The best eLearning platforms existing today have one thing in common - a great array of bundled features heightening the eLearning experience.
The eLearning industry has grown at a staggering pace of 900% since 2000. The global eLearning market size is expected to touch $300 billion by 2025 according to Global Market Insights.
Great value for money, customized experiences, and better flexibility are responsible for its popularity. Schools and universities apart, even corporates are extensively using eLearning development for employee training. The last few years have seen newer trends maneuvering itself into newer features that have become essentials of a great eLearning development website. Not just eLearning organizations but even users are evaluating eLearning features and advantages before choosing.
Source: BINUS university
For the ever-growing competition and to ensure your business stands out, building an eLearning application is the best place to start. Having the right set of online learning features will help you achieve your goals. We start by giving you the most important features your eLearning portal should have followed with a cost estimate to develop one.
Online admissions are the first major step towards eLearning. Shortly after students enroll in a course of their choice, they’ll be asked to log into a learning management system (LMS). This makes online admissions the first important e-learning website features.
Online admission process
Online admissions are the first step towards eLearning. After the students enroll in the course, they will be asked to log into a Learning Management system (LMS) making online admissions the first key eLearning portal website features. LMS is a platform that lets students view their syllabus, contact their prof, access course materials, videos, audios, and so on. This is also where students can take part in discussions, send emails, or instant messages to fellow classmates and instructors. Some of the advantages of having an online admission feature are:
Easy application process and a simplified submission process
Extremely dynamic and user-friendly
Reduces paperwork
Customized real-time reports
Assessment administration and feedback
Next on our list of must-have eLearning portal features is assessment and feedback. Having periodic quizzes and tests while the student completes the course is needed to evaluate progress. It also helps students get extra practice around their normal class routine and ongoing projects. This also helps the facilitators understand their learning path and whether they need to redo a course module or not. About 71% of students strongly believe that virtual learning has given them increased flexibility to take classes. But virtual classrooms also can make students disconnected as they progress. It is here that one-on-one interaction with teachers will help and motivate students. This is exactly why live feedback from tutors and instructors is critical to the success of a course.
Gradebooks present a powerful tool that offers feedback and assists educators to analyze performance metrics and lets the tutors intervene whenever students need help. A digital backpack allows teachers to learn more about the students right at the beginning of the course.
SIS management
Student Information Management Systems (SIMS) completes many functions like keeping records of tests, performance appraisal, and attendance. SIMS as a feature in your eLearning systems means easy access to an end-to-end student record system. The feature is important because:
It integrates data sources and processes with a single function which corroborates one-time entry of student data
Student privacy, the integrity of data and security is well-protected
A centralized information-sourcing leads to centralized accounting and billing
Students can also perform basic administrative functions on this one-stop access ecosystem
Generation of real-time customized reports
Updated information about students
Quick integration
Smooth user integrations can impact a student’s choice for choosing a platform. Every step right from signing in, choosing a course, and making payments have to be smooth. Your content might be great, but a mediocre user experience can deter students from coming back. Coherent user integration is a useful feature usually ignored by eLearning solution providers. We at Chapter247 believe that integrating eLearning with workflow leads to better engagements. Our contemporary edtech designers are constantly developing eLearning solutions to provide a hassle-free experience.
Mobility
57% of consumers said that a business with a poorly designed mobile site is not likely to be recommended. M-learning or mobile learning has become an important element in eLearning applications because students need the flexibility to access the website from anywhere. This trend has been on the rise with 99% of mobile users believe that mobile learning enhances their experience. The mobile learning market is expected to continue to reach $37.6 billion by 2020. The other significant trend in this precinct is eLearning through mobile apps. App-based learning makes the entire process well-customized and accessible.
Community and social engagement
Online education leans on individual learning which can make students feel isolated if they do not connect with fellow students. This is the reason why this is a feature we have pinned as important. It is imperative that students can connect with instructors on a one-to-one basis along with building a community that can help students engage, increase their learning avenues, and give them the exposure they need.
There are also many social engagement tools that can help students and learners give instant feedback. Users can hence manage alerts, and announcements, and get instant feedback on such platforms. Users can also take advantage of easy-scheduling. Social media continues to retain its top spot for connecting with peers, but online forums create a pathway for students to discuss their courses, a particular question, or even collaborate for an assignment. It also provides an additional outlet for students to get answers to questions from students and tutors which is important without a doubt.
Reporting and data analytics
The whole idea of a well-featured e-portal is to give features beyond teaching and learning. It also calls for tools that could be fruitful to gauge a student’s performance and that is why an important feature of every E-portal has to be reporting and data analytics. Every industry has embraced the benefits brought to the table by data analytics and eLearning is no different. A schematically structured data tracking and reporting process will help in monitoring individualized performance allowing instructors to make changes as and when required. Reporting and analytics also help learning organizations to understand a lot of factors like which are the popular courses, which part, of course, are the students flagging for questions, and whether they are referring to any audio or video to understand the course. Tutors are usually concerned about the course productivity but with this feature, they can keep track of student progress and also offer them a customized experience. LMSs come with live dashboards that present a bird’s eye view of the performance chart. With AI tutors, students and parents can intrinsically understand the performance metrics on a day-to-day basis.
Learning analytics augments the role of tutors and course facilitators for automating tools within the parameters of eLearning programs to promote further research. It also has brought about accelerated development of ML tools, content recommendation systems, discourse analysis, predictive analysis, and much more.
Different kinds of e-learning analytics:
Total time spent on the course
Page exits
Satisfaction ratings from the parents
Learner Progress
Learning style and preferences for learning
Our recommended case study read: Apart from the regular features that every LMS solution provider offers, we went a step ahead and provided Simple Study with futuristic tools that go beyond the convention. Read up to find out more.
Costs of building a portal for your Elearning project
Portal development is not restricted to any cost framework. The cost and time that goes in eLearning Portal development depend upon the project and the features that you are looking to include. To give you different perspectives, we have included many factors that will have an impact.
Based on content elements
More the content more will be the cost and since it is a portal for learning, content is bound to be on the higher side. But as an experienced eLearning development solutions organization, we recommend you to blend different types of content to balance your costs. Also, today’s learning styles are different, meaning that if you present an all-test portal, your learners would not be engaged, but if you amplify it with pleasing visual content the user experience increases and so will retention. The first step towards deciding content elements is understanding the types of content styles currently in existence.
Narrative style - places content in the story-telling method with a whole lot of self-assessment questions
Procedural style - They are good for training systems and calls for breakage of content into several logical steps. It usually follows up with a quick-fix referential guide.
Experiential style - There will be increased use of multimedia because this style of content is all about self-discovery
Let us understand the difference in the cost of these three.
LEVEL OF INTERACTIVITY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN
So, the content style will drive your teaching style and once that is done, the next step is finding out the level of interaction and instructional design you are planning. Ideally speaking, the list below are the features an eLearning program should have.
Dynamic media
Instructional design
High level of interaction within the portal
Customized graphics interface
Gamification
Detailed feedback
The cost/hour is an estimated $170 to $200 per hour
What we advice
It is important that proper plans are formulated with an Elearning solutions provider because intermittent iterations are time-consuming, will cost more and reduce quality.
Why Chapter247?
We have always endeavored to analyze objectives that you wish to complete through your online eLearning portal and developing powerful portals that meet your expectations. With more than 8 years of expertise and thousands of hours of expert project development, we deliver the best in class online portals and apps that define industry benchmarks.
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