Last updated on February 12th, 2024 at 06:23 am
In today’s society, smartphones have taken on the role of full-fledged knowledge guides. Furthermore, we’re referring to educational apps that routinely appear at the top of AppStore and Google Play’s most-downloaded lists, rather than an endless amount of information on the Internet. Here, you’ll learn about the latest education app development trends, the most common types of educational apps, and the qualities that are essential for a quality product.
In the second half of this piece, we’ll discuss how to develop an educational app, how much it will cost, and how to monetize it, among other things. As you progress through the course of your project, you’ll come across several helpful hints.
Your product will be more appealing to customers if you do this. In educational apps, the most common trends are:
1. Virtual Reality (VR)
Remote interaction in three-dimensional space and the development of a wide range of skills, from painting to rhetoric, are both possible with VR. Both the Quiver coloring software for youngsters and the InMind app for those with mental disorders can benefit from the use of virtual reality.
These experiences allow students to become fully immersed in their studies and alleviate any sense of boredom they may be experiencing. With the use of virtual reality, you’ll be able to draw in a wider audience than just educational app aficionados, as well as tech-savvy fans and gamers. It’s a double-edged sword, though, when it comes to virtual reality development and expense.
2. Augmented Reality (AR)
AR enhances the experience of using educational apps by providing outstanding content visualization possibilities. AR, like its virtual reality counterpart, finds a home in a wide range of educational apps, like Star Walk, which allows students to explore celestial objects, and Anatomy 4D, which provides a realistic look at the human anatomy in 3D.
If you want to use AR, you’ll need experts who are familiar with the technology. Benefits such as increasing public awareness and new capabilities make it all worthwhile.
3. Gamification
Gamification can be achieved without the use of pricey virtual and augmented reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. Users’ lack of interest and motivation is a prevalent problem with educational apps.
This can be avoided through the use of gamification to non-game elements. It has the potential to be both competitive and amusing at the same time.
Among the best examples of gamification in educational apps are:
- Duolingo — There is a game component to every language-learning session with Duolingo (hearts-of-life, scores, timer);
- Yousician —When a user plays an instrument and chooses a song, the application delivers immediate feedback on how well they did.
- Sololearn — The user gains XP (Experience points), competes with other coding enthusiasts, and tracks his/her progress on the global scoreboard while learning the programming language.
At a low cost, gamification allows you to keep students engaged in your instructional app.
4. Artificial Intelligence
Advanced Intelligent Virtual Assistants (AIVAs) have been used in a variety of industries, including educational app creation, thanks to recent advances in AI. There the IVA assumes responsibility for all aspects of learning in the application: briefing and management.
There are clever algorithms that can analyze a user’s abilities and then adjust the style, complexity, and material to their needs. Adaptive learning can be achieved by incorporating AI into your educational software. You and your customers will reap the benefits since the product’s quality will rise to a new level. In addition, AI implementation will save you money on scientific specialists by determining on their own how difficult each piece of information is to be.
As a matter of strategic relevance, you must take into account all components of the application type you are designing. Understanding trends is crucial.
Apps for teaching and learning
The type of educational app you develop will have an impact on who you want to reach and how you go about doing it. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular models on the market and see how they stack up against each other.
1. Apps for children’s education
Parents who are concerned about their child’s development from an early age are reaping the benefits of their child’s interest in modern technology. These can be used in a variety of ways, from teaching children to read and write to helping them discover their skills. All ideas are viable, but you must stick to the principles of visual appeal and casualness – youngsters should like the product’s design and not be intimidated by its intricacy.
ABCmouse, Epic!, and Quick Math Jr. are the best examples.
2. Apps for classroom use
There are two basic types of educational software: those geared toward students and those geared toward educators. These two materials are utilized by teachers in their classrooms to help students better comprehend what they’re being taught as they go along. Cloud-based applications are utilized for remote learning in the second category. It provides a central location for all educational materials, as well as alternatives for communication between teachers and parents, as well as control over behavior and knowledge.
Kahoot, Google Classroom, and Classtree are the best examples.
3. Apps that help students prepare for tests are also available.
Most of these apps cater to students and offer them up-to-date curriculum training assessments for entrance, quizzes, or exams. Every year, millions of students enroll in colleges and universities and search for any and all resources they can find to help them succeed. Some of the more effective ways to do this are test prep applications. Make sure to keep up with educational programs and make sure that the content is current.
Gradeup, EduRev, and PocketAptitude are the best examples.
4. Courses that can be taken via the internet
Adults who don’t have the time or inclination to take classes but still want to learn new things can benefit from this type of program. There is a wealth of multimedia elements in online course apps, which make training programs interactive and engaging. One of the most important decisions you have to make is whether or not the original content will be written by you or sourced from high-ranking academic institutions.
Linkedin Learning, Coursera, and iTunesU are the best examples.
5. Apps for learning languages
In terms of educational app use, learning a new language is the most common sort of activity. In recent years, it has received new features for mobile presentations.
Playing a game while learning a language is the same for all eLearning app development. Use a range of modalities to help students learn a new language, such as a simple to complicated framework and a variety of difficulty levels. You may distinguish out from the mass of competitors by using innovative technologies like progress tracking and in-app chat, as well as developing your own distinctive approach.
LinguaLift, DuoLingo, and Memrise are the best examples.
6. Apps for brain training
To put it another way, it’s a collection of mini-games designed to challenge the user’s reasoning, memory, and attention. Infographics about the user’s abilities and progress are used to enhance the learning experience. However, you must be prepared to deal with the swarms of competitors who will be eager to get their hands on these lightweight devices.
MentalUP, Lumosity, and Elevate are among the best examples.
Consider the most essential elements for your mobile educational product after you’ve learned about educational app types and trends.
What are the steps to creating an educational application?
There aren’t many differences between designing an educational app and other kinds of apps. To ensure that you receive your app on schedule and to the high standards of the development team below is a step-by-step guide:
- Once you have a basic idea, contact a vendor and focus on the Statement of Work (SoW), which includes technical documents and a list of features. You can hire a designer to create wireframes or complete mockups of your app’s user interface, or you can do it yourself if you prefer. Making sure everyone is on the same page and avoids misunderstandings is essential.
- The development team studied the SoW and provided you with an estimate. The requirements are broken down into development stages, and the hours are estimated and reported for the benefit of both parties.
- Developers may have queries or clarifications about the SoW during the first two stages. Prepare yourself for a lot of questions from the vendor’s representatives, as this is a natural part of the process of clarifying any ambiguous points.
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The project’s progress is mapped out by representatives of the vendor and the customer. The app’s architecture and technology stack are defined by the development team after it receives final approval. Standard or third-party databases are also available. The native SQLite database is less difficult, whereas the third-party Realm database is significantly faster.
- As part of this phase, the mobile developers build an application core, assemble basic features, and connect the database and user interface. Finally, a backend can be built to speed up development, while an overall application’s logic is written.
- Learning information is rendered when your developers build an educational software. Some information, such as tests, is more difficult to add. This is something we discovered through our work on the InContact case, where we included tests to gauge how young people felt about the town’s celebrations.
- Multiple people can work on various pieces and merge them into a single code for increased efficiency and speed in the development process.
- There are a variety of tests (unit, integration, and UI) in the final stages of development to ensure the app works properly and limit the possibility of errors.
- QA begins the bug-fixing process when the application passes unit testing. To ensure that the program fulfills your needs, the developers will make changes based on your comments.
Development Ideas And Techniques
For now, let’s get down to business and discuss the technical aspects of application development. An educational app has a major advantage over other types of apps in that it does not rely on the device’s hardware. An educational software doesn’t need to interface with the internal device at all if geolocation or video chat apps require to set up a GPS navigator or camera with a microphone, saving time for development.
iOS and Android are completely different platforms since the implementation takes place on different infrastructures. ReactiveX and RxSwift will only overlap if the code is placed in ReactiveX with both iOS and Android libraries (RxJava).
There are a lot of different technologies and specialists that you’ll need to use on each platform, so we’ve broken them down into separate sections.
When going for educational android app development, keep in mind the primary restriction of data synchronization—from version 8, no more than 10 seconds are allotted for background work calculations. Launching the app on an older device will result in a crash for those users. Using other APIs rather than Android services is the simplest answer to this problem. It is preferable to use foreground services if you cannot remove services from your program (for example, they are required for GPS tracking). As a result, your application will not be removed from the system, and it will not crash.
Ergonomic constraints are another common gripe. The battery optimizer is one of the issues you face while designing the Android educational app. More and more battery-saving techniques are being added to the operating system by Google. Because the optimizer considers reminders and alarms to be a lot of scheduled labor, it may cancel them on some devices. This has the potential to reschedule all user activity, resulting in user dissatisfaction and irritation. Switching off the battery optimizer will help.
iOS app development is often restricted by push notification restrictions: when an app is closed, you can’t change how a message is shown. To add insult to injury, the App Store refuses to accept applications that require the use of push notifications. However, the application should still be able to function without them.
When building educational apps for iOS and Android, there are a few key considerations to keep in mind. Now that we’ve covered some of the most prevalent issues, let’s go over how to build an educational app from scratch.
What is the cost of this?
Your instructional app’s potential cost can be calculated using simple math: A list of features to be implemented, along with the number of developers who will need to do so, will give you a total amount of working hours. There will be a requirement for an admin site for content addition and other features in the educational app MVP.
user profile, push notifications, payment system, in-app purchases, search system, content addition, lesson categorization, statistics of learning progress, and success assessment are some of the features included in this app.
This collection of features requires the following specialists:
1 Project Manager; 1 Tech Lead; 1-2 iOS developers; 1-2 Android developers; 1 Backend developer; 1 UI/UX designer; 1 QA engineer is needed.
Please keep in mind that as the number of developers grows, so will the number of features you can offer, such as:
Integration with social networks; scheduling system; statistics of learning progression; progress monitoring, videos, discussion, and attachment of files to the course.
It will take between 50 and 60 hours to complete the business analysis and technical specification stages for the educational app. During this period, you should have a solid business plan, a list of features, and a rough draught of the user experience. More than 60 hours were spent on the MVP’s UI/UX design because it’s more sophisticated and crucial for this type of application.
More than 400 hours for both iOS and Android MVPs will be spent on mobile development. There will be a “success evaluation” as well as the server being placed on the backend, so be prepared to put in 300+ hours on it. QA testing typically accounts for 20% of the entire development time.
Conclusion
To the well-worn axiom that “knowledge is power,” we may also add “knowledge is money.” Furthermore, it is now easier than ever to profit from such a good cause. You only need a business plan, an experienced vendor, and a little amount of initial money for eLearning app development. When it comes to the first two, we are here to help: just get in touch. To understand more about education software development, get in touch with us.
Naveen Khanna is the CEO of eBizneeds, a company renowned for its bespoke web and mobile app development. By delivering high-end modern solutions all over the globe, Naveen takes pleasure in sharing his rich experiences and views on emerging technological trends. He has worked in many domains, from education, entertainment, banking, manufacturing, healthcare, and real estate, sharing rich experience in delivering innovative solutions.
