Every e-learning app development starts with identifying the core concept of the project and assembling a team of expert programmers 👨‍ Read this guide to find out more about application creation process!

How To Build A Custom eLearning App: Best Practices of eLearning App Development

e-Learning Mobile App vs Website — Which One to Choose?

Purpose

Complexity of the development process

Time to launch

Resources required

Core Features of eLearning Apps

Sign Up & Profiles

Search & Filtering

Dashboards & Progress Tracking

Video Calls

Calendar

Payments

File Uploads

Gamification Elements in eLearning Apps

Rewards & badges

Levels and scores

Leaderboards

Virtual currency

Progress bar

Microinteractions

Storyline

Countdowns

Personalization

Custom E-Learning App Design & Development Process

Discovery stage

Instructional design

MVP development

Testing

eLearning App Development Tech Stack

Costs of eLearning App Development

WTT Expertise

Do You Want To Know More About Custom Elearning Development?

How To Build A Custom eLearning App

Using a dependable video conferencing technology for edtech product allows to greatly advance UX and promote quality learning 🧑‍🎓 Read on to find out how to integrate video conferencing API in your software!

How to Integrate Video Conferencing API in Edtech Product

Benefits of Integrating Video Conferencing Functionality in Edtech

Higher Security

Advanced Capabilities

Less Expenditures

Higher Conferencing Quality

Better Scalability

Process of Video Conferencing Technology Integration

How to build your video application with the Twilio Programmable Video JavaScript SDK

Challenges of API Integration in Edtech Product

Adoption complexity

Security threads

Maintenance and upgrades

API availability loss

WTT Solution Experience with Video Conferencing

Level Up Your Edtech Product

Even though the logic of video conferencing API integration always stays somewhat similar, in practice for each integration there will be differences depending on the vendor. Thus, we cannot provide you with a 'one-size-fits-all' answer; however, we can show how video conferencing technology works — using the '1-to-1' communication example.

This will give you a general understanding of APIs and SDKs components and what to look for during your next integration. So, to make video conferencing technology work in your product (let's consider app as an example), you need three components:

The first part of the process is creation of the meeting room:

The second part is connecting users (clients) to the meeting room:

In the same way the connection process goes for the 2nd, 3d….N client too.

To give you a deeper insight into the integration of video conferencing for education, here's also another example of the integration flow that our team applied at one of the recent edtech projects:

By using the Twilio Programmable Video you can also control your video applications from your back-end server via HTTP requests.

How to Integrate Video Conferencing API in Your edTech Product

This blog post explains how to create custom LMS👨‍💻Discover must-have features, costs, and best practices for creating your own solution.

Custom LMS Development Guide: Cost, Design & Technologies

Does Your Company Need a Custom LMS Solution?

You want to reduce training costs

You want to shorten time spent on training staff

You are looking for custom features

You need a higher level of personalization

Must-have Custom LMS Features

Content Management

Tests

Statistics & Dashboards

Integrations

Compliance With Standards and Specifications

Gamification

LMS Software Design Best Practices

Define the desired outcome

Assemble production team

Design learner experience

Decide on the features

Choose a tech stack

Build an MVP

Conduct QA

Custom LMS Development Technologies

How Much Does It Cost to Build Your Own LMS?

Our Experience Creating Educational Solutions

Sum Up

This module defines the types of content that will be supported by your system and ways of managing this content. Generally, there are six types of educational content that can be used in the LMS:

Evaluation activities are as important as learning ones in the LMS, because they help to identify how well the educational content is being processed by learners. These activities may come in the form of practice tests, practical evaluations, and online exams.

In order to be able to measure the effectiveness of your LMS courses, you need data. By gathering information about learner performance and course completion it's possible to determine the weak points in the educational content and improve it accordingly.

Statistics allows you to measure performance indicators while dashboards help you to determine how potent your educational content is. Here are the seven most common stats typically included in LMS dashboards:

Third-party integrations are not mandatory; however, they can greatly improve UX (user experience). By adopting third-party integrations you can get additional opportunities for streamlining internal processes and eliminating some redundant tasks that your employees need to perform to start using LMS. The most common integrations that can be introduced to LMS are:

Compliance with government-issued regulations regarding software development is what can make your product stand out from others — if your LMS is being developed as a standalone SaaS platform — or make it more accessible for your employees.

The differences in the application of compliance standards will mainly depend on the region that the software is developed for since the EU and US have their own policies in that regard:

Adding gamification elements to your LMS helps to advance the educational courses and gives learners additional motivation to complete them. Gamification is especially helpful in cases where users need to pay extra attention, and, at the same time, it's vital to ensure they don't get bored along the way.

There are literally thousands of different gamification techniques that you can incorporate into your platform — stories, challenges, rewards, gamified quizzes, badges, etc. — however it's better to refrain from using them all at once. Pick a few and test them first.

Defining what you want to get from your future platform in particular lays the foundation for all the subsequent development stages. In order to correctly set goals for the system, you should first ask yourself a few questions, like:

By answering such questions you'll be able to better prepare for the upcoming development process, figure out if there are any associated tasks that you'll need to get extra resources for to shape your future LMS.

Obviously, if you want to get your project off the ground, you'll need a development team. Here, you basically have three options: you can hire freelancers, assemble an in-house team, or outsource LMS development.

When developing LMS try not to underestimate the importance of a good UI and UX system. The majority of learning activities are difficult by default, so there's no need to overcomplicate them even more with a cumbersome system structure or cluttered interface.

To create an engaging learning environment it's necessary to make sure that the design of the LMS interface is intuitive and straightforward. LMS developers also need to reduce to a minimum the number of possible 'distractions' that users may come across when completing a course.

Putting users in the center of the development process will help create a learning management system design that takes into account the needs of each individual group of learners and produces desired outcomes.

Now it's time to decide which features your future LMS will have. We recommend coming up with two lists of features: core — those that are vital for implementing your vision regarding the product, and optional — secondary features that don't affect the educational process directly, and, thus, can be added later on.

Keep in mind that implementing each new feature in the LMS is a time-consuming process, so, when developing a platform, focus on the core features first. This way you'll be able to release the first version of a product as soon as possible, without spending months introducing small updates and additional features.

Once you've settled on the list of features for your platform it's time to choose technologies that will back your functionality. Every LMS is built using its own unique tech stack, so we always advise you to stay away from copying other platforms, but pick those tools and solutions that would work best for your plan.

Keep in mind that the tech stack has a direct impact on the project budget, i.e. the more complex technologies are, the more time it will take to put a project together. Thus — in the same fashion as with product features — choose only the core technologies first that will help you to roll out the LMS faster.

After all the preparation work is done, it's time to develop the minimum viable version (MVP) of your future product. MVP normally contains the minimum number of features (the core ones) that allow for stable product functioning and testing your product concept 'in the field'.

The importance of creating an MVP comes from the fact that it allows you to greatly reduce the development time and budgets while still getting a working version of a product. By testing MVP — instead of a fully fledged product — on a smaller group of users it's easier to collect feedback to understand how exactly your audience perceives your system. Information that may be really helpful later on, when working on the following updates.

The very last step before introducing your product (MVP) to the public is the QA. Now, it's important to keep quality one of the highest priorities all the way through, so even in the case of MVP the QA process should not be overlooked. Conduct as many testing sessions as possible with your developers to ensure that the system is resilient and immune to crashes and other types of failures.

Once the QA stage is done you can continue working on your platform — collecting feedback from learners, adjusting UI/UX, introducing additional features, and producing further product updates.

When it comes to choosing the right tech stack for your platform, it's important to take into account the flexibility, scalability and economical feasibility of the technologies you're about to choose. Try to always keep the long-term perspective in mind — the utilities you've chosen may work well for your needs today, but will they be able to do the same in one, three, five years?

It's hard to give precise recommendations regarding the choice of tech stack or LMS since 1) there are thousands of tools and utilities on the market today, and 2) everything depends on the requirements set for a particular project. However, to give you a general view, here's a list of suggestions for technologies that can be used in LMS:

A Complete Guide to Custom LMS development

The process of conducting exams becomes easier when you have a dedicated digital software in place 👨‍🎓In this blog, we demonstrate how to build an online examination system that is adapted to the needs of your facility

How to Build an Online Examination System [Design, Stack, Challenges]

Key Benefits of Building an Online Examination System

Flexibility and security

Getting rid of outdated infrastructure

Reducing logistical and management costs

Online Exam System Design Best Practices

Secure browsing

Remote proctoring

Audit logging

Data encryption

Online Examination Software Features to Consider

Admin Panel

Student Profile

Content Management System (CMS)

Examination Management Module

Exam Evaluation Module

Online Examination System: Tech Stack

Custom Online Exam System Development Challenges

Question bank management

Infrastructural barriers

Abstract answers dilemma

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Custom Online Examination System?

Our experience

Conclusion

The secure browser feature commonly comes as part of the examination system and prevents students from opening any windows or switching between different tabs during the examination process. This technology prevents students from using keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy and paste. It can also block any software that may run in the background to try and record a test.

The secure browser can also either entirely block a student's window — and make the examination platform the only tool that is working during the test — or send warning messages when a student tries to move to a new window or run any app. All messages can be immediately sent to supervisors and recorded in the database.

Course supervisors can further fine-tune this feature: for example, the exam can stop automatically after a student gets 2-3 warning messages.

With the help of remote proctoring, students can pass exams at any location while ensuring the exam's integrity. Remote proctoring can come as a standalone platform or as a part of the entire examination system. To ensure that proctoring is being conducted as required, the system analyzes data that comes from different sources and spans across the following processes:

A custom online examination system can record all the actions taken by a student: logins/logouts, exam access, responses, section navigation, etc. The Super Admin (a person with complete access to system features and sections) can receive a detailed activity log from the candidate appearing on the test — IP address, internet speed, and even track the precise location of a student.

Aside from that, you can also audit the activities that were performed by other team members regarding the course: question creation, test creation, question edits, etc. In broader terms, audit logging procedures help to tell administrative personnel who, what, where and when have interacted with the system.

To ensure a high level of exam data privacy and security, all information — including the question bank — has to be encrypted and stored in a secure environment. This helps avoid any potential database misuse and unauthorized manipulation of test results.

In addition, all communication between clients (students) and the server needs to be encrypted to facilitate the confidentiality of the examination process. As for decoding, only authorized personnel should be allowed to access actual information.

How to Build an Online Examination System from Scratch

This educational website redesign guide will take you through a step by step process of redesigning your site and show you how to do it completely risk-free 🎨 Read on to find out more!

Edtech Website Redesign Process and Best Practices

Educational Website Redesign vs Website Refresh

When Does Your Edtech Website Need Redesign

Stagnancy

Decrease of online sales

Full rebrand

Outdated technology

Advanced integrations

Digital strategy makeover

Educational Website Redesign Process

Benchmark Your Current Metrics

Find Most Valuable Pages

Understand User Journey

Analyze Competitors & Gather Inspiration

UX/UI Stage

Development Stage

Launch New Website

How To Budget Edtech Website Redesign

Redesign strategy

Custom functionality

Content

Website size/number of pages

Talent in charge of the redesigning process

Redesign Your Website Without Any Loss

Website refresh. This process involves introducing minor enhancements to the website and does not heavily influence its structure. It can be considered as a 'quick makeover' that leaves the technical base of a platform unchanged, only slightly sprucing up its appearance. Requires minimal investments to do. The main characteristics of the website refresh are:

Website redesign. The more complicated process involves extensive changes in website structure, content, navigation, etc. It also includes a complete makeover of a website appearance and thus requires significant investments to be made. The website redesign normally follows the establishment of a new marketing strategy or rebranding process. When doing a redesign, the website owner should be ready for:

Before we proceed to the subject itself, it's necessary to sort out the main differences between redesign and refresh as these terms often get confused with one another.

Now after we get through the definitions of both approaches, let's look in more detail at the redesign process, in particular the reasons that can make the website owner decide to start elearning website redesign.

The very first thing you want to do when preparing for a website redesign is conducting a website audit to figure out where you are at the moment, and in which directions you can move from there. You want to precisely know the current state of all integrations and website assets to understand what's working and what's not working.

Aside from that, you also should analyze website performance and current metrics, such as number of visits/visitors, bounce rate, linking domains, keywords, page indexed, sales generated, etc. Ideally, you want to come up with a spreadsheet that details performance (metrics) of each individual page of a website. This document will serve as a reference, helping you conduct the redesign process with less performance losses.

Even though the redesign process may involve significant structural changes, it should never cause damage to those assets (pages) that are most valuable in terms of performance.

What is already working well should continue to do so once the redesign is done, so we recommend to refrain from blindly redesigning everything as it can cause irreparable damage to the platform.

You need to identify your most valuable pages and make sure that you treat them as carefully as possible — to keep the website from losing its positions and conversion rates after the redesign is done. It's also important to identify relationships between different pages to understand how changes applied to one will affect others.

No doubt that there may be lots of less significant pages that you can simply tear apart and redesign from scratch (or even delete), however, make sure that you always conduct a thorough analysis first.

Users journey covers all steps that users 'take' on site to make a purchase (or buy a course in case of educational platforms). Understanding how users make their decision is very important when doing website redesign as it is the only way for you to figure out whether the changes you are about to implement will match user's expectations.

By mapping out the user journey it is also possible to find gaps and barriers that stop users from performing target actions. This information can then be used during a redesign to understand what needs to be added (or removed), and how user behavior correlates with your website structure in general.

To figure out how users interact with the platform, interview them asking a few questions about their experience on site, for example:

Another effective way of mapping out the user journey is website heatmaps: these can help you visualize user's interactions with different elements on the page. By using the information you can better shape the goals of the redesign strategy.

During this step you basically decide how your updated website will look like. By gathering inspiration from similar websites and analyzing industry standards you'll be able to come up with the unique style for your platform. However, here's one trick to be aware of: don't try to blindly copy everything because you never know how well this or that concept works on another website.

Instead, pick two-three websites and sit down with your team to discuss what you like, and what you don't like, how incorporating a particular idea will influence UX or your business strategy, etc. Ask yourself what feel you want a user to get once they open a platform, what features should a website offer, what type of media should be added, etc. Gather inspiration but always be selective and base decisions on the needs of your audience and product in the first place.

This is where you or your team get to create a design itself. The best way to approach this process is taking it slow — instead of redesigning everything at once, introduce changes incrementally, in orderly fashion.

Start with wireframing — a process during which you establish wireframe (structure) for each of your pages. Wireframes come in a form of sketched out black'n'white schemes that show how the content will be laid out on the future page.

Once that's done, design a few sections of a page to understand whether the obtained result matches your vision. By doing so you can save yourself a time designing dozens of pages just to find out that some ideas, in fact, aren't working. So, moving through the process step-by-step will allow you to revise and adjust the visual style on the go.

The final stage of the redesign process is where all the code work happens, and previously created mockups (designs) get transferred to CSS/HTML. This step will take a big chunk of a time as here aside from the development process itself you will also need to check lots of other aspects, like cross-browser compatibility, mobile responsiveness, correct functioning of all integrations, features, etc.

You'll also want to make sure that the SEO strategy is correctly implemented on your new redesigned platform: web pages contain correct title tags and meta descriptions, images are optimized, website load speed is high, website utilizes internal linking, and contains relevant keywords.

At this point you've reached the most anticipated moment of the redesign process and can finally launch your fresh site. But before that, however, it's important to do a few final checks to ensure everything works as it should:

After the website launch you can start collecting user data, assessing the performance of the new website structure/design, testing different layouts to improve UX and carry out other related activities that will help you boost site performance.

Tip: in order not to drown yourself in testing hundreds of design ideas and website pages, pick 4-5 the most important pages and work on those first.

Putting together a redesign strategy helps to set a foundation for an entire project. It will normally include expenses connected with interviews of all stakeholders, audit of the plugins and integrations, analysis of current metrics and overall state of the website, etc.

In other words, the amount of resources needed to be invested into the establishment of redesign strategy will be identified by the number of deliverables produced. Normally, these are:

Estimating the costs of the design part itself might be the most subjective thing to do. Here, the budget will depend entirely on the project requirements, complexity of animation, layouts, graphics, etc. Don't forget also about the number of pages that need to be designed.

Another side of the coin is imagery — what media is required, will it be sourced from stock websites or created from scratch, do we need a professional to edit stock photography or not, and so on. The ultimate recommendation for keeping budget within acceptable range would be not overthinking and overdoing designs — in any case, you can always go back and add some custom design elements to your pages later on.

UI/UX design

This aspect of the redesign process can really affect your budget as more complicated tech stacks usually demand for significantly higher investments. Today, platforms like Coursera, Udacity, or Skillshare rely on hundreds of third-party tools and technologies in their daily operations.

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