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Modern online education has redefined the learning process, teaching, and development of professional skills. Now a person can learn math from a teacher in a distant city, complete the employer's training remotely from home, and a working professional can acquire new skills not visiting a class. The use of video is a key feature for many online courses. Watching an example of the practical application of the material on video is more convenient than reading the instructions in multiple pages, particularly when the material concerns software, cooking, exercising, designing, medical treatment, or other technical skills.
What Is a Video-Based eLearning Platform?
Video-based eLearning platform refers to an online website or mobile application where the individual learns via recorded video lessons.
Think about the learning platform at which the learner creates an account, chooses a class, pays for the class, and proceeds to start watching the class. The class is composed of different sections, and each section may contain many videos, tests, assignments, and notes.
Why Businesses Are Investing in Video Learning Platforms
The advantages of learning through videos include the fact that students get a chance to see and hear the lesson instead of depending on reading alone.
A cook can demonstrate the preparation of a dish. An athlete can demonstrate the correct position of the body during an exercise. A programmer can make a screen recording while explaining every step. A translator can demonstrate correct pronunciation and communication skills.
How Does a Video-Based eLearning Platform Work?
A user firstly registers or signs in. He/she can browse the courses, read the description of those, see the instructor’s details, and the cost of the course. After he buys the course, he gets access to the lessons provided by that course.
He watches the videos via the platform’s video player. His watching process is stored, and he can continue watching from the place where he stopped. Depending on the platform, a learner can also download the materials needed, do quizzes, submit homeworks, post questions, write reviews, and get certificates for completed courses.
Core Features to Include
Depending on what kind of platform you will be building, you may not require all these features in your platform. A small platform for a single training company won't require all these features.
However, there are some features that are applicable to most video-learning platforms.
• User Account Creation and Profile
Students must have the ability to register using either their email address, phone number, or their social media account. Once they do this, they get access to a custom-made dashboard where all their enrolled classes, completed lessons, and certificates are listed. Don’t ask for too many details during registration. Otherwise, the process might seem boring and long – no one wants to spend time filling out ten fields just to access one course.
• Courses Catalogue
The courses may be sorted according to their subject matter, level of complexity, price, language, instructor, duration, and any other factor of your choice. Searching and filtering are very important when you have lots of courses on your site. Each course includes its name, description, number of lectures, duration, price, outcomes, and more.
• Video Player
Students should have the ability to pause, play, adjust playback speed, volume, watch video in full screen, control the video, etc. Captions will make lessons more understandable, and different levels of video quality will help users with poor Internet connection.
• Progress Tracking
For instance, the learner can see how many lessons out of 20 they have already passed. The system can also display completed modules, quiz results, assignments, and course progress.
This seemingly minor option can significantly help the learner as it allows them to see their achievements instead of getting lost in a large course.
• Quizzes and Assessments
There are instances where the use of video may not be sufficient in demonstrating that the learner has acquired certain things. In such a situation, the teacher may incorporate multiple choice quizzes, true or false quizzes, short answer quizzes, or module quizzes. These quizzes can be automatically scored.
• Certificates
Certificate generation is an option that can be implemented when the learner passes certain criteria. This certificate can contain the name of the learner, the name of the course, the instructor or organization, the date of passing the course, and a certificate number. For professional education-related platforms, certification verification option can be beneficial.
• Search & Recommendations
With an increase in the number of courses, learners require assistance in selecting relevant courses. Initially, you can have a rudimentary searching system. Then, recommendations can be generated depending on the interests of the learners and the subjects watched, course completion, and past purchases.
• Payment and Subscription Options
If there are payments involved in your courses, you will need a payment mechanism that is secure. Course purchase options may include one-time course purchase, monthly subscription, annual membership, course packages, or any combination of the above.
• Instructor Dashboard
Instructors require a portal where they can manage their content without relying on the developer for minor changes. This portal will enable them to make courses, upload videos, upload documents, make quizzes, manage lessons, learn the number of learners, and even the amount of revenue the course makes.
• Admin Panel
This is the core of the whole platform where all the administrators have the ability to manage users, teachers, courses, payment, categories, reviews, reporting, subscriptions, and lots of other things. The efficiency of the admin panel results in saving time as everything will be managed without any coding change in the application.
Advanced Features for a Larger Platform
After getting the core platform working, there are a lot of additional features which would help the learning process become more interactive. The live class feature could allow instructors to mix recorded lessons with live classes. Discussion boards could allow the learner to get in touch with his/her peers or ask questions from instructors. Gamification is one more advantage. The learner would receive points, badges and other rewards for his/her successful performance in the lessons.
Video Security Should Not Be Ignored
It is important to note that video materials are a huge investment especially when the courses are created by qualified teachers. In case the videos are just uploaded as regular public documents, users will be able to share the links to the videos or download the materials illegally. It is necessary to consider such solutions as protected video delivery, access control, expiring links, domain restrictions, encryption, and visible/hidden watermarking.
Technology Needed for Development
Technology stack is determined based on platform size, traffic expectations, budget and features.
Typical technology stack may include frontend website, application, database, cloud storage, video processing, payment gateway and notifications. Frontend deals with what users and teachers will be seeing. Backend takes care of accounts, course access, payments, progress and other application logic. Database holds user, courses, lesson, order and quizzes data. Videos are typically stored and streamed not from the server that runs application but via specialized cloud or video services.
How Much Does Video-Based eLearning Platform Development Cost?
It is highly dependent on the platform scope. Development of the basic video-learning site with user registration, course pages, videos, payments, progress monitoring, and administration panel will approximately cost $15,000-$30,000. Medium video learning platform with instructor dashboards, quiz system, certificates, subscriptions, mobile apps, analytics and more sophisticated video protection will be estimated approximately between $30,000-$60,000.
What Affects the Development Cost?
Features alone do not comprise the whole budget; design plays another key role. The more straightforward interface developed from templates is usually cheaper than the entirely custom interface designed after conducting user research.
The platforms to be used have their own weight as well. A responsive website is more affordable than a combination of a website and two additional apps for Android and iOS platforms. Video technology can also result in recurring costs. The latter may include such components as storage, processing, bandwidth, streaming, backups, and security.
Development Timeline
• An elementary platform would require between 3 to 5 months to be completed.
• A medium-scale platform would require between 5 to 8 months to be completed, especially considering such features like mobile applications, instructor tools, payments systems, tests, and sophisticated dashboards.
• A complicated platform would require between 8 to 12 months or more.
Building an MVP First
Just because you are setting up a new business for eLearning, it does not mean that your first step should be to create an extensive platform. You could start out with an MVP which would include learner registration, course browsing, video lectures, payments, progression monitoring, basic testing features, and administrative functions.
How to Choose a Development Team
Consider more than just the screenshots provided by the company about its application portfolio. Check out if the developers have any experience in developing apps related to education, subscription, video, marketplace, or content-oriented apps. Apps that incorporate video technology need certain technical skills, and prior experience would help in avoiding possible pitfalls.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The first one involves putting too much emphasis on looks without regard for the learning process. An attractive homepage will be of no use when videos require a lot of time to load. The second issue relates to building overly complex navigation. Users must be able to access the next lesson in a few clicks.
It is also tempting for some organizations to develop a website with a bunch of functions. However, that approach will cost time and money and make testing more difficult. Forgetting about mobile users is yet another costly mistake because there are many learners who watch lessons on smartphones. It means that everything – from pages to dashboards – needs to work correctly on small screens.
Final Thought
A video-based eLearning platform can make for a good business venture when technology and learning content complement each other. Make the user interface simple, reliable video playback possible, protect your content from piracy, and plan further development.
A practical first version will get your product out to the users without making a great effort on development. Real behavior of your users will tell you what features you should focus on in your next development stage.
This way you'll have a better product than the one developed at once.
