List of Must-Have Features of eLearning Portal

Creativity is going beyond all the benchmarks when it comes to online education. You cannot go with the same old technique of making PPT and a voice-over explaining it. There is so much creativity you can do with it like gamification, animation, etc. depending on the topic. To include all this creativity in your content, you will have to use different tools. Not all eLearning portals will have these features where you can make such creative content. But if you want them, you can consider the must-have features that we are going to discuss in this article for education portal development. Because having such a portal will make your audience spend more time on it.

Friendly User-interface

Based on the content, it is possible that your user base can be school kids to adults or maybe someone in their 50’s trying to learn a new skill, or parents looking for information about courses and other stuff for their kids.

The flow and the design of the portal should be such that it is easy to understand for anyone of any age. They must be able to login quickly and navigate themselves around the website finding relevant information and resources. Also, if they shift from laptop to mobile phone, the pages must open correctly and the videos must resume from where they left off.

The design of all pages should be such that it keeps the visitor engaged. You can use creative designs to make pages interactive, at the same time informative, and easy to understand. You can also try the portal to understand how the flow of the portal is and will a new user be able to understand it or not.

One thing is crystal clear the visitors on the portal will be able to use the portal only if they are able to find what they are looking for. No one would stay longer on the portal if it is not able to navigate them in the right direction.

Quality and Quantity of Learning Resources

If your platform provides one or two courses or online training then you will have a limited user base, which is not enough. You require more courses where more people can engage. You will also require different types of formats like documents, PDFs, images, videos, audios, online courses, and a live course for targeting a wider audience base and their needs.

Using external APIs can be a smart decision for adding additional lists of students, assignments, fee structure, and a lot of other things. Why add all these things manually when you can automatically transfer all the data by integrating with reliable external APIs.

The content on your portal must be SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) compliant to meet the industry standards. Your platform must be compatible with one of its versions so that you can access a wide range of learning materials for your audience. 

Collaboration With External Tools

The portal must allow you to use different tools so that you can create creative content. The quality of your videos or the editing does depend on the type of the course you are going to build. To maintain the level of your customers’ expectations, you can use a tool like Articulate Storyline. To create an interactive session with your users that has quizzes, you can use Rise and Adobe Captivate.

You can use a variety of external tools to help you create different types of online courses and digital learning resources. The more interactive and creative your session, the more audience it will attract. So collaboration with such tools and using it wisely is a must.

Scalable

Your portal must serve all your purposes now and in future. You want a platform that can handle all the changes that may come in future like, increasing number of users, adding complex functionality. If you have something in mind, you can explain those requirements to the developer and identify whether the platform is capable of it or not. Because new trends are going to come and it is somewhere necessary to follow them to maintain the position in the market. The platform you choose must grow with you and so it is necessary to ask questions before taking a final decision.

Types of Content

When a platform is compatible with multiple types of electronic devices, it becomes easy for your customers to use it. You can make different types of content for users like short content for learning topics while they are commuting or gamified content to attract users to watch it daily. These are the things you can do to improve your users engagement level on the platform.

Making short content can be challenging as you need to ensure it is delivering all the value in a short period of time. At the same time, it is interactive enough that it intrigues users to see it as soon as they have a short break. While making gamified content, you need to ensure that its narration is strong enough and the design is realistic and attractive.

Community

When we study offline, it is easier to discuss the topic once the lecture is over, trying to resolve our doubts with our classmates. But with eLearning, these things are lost somewhere. If you want your platform to be as interactive as those classrooms then your platform should have a forum for online discussions. It should allow you to create groups of different topics, so not all things are discussed in one chat. To make it more interactive, you can add options like messaging, social media sharing, and invites to bring in more people to discuss and learn.

Data and Reports 

Reports give us clarity on what is working and what is not. It can also let you find small details like what parts of the course are viewed more, from where the users are abandoning the course, number of quizzes taken, and its results. This data can be used smartly to design the next course keeping those problems in mind. The real-time reports can be generated to check the engagement level of students in the ongoing course. And you can also make the changes instantly if the users are falling behind.

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Conclusion

The eLearning portals are gaining popularity due to its ability to implement new things as soon as possible. These portals integrate tools that help in building the quality content. The features in the app allow you to track the progress of the course. The reports help a lot in identifying all the flows and correcting it if required. The platform allows the community to interact with each other to learn and share the knowledge they gained. Thus, all these features in an eLearning portal will be enjoyed by the learners and they will stick to it for long.