The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in the education industry. Education is now all about critical thinking, creativity, and connectivity, rather than just attending lectures, taking notes, or doing assignments.
What was once only feasible within the four walls of a classroom is now accessible from any location on the globe, thanks to technological advancements and internet connectivity.
The advent of online education apps has transformed the education industry and made it easier for learners to understand new concepts and get access to education from anywhere, anytime.
When we talk about e-learning apps, there are a few names that come on top of our heads almost instantly – Coursera, Udemy, Lynda by LinkedIn, etc.
All these names that hit our thoughts belong to the sub-category called MOOCs. Massive Open Online Courses have played a significant role in the transition from brick-and-mortar classes to digital.
The several benefits offered by MOOC apps have made them quite popular among students and instructors around the world. Such apps also help train and monitor students remotely while providing a continuous flow of education. The growing demand for MOOC apps has also made it one of the most quickly flourishing industries in a very short amount of time.
In this article, we will understand the different aspects of the MOOC market, including the present and future state, funding in the sector, and top players in the market. We will also look into the technical and monetary side of the app, and in the end, Coursera Like App Development Cost.
Present and Anticipated Future of the MOOC Market
Recent Funding in the Field of mLearning and MOOCs
The market scenario that you just saw is one that has not just attracted market players but has also warmed up the investment world.
The ease that these MOOC platforms offer to the world full of learners and instructors, both in terms of convenience and cost-saving, is something that has not gone unnoticed by the investors’ community. Time and again a number of funding rounds have been happening in the edutech platform, keeping the momentum of Coursera clone app builders high.
Let us look at some of the recent ones –
A. Emeritus, a U.S-Indian company that partners with universities to offer digital courses, raised $650 mn in Series E funding led by SoftBank and Accel in 2021.
B. Udemy, which offers more than 130,000 different online learning courses from business analytics to meditation lessons, raised $50 million at a $3.25 billion pre-money valuation in Series F financing in 2020.
C. MasterClass, a platform for online video courses on topics from film directing to tennis taught by iconic figures in each field (like Martin Scorsese and Serena Williams), raised a total of $461.4M in funding over 12 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jul 22, 2021, from a Secondary Market round.
D. In 2021, Edutech start-up Unacademy raised $440 million in funding led by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.
These funding rounds are simply a peek into how big the MOOC sector is and how mobile apps are changing the future of the education sector, especially from the point of view of educational institutions that are witnessing a change.
Top Players of the MOOC Domain
Coursera, in spite of being the most installed app, is not the only one that the users are following, there are a number of other similar apps in the domain that have been keeping the category up and running.
On that note, let’s take a look at some of the other established names in the sector besides Coursera before we move on to the mobile app development cost breakdown –
The names that we just saw to be ruling the edutech and MOOC domains are not restricted. The list is ever-growing and more and more brands are now entering the segment to try their luck in the flourishing sector.
Now, irrespective of the number of players in the edtech market, the one thing that has been driving the attention of both investors and end-users towards the e-learning platform is the set of features that it comes with. Features are also an important factor that decides the overall e-learning development costs.
So, without further delay, let us get straight to it.
Must-Have Features of MOOC Apps like Coursera
In this section, we have mentioned some of the most relevant features that are best for any MOOC app like Coursera. So, to make your app more user-friendly and intuitive, read about these features carefully:
A. Search, Filtration, and Recommendation
It is the first and most important part of the whole e-learning software-building process. All the e-learning platforms – website and application – showcase a whole catalog of courses that require a proper, search and filtering mechanism. There should be multiple ways users can arrive at the course that they are looking for –
- By entering the keyword in the search bar
- According to primary and secondary categories
- Filters and sorting
- Recommendations
B. Stakeholder Profiles
Usually, you will have to accommodate three profiles inside your application, as the top mobile app developers would tell you – Student, Teacher, and Admin when building an app like Coursera. Let us look at what features the three should individually entail –
Users Profile –
- Personal and payment information
- List of present and completed courses
- Information about the earned credits, points, or certificate
- History of purchases
- Wishlist
- Profile settings
- Contact admin option
Teacher Profile –
- Personal and payment information
- Create and submit courses
- Dashboard with details of interest shown in their course
- Contact admin option
Admin Profile –
- Modify blacklist users
- Modify courses
- Get statistics reports
- Assign roles to the users
- Help with change in subscription plan
- Manage newsletter and notification
C. Course Creation
There should be a tool integrated within the application that would enable the teachers to develop a course, and prepare quizzes, questionnaires, etc. The platform should allow multiple things – designing a course structure, writing scripts, and adding – slides, videos, text, coding exercises, quizzes, PDFs, audio files, etc.
D. Dashboard
The instructors should be given the facility of a dashboard where they can track several activities and gain useful insights.
Usually, a dashboard consists of information on –
- Detail of courses
- Monitoring of students counts, conversion, and revenue earned
- Insights into what the students are looking for.
E. Course Detail Page
Every course should be given a dedicated page where all types of information and features can be fed in. The page should have details like –
- Description of the course
- Information about the creator
- The instructions for usage
- Material required to study the course
- Duration of the course
- Rating and review
While this was about the course detail page, the course in itself should have – videos that have been pre-recorded, subtitles, quizzes, assignments, a discussion forum, and maybe even a gamification element to increase user engagement.
F. Payment Gateways
Since offering paid courses or taking payment for certification are the two most common sources of revenue present in a MOOC application like Coursera, you will have to have complete know-how of the process of payment gateway integration for estimating your cost to develop an e-learning platform. There can be multiple payment modes that can be added to the application – Debit/credit, net banking, UPI, and integration of P2P Payment systems like PayPal, Venmo, etc.
G. Notifications
Notifications, as we have discussed in multiple instances before, are one of those important mobile app design tips that improve conversions. You should integrate the notification mechanism in the app in a way that the users are always updated about the topics they are interested in.
H. Business Side of the App
Although this is a feature that must be added at a much later stage, the option enables companies to give learning material to their employees. With the help of an Application Programming Interface (API), you can send in the details of the employee’s learning progress to the partnered company.
1. Progress Tracking
Provide a progress tracking feature to help students and users stay organized and accomplish their goals. For every course they are registered in, users should get personalized dashboards with a progress bar and a quick overview of the study material and tasks for the following week. Let your application help learners jump right from the dashboards to the next level of their course, which ultimately saves time.
Now that we have looked at the different features that must be present in your application, it is time to look into the technology stack that goes behind the creation of an app like Coursera.
Source: How Much Does it Cost to Build an App Like Coursera?
