Online Learning Programs Students Crave and Employers Want

After the COVID-19 pandemic, working and studying from home became our new reality. Moreover, online learning is probably one of the best and most preferred educational solutions in the 21st century! And even though university students have become the primary target audience of e-learning, online education is unrestricted. A target audience varies depending on the app’s demands: a cognitive game for schoolers and a learning platform with various topics require different development approaches, yet both can be equally successful! This article will provide a tiny peek at students’ and employers’ dream online learning programs. Stay tuned to get all the vital information!

Importance of Developing Online Learning Programs

Before everything, let’s define why it’s reasonable and even beneficial to invest in developing educational applications. The ever-growing digital market indicates that such investments are still relevant and lucrative. Statista states that the category “Education” is the second most popular user choice on Google Play and the third on the App Store, correspondingly with 10,4% and 9.8% of active apps. So, is there any reason to try creating something that seems to exist already? Certainly! New improvements, updates and innovative ideas that lead to the creation of high-quality products are always more than welcome! If you are ready to hop on the trend, be ready to see a sky-rocket increase of your income.

One of the secrets behind such a demand for online learning solutions is its flexibility. Indeed, education is becoming more and more accessible since everyone can start their learning journey after just a few clicks! Even though smartphones have been associated with a waste of time for a while, they turned out to be exceptional tools for gaining knowledge. Additionally, such apps may accumulate all important e-books and other materials so that users don’t have to look for them somewhere outside the system! In other words, e-learning provides learners with exactly what they need – quick access to information irrespective of the place, time and other conditions.

Another viral reason for educational applications’ success is their accessibility. In fact, with online access, high-quality learning has little to no borders or any other challenges! Many people worldwide can obtain knowledge despite financial capacity, physical abilities, occupation, language and even age. Indeed, e-learning is much more affordable than traditional courses in universities or other institutions. Additionally, unlike the latter, e-learning systems are available 24 hours a day. Learners are able to efficiently control their daily schedule, balancing the learning process with other duties and hobbies. Hence, users can study at the most convenient time.

Summarizing the above, by agreeing to e-learning app development, you make a significant contribution to the EdTech industry’s enhancement. And with high chances of profiting from such an investment, it’s a win-win situation for you!

Creating Online Learning Program: What Users Want?

The real enigma remains unsolved: what features does a decent online learning program have to contain? Whether a learning management system or an online course platform, the software’s user-friendliness must be a top priority. Furthermore, there are some specific functionalities both learners and admins would like to see on the educational platform. Now, let’s review both sides!

Students’ perspective

• Personalization: Users don’t want a responsive application that perfectly meets their expectations — they need it! To create a better learning experience, an educational system has to track each student’s engagement level, learning pace, typical behavior, and analyze their preferences, previous failures and achievements. This way, users will have a proposition of recommended materials and classes that they might find interesting and useful. An excellent addition would be a personal schedule and reminders about upcoming events within the course. Thanks to that, users can avoid falling behind and getting lost in assignments!
• Usability: A scalable interface that adapts to any device’s screen size is a must-have feature of learning applications. Along with the aesthetically pleasing design, a program needs to retain the intended functionality on all devices. Thus, users would be able to resume their learning process whenever they are. Learners want a good UX/UI with just enough functionality that is far from being over the top. In fact, the application’s usability is way more important than its content! Indeed, who will use an app if it takes ages for them to find a specific service?
• Gamification: A little game integration into such a tedious activity as learning is what users dream of having! This fun approach to comprehending information can also positively affect students’ skills, such as logical thinking, memory capacity and other cognitive abilities. Learners want online learning programs that allow them to track achieved progress, milestones, and provide ranking lists, along with rewards, points and other encouragement. With such a feeling of competition and playfulness, users can concentrate their learning journey and effectively complete it! And, that actually plays a pivotal role in increasing and maintaining users’ engagement and motivation.

Employers’ perspective

• Advanced management: Having a whole class of online students might be a slightly arduous task to manage. That’s why most businesses and institutions decide to adopt online learning platforms. Thanks to such software, they can delegate manual work that can be easily automated, like operating all the reports and records, sending reminders, messages, etc. The usage of big data helps understand whether the users engage with the learning process and how effectively they comprehend the information. Furthermore, it helps to track the availability of any struggles, successes and other valuable feedback for further improvement.
• Learning analytics: In addition, administrators would like specific learning analytics that employ computational analysis techniques from data science and artificial intelligence. This way, they can extract more valuable insights, analyze students’ progress, and therefore enhance teaching and learning quality. Customizable reports must collect all the data from each user individually so that the administrator can examine the overall performance and give it the final score depending on the organization: a gold medal or a promotion. Plus, that data can be used to improve business efficiency or shift workflow.
• Assessments: The importance of feedback is hard to overestimate. That’s one of the reasons administrators, teachers, and employers require some testing features to ensure the level of content cognition. There might be tests or questionnaires for learners with written responses that consist of required and optional questions. For instance, the students, aka employees, might later receive feedback on the test to see where they were wrong. So they would understand where to improve, and their managers would see their overall progress.