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There is a huge boost in the popularity of e-learning or online educational apps fir all niches and categories. There are thousands of high-quality e-learning apps across both the Play Store and App Store. At present, an increasing number of learners from different curriculums and learning requirements are opting for these e-learning apps for a smooth, fluid and native mobile learning experience which is better than the erstwhile online courses.
Earlier online courses were popular principally because of the ease and flexibility of acquiring expertise and knowledge in their given fields of choice. Now, thanks to interactive learning apps and a host of other native mobile features, e-learning apps are offering a lot more engaging experience than the online courses and curriculums.
The popularity of e-learning apps can be attributed mainly to the advanced features and native mobile learning experience that they are offering to the learner’s now. Here we are going to explain some of the must-have and elementary features of mobile apps.
Design Focused on Learners
The most important purpose of e-learning apps is to facilitate learning. Naturally, from design to content, every area of the app should be optimized enough to facilitate an easy and smooth learning experience. When it comes to the learning app design, it should provide a clean and user-optimized layout allowing users to focus on the learning content. From the layout to the user-optimized placement of buttons and content grids, the design should be engaging enough for the learners in every possible way.
Video Content
Since educational apps can be used as personal tools by the learners, they can access chapter-specific lessons and lectures in various subjects through pre-recorded video content. The video content will help the learner to use functions like fast-forwarding or zooming or just taking screenshots. The video-based educational contents are increasingly getting popular across other media channels like YouTube. Naturally, they are now being used by e-learning mobile apps for engaging learners.
Interactive Content
Most of the e-learning apps across niches focus on making the learning apps engaging through easy learner interactions. This is why interactive learning contents are so popular across the vast majority of e-learning apps. To make your e-learning app interactively engaging here we provide some effective tips.
- The learning content should be optimized for different mobile devices.
- The content should be created keeping the specific learning audience in mind.
- The app content should be enriched with a variety of fun facts and statistics to keep learners engaged.
- The learning content should be created keeping the slow learners in mind.
Scalability
Scalability is another crucial aspect of the e-learning app. As the e-learning app grows in popularity and as there is a perpetual increment in the learner numbers, the app should be scalable enough to accommodate this increasing traffic and growing interactions. The app should also be scalable enough to support every subsequent new version of both iOS and Android mobile operating systems. The app should also be able to allow the addition of new features to the app.
Live Tutorials and Sessions
Some educational apps that deal with distant learning programs can be hugely benefited from the live tutorials and sessions. The live tutorials not only help students to get an engaging and lively learning environment comparable to regular classrooms, but they also help them interact with the tutors through the real-time chat function. Live tutorials by providing a Virtual classroom, make learning a fun practice.
Offline Mode
For many learners, a weak network connection often adds enough pain to the learning experience. Moreover, due to various reasons including monetary constraints, students often do not have a consistent internet connection. This is when offline mode helps them to use the e-learning app content without connectivity. Offline mode can help them to save certain content and access them later as and when they need it.
Gamification
Gamification is an engagement technique that helps create a competitive environment for app users. Taking inspiration from the competitive attributes of game apps like score, marks, grades, etc gamification in educational apps can also appear as motivational attributes and factors. For example, virtual trophies, badges and other honors provided by an e-learning app can engage learners more with the curriculum and the courses.
Push Notification
Push notification is the basic and elementary feature for any mobile app and naturally, thus compelling features cannot be left out from the e-learning apps as well. In the context of e-learning apps, notifications can actually keep users informed about developments, marks, progress, etc. Notification messages can also be sent to the learners to send them alerts regarding pending tasks or the approaching tests or classes.
Tests and Quizzes
Any e-learning or educational app is incomplete without the tools for testing the learner’s capabilities and progress. Since e-learning apps increasingly play the role of alternate classrooms, there should be tests and evaluations as well. Apart from following the regular online test formats, e-learning apps should also accommodate quizzes to test the grip of learners on information related to learning subjects. Quizzes in different formats are particularly helpful for the kids-specific e-learning apps.
Creating a Personalised Learning Experience
The demand for personalization is continuing to increase in all apps across the niches. In e-learning apps also there is an increased demand for personalization. In fact, most well-equipped and leading applications are allowing learners to create their individual space and take help from an array of personalized elements.
Creating a function to allow free discussion among students and teachers is a great example. Personalization can also make way for the learner’s free choice of the preferred method of learning among several available ones. Accommodating individual preferences and choices within an e-learning app can result in a great boost for the audience.
Utilizing Social Media Platforms
Finally, like every audience-focused app, an e-learning app should also make use of effective social platforms to reach out to the wider audience and boost user enhancement across different channels. Since you cannot make yourself present across all social media platforms with a larger muted resource, pitch the most effective ones where your target learners are mostly present. Creating a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, an Instagram profile and a Twitter handle are probably must for most e-learning apps.
Conclusion
Lastly, you must keep in mind that a great e-learning app is not just built overnight. It takes considerable effort and fine-tuning over time. This is why it is advisable to build an MVP app in the beginning and then further adding value to the app with subsequent efforts as per the learner feedback.
