How to Make an Educational App? The Ultimate Guide To Made One

Imagine how interesting, meaningful, and easy, learning can be made using educational apps! We can integrate various functionalities in apps that can make children as well as adults eager to think of ways to solve problems, create, and discover new things.

For example, we can create an application where, instead of having students cram mathematical formulas and rules, we can make them learn to solve problems through explanatory pictures and videos.

Focusing on telling them why we are doing a particular thing and how we are doing it will help them to train their minds on how to think and build links to the preexisting knowledge base.

“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think”.
Albert Einstein said –

So, if we want our kids to be talented and great thinkers, and eventually a successful person in whatever field they want to go in the future, we need to create an educational app that fosters meaningful learning rather than cramming or rote learning.

And nowadays, self-education is more popular than ever. Not only do adults like to spend time in self-education, but children also like to do so. Anatomy, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, and Art apps win Design and Interface Awards and are downloaded by hundreds of thousands of users. Mobile applications for learning foreign languages are now available for both children and adults. Self-education for both personal or academic education was never easier than it is today.

The average entrepreneurial age is 45. It’s not long before that is cut in two. Now children are becoming millionaires out of classrooms. It is access to the right tools that help them gain the knowledge they need and become a huge success at just 15 years old.

Educational Apps Market Statistics

The current state of quarantine and shutdowns being repeatedly turned on and off globally changed the way many things were done. The way business operates, the way students learn, the way people shop, etc. went online mostly. Also because of this Covid-19, entrepreneurs, startup owners, and investors begin to pay attention to the areas of businesses that previously if were not neglected than underrated. Besides the healthcare industry, it’s education and learning of various kinds.

It’s not like educational apps are recently popular. Looking back over a decade, as technology began to advance, the impact of online learning on education really began to strengthen. And with an actively growing market and a considerable increase in demand for online education, there are now millions of users of e-learning courses.

Education is the third most popular category on the App Store, defeated only by games and business, and on Google Play, e-learning is even higher in the second place. However, the education category has the same percentage of 9% of the total on both platforms.

Benefits of E-Learning App for Users:

Not only kids but also adults of almost every age are users of e-learning mobile apps. Educational apps have many benefits for users, such as:

Convenience – Individuals can study in their available time and place; There is no need to manage their presence for a fixed time and place. With the e-learning app, anyone can learn at their own pace.
Cost-effectiveness – Travel, spaces, and infrastructure are not required, thus, saving money on all these things.
Knowledge — Many educational apps are providing free knowledge. Even if some are charging, which is not as expensive as physical classes, it is quite worthwhile to invest in it because knowledge is the one thing that pays the highest ROI for the long term.
Engagement – These days, e-learning applications are made interesting, exciting, and social so that people can get more involved and learn more.
Fresh learning approaches — gamification, micro-training, and other new methods are followed.
Productivity tracking — Simple and easy option to track one’s performance.

Benefits of E-Learning App for Businesses:

Given the increasing popularity of mobile e-learning solutions, there are huge profit opportunities for businesses that plan to build educational apps. Business owners who dream of making a great impact on people’s lives can take advantage of this place.

It is just within the first months of the pandemic, the demand for online educational sources skyrocketed like anything. Progressively, more and more companies, including giant enterprises, recognize the flourishing popularity of educational content. For example, in May 2020 TikTok launched a new platform #LearnOnTikTok to promote self-education among its community. Approximately $ 14.6 million has been invested to create engaging educational content.

How Much Does It Cost To Build An Educational App?

One educational app can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $50,000. A number of factors influence the type and price range of an educational app. One factor is the desired purpose of the app; for example, an “educational” app is different than a “games” type application, and it’s difficult to generalize costs between these two categories.

Another significant factor influencing the cost of an educational application is what building blocks will be used for construction—Java or Cocoa? These are important because they create libraries that deal with various functions in developing applications (e.g., calendar and map). You can explorer more about the cost to make an app in India.

How to Make an Educational App?

To make an educational app, search for e-learning apps, and you will see that there are lots of them in the market, but are they able to reach classes too? After all, classes are the right place where they should be used as most of its users are there. But unfortunately, even today, they are banned from many classes. Why is it like this? Because for so long smartphones are stigmatized as distractors, cheat devices, and addictive gadgets.

It’s sad. Because educational apps have the potential to support and motivate students to learn, create and innovate. It can also help teachers organize their classes and lessons to make teaching easier and more effective. And most importantly, e-learning apps can provide transparency to parents as well.

It was in the first generation of e-learning app development, which gave people many opportunities to call it a hindrance to children’s development. But these days, e-learning apps have been designed in a very precise way, using advanced technologies, focusing on proper education development in children.

So instead of talking about ‘disruption of education’, let’s see educational apps as a great tool for your children to develop their power to learn and innovate.

Classification of e-learning applications

At the first level, e-learning apps can be classified into two, one for students and the other for teachers.

For students, the most common types of e-learning applications include:

Apps for a specific purpose – Such as apps for language learning, playing the piano, sketching, etc.
Apps for kids – From learning colors, shapes, alphabets, nursery rhymes for toddlers to math and geography for school kids. The demand for such applications is constantly increasing for every age.
Apps for examinations – A great help for school, college, and competitive exam students to keep their preparation regular, grade up, and pass the exam.
Apps for specific fields – Popular among professionals, for example, apps with educational information for doctors and medical interns.

For teachers, the most common types of e-learning applications include:

Apps for planning – These apps help teachers to arrange their classes easily and save their precious time.
Apps for scheduling – It helps teachers to effectively schedule a time to get the most out of every minute of their day.
Apps for grading – Such apps come with integrated functions such as reports, grade calculations, notifications & more.

Based on the architecture and content type, e-learning apps are categorized into:

Multipurpose learning platforms
Specific subject learning apps
Supportive apps
Educational games
Learning management apps
Educational apps for preschoolers and toddlers

Collectively, the e-learning apps range from instructive (drill-and-practice) through manipulable (discovery-and-experimentation) to constructive ones (open-ended ‘sandboxes’), in accord with Bloom’s hierarchy of learning. Some of them are built to gain knowledge and skills, others for collaboration, yet others – to support learning and teaching, and the list goes on. The consumer market covers a variety of needs – from child to adult solutions, special needs apps, corporate training tools, and many more.

But this large diversity of learning apps does not necessarily guarantee quality. If we want educational apps to reach the classroom and assure parents that this will not affect their child’s development, then we need to create apps that offer distraction-free learning experiences.

So, let’s learn about the intricacies of the learning app development process.

Step 1. Designing

Applying engineering-style and problem-solving thinking to complex domains such as education is indeed a challenging task. A broad understanding of learning science is required to align the app’s design and use with the process of learning and development.

Seven aspects of creating an educational app:

In the e-learning app architecture, these seven aspects shape the product roadmap:

Temporal:synchronous / asynchronous user interaction
Communication:uni- / bidirectional information flow
Transaction: capability of in-app purchases
Public: Open to public / limited to a particular group
Multiplicity: the app alone / a community of other participants
Location: information or functionality customized for user location
Identity: information adjustment based on user identity

Content is King!

For educational apps, content is everything. Because this is what users come for. There is no escape for the content part. If you are building an educational application, it requires content that complies, engages and drives results. In addition, you mustn’t put mediocre user-generated content or marketing-driven pieces, as this will take your users away from your app immediately. Your consumers are the most discerning and results-oriented part of your app.

Teachers are those who have always been dedicated creators of syllabus, producers and performers of lesson plans. Teachers these days are more than “just a teacher”, they are tech-savvy like never before. In fact, curriculum writers are among the most frequent jobs in the EdTech market. So make sure you have a group of domain experts among the educational app builders. You can check out Invedus Outsourcing; Here at this company, you can hire highly experienced education app developers at an affordable rate.

Four pillars of e-learning app design

Content is important, but it is also necessary to organize them in a proper design to provide a seamless learning flow to users. Therefore, if we want to give users amazing learning experiences, then we need to create educational apps that show…

Active involvement

We can prompt active involvement in kids by reinforcing physical objects or phenomenon representations, like pictures while teaching them language, numbers, geographical maps, and all. Active also means distraction-free. Make sure, you don’t put any factor in your app that can cause loss of control and bring a hindrance to the learning process.

Engagement

To create an educational app that engages, one should design an app that balances the main educational content with motivational elements. For long-term interactions, it is important that the user receives a response from each action. In this way, the user feels in control and continues to interact. Motivational messages “Great Job!”, sounds effect, animation, points, and badges, helps users to anticipate their progress and foster a growth mindset.

Since motivational elements can be distracting, create an interface that allows bells and whistles to be switched off.

Meaningful learning

For meaningful learning, it is important that whatever one learns has a purpose, personal relevance, and builds links to the preexisting knowledge base. For better retention, learning should follow some principles:

Gradation:generic-to-specific, simple-to-complex
Systematization: in connection rather than isolation
Repetition: emphasis on drilling, revising, and recycling to form skills
Contextualization:embedding abstract concepts in a real-life context

This means that it is very important that you select a specific subject or area of learning before creating an e-learning application. For example, learning vocabulary is the desire of many kids and adults, but memorizing them is a tough task, many say. So that’s where the use of apps will bloom. Or take kids and math. Why not encourage young children to find a triangle in your home through an AR app and praise the correct answer with a comic animation? Abstractions and symbols become apparent through visual metaphors.

Social interaction

Social learning helps in learning other skills. For example, one can learn the language. We learn a lot from imitation. Children learn fast by listening and watching their elders. One skill that particularly requires collaboration is critical thinking. Sharing ideas and thoughts through an argument creates a deep understanding.

Eventually, the educational apps that promote active, engaging, meaningful, and socially interactive learning are a success. And you can build such apps too!

Step 2. Select The Right Education App Development Option

Talking about options to make an educational app, you have three choices:

Hire an entire team of in-house educational app developers
Hire offshore educational app development company
Hire freelancer educational app developers

Of all three options, hiring an offshore educational application development company is the most appropriate option. It provides you with the exact balance of quality and price.

Hiring an entire team of in-house developers can cost almost three times that of hiring an offshore app development firm. In addition, to build an onsite team of developers, you need to invest time and resources for a rigorous recruitment process. Conversely, with an offshore educational app development company, they will offer you with a complete team of educational app developers, app testers, domain-specific content writers, graphic designers, and everything else that will be needed. With the outsourcing of e-learning app development to offshore firms like Invedus Outsourcing, you save your hard-earned money on salaries, bonuses, health insurance, taxes, and many other things you normally spend on your regular employees.

To develop an application for complex domains such as education, hiring freelancers can make the development process more complex and difficult to handle. First of all, you will need to hire freelancers for every specific requirement, such as front-end development, back-end development, app testing, designing, etc. And as every member of the team would not be available in one place, it causes hindrance in coordination.

On the other hand, if you hire an offshore app development company, every member of your remote app development team will work for you through an officer well-supervised office; They can easily coordinate because all are in one place.

To conclude

After reading this guide, you will surely get an idea of how to create an educational app. Education is something that will always be there. And online learning is booming like never before. As mentioned above, by creating an e-learning app, you can provide many benefits to users as well as to your company.