype. Now you can ask your team leader to approve the prototype so that you are ready for the main job – the actual complete course.
Course Creation
With the prototype in hand, start designing the course and meanwhile also keep in mind the objectives you had earlier outlined. During this time, the developer needs to keep the entire framework of the app and the options required by the customers in front of him always. The developer can use different professional models while designing the course to suit the needs of his customers.
Publishing
Its high time the course was published. However, before publishing makes it available to your colleagues, and customers (if possible). This way you can earn their feedback and comments, and make the required changes to your app before publishing.
Promotion
Truly, your job has not come to an end soon. There is perhaps more work to be done after the creation and publication of the app. The app needs to be known among your prospective customers. Make use of the media to advertise. These days’ social media is a great way to advertise and even launch your apps. Use Facebook or Instagram for this purpose. Having developed the app, remember to promote it. Without promotion, you may as well have never developed it.
Another way of promotions these days is by providing your app on a trial basis. Provide a few unimportant courses that show the features of your app to the customer for free. Once he is attracted and ready to take up a full course, then let him pay.
Evaluating Results
The app, into which the developers put in so much of their labor, must tell them how effective it has been. What were the good and the bad points of the app and what improvements can be done? To gauge all this developer generally turn to the following four metrics:
Reaction to Learning
Knowledge
Behaviour Changes
Results and Impact
The developers can also have a look at ROI, cost, and performance. Involve the management and stakeholders to get the best idea of your KPIs.
