How to Create an eLearning App like Coursera

**The Internet has simplified many things for the world, including education. From classroom learning to online tutoring, it has content to contribute to numerous subjects. Providing such education remotely, one major educational giant in the eLearning industry is Coursera, which was founded in the year 2012 by Ivy League professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. A notable value proposition that made Coursera stand out from its competition is that the app collaborated with esteemed universities to provide actual college education, including various vocational courses and degrees digitally.
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As a result, Courser’s business model became widely popular, and other entrepreneurs in the education industry also stepped in with their distinctive apps and value propositions.

Popular eLearning Apps in 2022

According to Forbes, the global eLearning industry is expected to reach 325 billion USD by the year 2025. Below are the incumbents leading the industry:

Leading Players	Founding Year	Founder	Estimated Revenue (USD)
Coursera	2012	Andrew Ng	$102 million
Udacity	2011	Sebastian Thrun	$100 million (2018)
edX	2012	Anant Aggarwal	$95 million
Udemy	2010	Eren Bali	$775 million

Revenue Streams of eLearning Apps

One of the most important aspects of launching online businesses is their multiple revenue streams. eLearning platforms also share the same benefit. Below are some of the revenue streams that entrepreneurs can have on their eLearning apps.**
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• Paid courses
• Display ads
• Paid listings
• Monthly subscriptions
• eBooks
• Personal tutor fees
• Study material delivery
• Extra session charges
• Live session charges

How to Create an eLearning App Like Coursera

To build an app like Coursera, entrepreneurs will need to take care of many things. The first and foremost of them are the market and the platform. Once the market is selected, you can think about moving ahead towards eLearning app development, which can take up to hundreds or thousands of hours.**
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To help you understand the app development process, we have given some pointers below:

Prepare the Software Requirement Specification (SRS) sheet

This is the software requirements sheet that will include all the important features that you want in the eLearning platform. It is based on this list that an app development company will develop the software and use it to test the features as per your desired functionality. Luckily, there are two ways to prepare this sheet. The first one is conducting competitive research to find the best features, and the other one is to take consultation from your app development experts. Either way, this step can be done before or after selecting the app development company.

Select the Tech Stack and Begin the eLearning App Development

Different tech stacks have different benefits. They also affect the overall development cost of your software, as hiring experts of difficult technologies is more expensive. Once you have selected your desired tech stack, you can proceed with the development. Before developing the actual platform, there are also some optional steps that you can take to ensure proper development. These steps are:**
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1. Develop an MVP: An MVP refers to a minimum viable product and is used to test the market demand of a product or service. This way, it prevents loss by letting you know whether your product will be liked by the market.

   
   

2. Develop a Prototype: A prototype is more like a sample product that is used to understand software functionality and for product demonstration purposes. It also assists in securing funding.

The most popular tech stacks for app development in 2022 are:**
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• LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP
• MEAN - MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, and Node.js
• Ruby on Rails
• MERN - MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node.js

Test and Revise

Your eLearning app development company will conduct various software development tests on the application, including unit testing, integration testing, regression testing, and more. These tests will ensure that there are no problems with the application, and it meets the desired functionality. Once all the tests are done, you can give access to your eLearning app to early adopters who can recommend UI adjustments and features.

Alternatives to Scratch Development

Scratch development can also be a very lengthy and costly process. Moreover, the overall quality of your eLearning application will depend on the efficiency of the source code and selected feature set. Thus, in comparison to scratch development, many entrepreneurs prefer to go with ready-made software.

Building an App via Scratch Development	Building an App via Readymade Software
Lengthy development process	Only needs deployment
More flexible from development point-of-view	Customizable but with minute limitations
Careful feature selection is important	Feature selection is handled by the experts
Entrepreneurs can select their own tech stack	Tech stack is already decided
Any third-party integrations such as business tools and payment gateways will cost extra	Several third-party integrations and business tools are pre-integrated
Can provide unlimited listings, user profiles, and transactions	Only self-hosted readymade software supports unlimited listings, user profiles, and transactions

Features to Consider to Build your eLearning App

After selecting the mode of development, entrepreneurs can move forward towards preparing the Software Specifications Sheet. This sheet will mention all the features and functionalities that you want in the application. Note that in case you want to opt for a ready-made software, again feature selection is important to help you select the right software. **
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After conducting thorough market research and analyzing renowned eLearning platforms, we found the following features to be the most important and useful:**
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1. Schedule Management: On a platform with multiple tutors, it can get difficult to manage the time schedules of both tutors and learners. In this case, a schedule management module with a booking calendar and different time slots will help both learners and tutors. The schedule management module can include features like showing the booking schedule, postponing a booking, canceling the booking, or sending timely reminders.
2. Course-Creation Module: This module allows tutors to create their own unique courses by adding files in various multimedia formats. They can also select the recommended pace of the course and add quizzes, notes, and other important info.
3. eBooks: On an online eLearning platform like Coursera, one can also sell eBooks and other coaching material. These eBooks can be on various topics such as accounting, engineering, law, medical science, software programming, etc. However, to support the selling feature one would also need to add a shopping cart module to his online platform.
4. Shared Space: Shared spaces are more like web spaces for tutors and learners from where they can upload and exchange documents. Using this shared space, both tutors and learners can also save important notes and keep track of all the downloadable materials.
5. One-Stop User Login/Registration: User registration processes on online platforms are too long these days. However, in the digital world where visitors get to see hoards of information every second, they find the lengthy login and registration process quite tedious. For this reason, you can provide a one-click login and registration feature via visitor social media profiles or Google accounts.
6. Profile Management: After creating a user profile, both tutors and learners will require profile management options form where they can see the following information:**
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For tutors:

• Created courses
• Completed courses
• List of learners
• Time schedule
• Total earnings
• Option to edit information
• Workspace

For learners:**
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• Enrolled courses
• Course status
• Workspace
• Option to edit profiles

7. Search Filters: An eLearning platform can have search filters for learners. Some exemplary filters on an eLearning app are the duration of the course, ratings, language, practical lessons, price, the field of study, free downloadable materials, quick query assistance, etc.
8. Course Recommendations: Based on the learning history of a learner, the online platform can also recommend various courses to the learner. For this feature, entrepreneurs will require to integrate artificial intelligence into their apps.
9. Categories and Subcategories: Along with search filters and course recommendations, categories and subcategories will also assist learners in navigating their preferred courses. Some of the categories that you can add to your eLearning app are social sciences, sciences, medical studies, business management, languages, fine arts, and more.
10. Multiple Payment Methods: Today consumers prefer to pay with their preferred payment methods. As different payment services provide different offers, customers find it more profitable to pay with those methods that come with these offers or some other types of rewards.
11. Video Player: The eLearning industry is highly dependent on educational videos. They will also be an important part of the study material and courses uploaded by various tutors on your platform. For providing smooth uploading and browsing experience, you can limit the number of video formats that tutors can upload. To play all those formats, you will require an advanced video player.
12. Ratings and Review: Modern consumers consider ratings and reviews to be a trustable source of collecting genuine information about a service or a product. For this reason, an eLearning platform should also provide the options to both upload and view ratings and reviews. These reviews will assist learners to find the most appropriate tutor for them and also seeing the experience of his/her previous students.
13. Chat Support: Chat support is one of the fastest and most helpful means of providing customer support. Today, entrepreneurs can provide real-time in-person chat or integrate a chatbot on their platform to perform for the same intent.
14. Multilingual Content: If you are targeting a global audience with your eLearning platform, then it is important to upload content in multiple languages. Alternatively, you can use a translation tool but those aren’t as effective at translation as their human counterparts. Lastly, the business owner can also ask tutors to upload courses in multiple languages if possible.
15. Notifications and Reminders: The notifications and reminders feature will update learners and tutors on various types of action. For example, when a learner completes a test or the tutor uploads a new course. The notifications can be used for upselling and sending payment reminders as well.

Admin Dashboard****Admin dashboard is the area that will be inclusive of all important features required to manage the eLearning platform. This area is only accessible by the business owner or officially hired personals, due to which it is difficult to comment on the admin dashboard of Coursera. However, to give you a brief understanding of the dashboard, it is ideally inclusive of the following sets of features: Order management: Track course orders and view all delivered courses. **User management: Advanced features to view all existing learners and tutors with options like delete or ban users.**Portal management: Features to change the platform’s overall appearance and set visitor defaults, such as payment options. **Content management: Features to add or remove web pages, blogs, content sections, product tags, and more.****Tax management: To levy various types of taxes on all applicable products and services.****Analytics: Various graphs and pie charts to visualize monthly and yearly sales graphs.**Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Options to change meta titles and descriptions for each and every web page on the app.** **

Note: All aforementioned features are for advisory purposes, and the actual features can vary depending on your business requirements and consumer demand.

Conclusion

Schools and colleges adapting to online modes of education imply a high dependency on modern software. As more and more learners decide to use the digital means of education, more will be the complexities and problems in creating eLearning platforms. Nevertheless, proper guidance and experienced professionals can help entrepreneurs towards the right software platform and help them overcome several pain points of learners. For this reason, it is important to select your technology partner rightly. Once selected, the aforementioned tips and features will help you create a robust eLearning application.