Thanks to the recent global pandemic, smartphones have become more than a necessity in this modern era. People use their smartphones more these days while spending time locked inside their homes. As a result of this, more apps have come up to fulfil the demands on Google Play and AppStore. In turn, app builders have started using an app builder software of their choice to develop different types of apps.
Smartphones have also become a complete guide to the wide world of knowledge. This is not just limited to the world of the internet alone. It also covers the numerous educational applications that have come up. Students use these apps to continue with their education even though schools and colleges are closed worldwide due to the pandemic.
Picking up an app builder software to develop a new educational app will not make any sense. You need to understand the different types of educational apps before you can create one.
Types of Educational Apps
The type of educational app that you wish to develop will largely depend upon your promotion methods and your target audience. However, here are some of the primary types of educational apps that you will come across.
- Classroom Apps: These apps can be of two categories. First will be used while teaching and can serve as tutorial material. The second will be a cloud-based type that is useful for remote learning.
- Educational Apps: These apps are basically for small kids who are still at an early developmental stage of their learning process. These apps are helpful for kids to read, learn, write, and develop talents.
- Test Preparation Apps: There are test preparation apps with their primary target audience as pupils and students. These types of apps provide the most recent curriculum training tests for quizzes, exams, and admission.
How to Develop a Useful Educational App?
Using an app builder software to develop an educational app is just like creating any other app. All you need to do is stick to the basics and follow some steps carefully.
- When it comes to creating an educational app, there are seven dimensions of developing such an app. These include:
a) Asynchronous/synchronous user interaction
b) Uni/bi-directional flow of information
c) Option for in-app purchases
d) Open to all or limited to a specific group
e) A group of different participants or the app alone
f) Functionality or information tailor-made as per user location
g) Adjustment of information based on user information
After these seven dimensions comes the content, which is the king and the primary aspect of any educational app. After the concept is made, you need to get in touch with a vendor and develop an SoW or Statement of Work. This includes specific features of the app and various technical documentation. Next, your designer will go ahead and create wireframes or a complete mockup. This will give you a rough sketch of how your app will appear.
- After going through the SoW, the development team will come up with an estimate for you. There will be a division made according to the various developmental stages of the app. Your developer may come up with questions after going through the Statement of Work. This will help the development team to be at par with your expectations.
- Once all queries have been sorted out, you need to determine a rough timeframe to map out each stage of the app’s developmental progress. It would help if you also chose a suitable database solution, either a third-party or standard. Each option for the database has its pros and cons. It is also important to remember here that four pillars are designing an e-learning app. These include:
a) Actively involved
b) Engaged with the various learning materials
c) Have proper and meaningful experiences
d) Socially interact with different people in different high-quality ways
- This stage involves your development team creating the core of your educational app and forming the general functionality. They will also integrate the database and the user interface (UI). Once this is done, the entire application logic is put down on paper, whereas another team makes a backend to quicken the development process at the same time. While creating an educational app with the help of an app builder software, proper learning material needs to be rendered. Indeed, adding some types of content, such as tests, to an app may be more challenging than others. It will not be a bad idea to allow different people to work on different app parts and later combine them into a single app.
- After the app is ready, several tests need to be carried out. These tests will check the app in every possible way. Some of these tests include unit, UI, and integration tests. With the help of these tests, the risks of any errors can also be avoided.
- After all the tests are done successfully, the QA team takes over the app. They have to fix all possible bugs with the app. After this, the app gets released, and according to feedback from users, developers make changes to it.
When you decide to release the education app on a specific platform, such as iOS or Android, you need to make sure that it adheres to the requirements of that platform. For example, while creating an education app for Android, you need to remember that data synchronization will be your main restriction. There is also the problem of ergonomic limits. Battery optimizer is also a significant issue that you need to keep in mind while developing an education app with the help of an app builder software.
One of the simplest ways to create app features is to write an algorithm. This will analyze the different levels of knowledge of the various users according to your factors. Then, if required, you can calculate deciding ability more complicated; you can introduce complex AI and machine learning. However, you will have to spend more time on implementing these features.
