Prominent Features to Make an Outstanding eLearning App!

Prominent Features to Make an Outstanding eLearning App!
eLearning App
Learning new things was never so easy. With a few clicks on the smartphone and you can learn any skill from any location at any time with the help of eLearning apps. The modern learners are attracted by the facility of easy and quick access to information outside the confined walls of the classroom which was very unprecedented in the olden times. Because of the immense potential, these eLearning solutions are providing these days, businesses across the globe are investing multifold in eLearning app development.
The significance of eLearning apps has particularly risen further during this COVID-19 pandemic. Since there is a lockdown in most parts of the world, educational organizations are switching to the virtual model of imparting education, and professionals are choosing to upgrade their skill sets using these apps for eLearning. Consequently, several businesses worldwide are investing in eLearning mobile app development to gain a competitive edge amongst peers.
So, do you want to develop effective online learning solutions for students?
Or create interactive training apps for IT professionals?
Or build flagship programs based on multiple skills for modern learners?
Everything is possible with the new-age eLearning solutions. But, for developing an eLearning app that goes viral in the market, there are some criteria. Firstly, the app must have the following qualities:
  • Learner-focussed Design
  • Customizable and Scalable
  • Engaging and Pleasing Aesthetics
  • Interactive Elements
  • Powerful And Supportive Database
  • Valuable and Comprehensive Content
  • Personalization
  • Productive and Flexible Learning
  • Quick and Easy Access to Information
  • Information Presented in Small ‘Bites’
  • Real-Time Analytics
  • High Security
  • Professional Support
Secondly, it is essential to integrate powerful features in the app that provide an uninterrupted and enticing experience to the users. In most cases, apps with lame or insufficient features are bound to fail. So, here we have shared some key features required for an exemplary eLearning app.

Must-have Features of a New-Age eLearning App!

eLearning solution

1. Elementary features

An eLearning mobile app is simply incomplete without the fundamental features. The app must have in-app chatting or messaging functionality to allow the learners to communicate with each other or tutors. It must have the feature of push notifications to keep the users aware of their progress, new achievements, timings of classes, pending courses, any new deals, and offers, etc. The app should have calendar integration for the users to maintain records of the upcoming activities and set reminders accordingly. Last but not the least; it should have social media integration to boost user engagement, promote the app, and reach a wider range of audiences.

2. Audio/Video Streaming

Audio/video streaming has become an integral part of modern education. These are key players for accessing online education. These features help the users to connect in real-time and enable the sharing of files or documents in live sessions. This kind of learning allows the users to listen to pre-recorded lectures, rewind/fast-forward the lectures, zoom into an image, etc. making the learning process easier and convenient.

3. Live Tutorials

Live tutorials and sessions add another dimension to the learning process. They help the learners to gain a thorough knowledge of a subject. Reading the content of a course can often become boring. However, with live tutorials, it becomes a pleasing experience. Moreover, it gives the feel of a real-time classroom making education much more effective.

4. Progress Evaluation

Assessment and feedback are vital features for evaluating the progress of the learners. A good eLearning app solution must embed tests and quizzes to be held at regular intervals or ensure that the tutors conduct the tests and quizzes periodically. They should either be assessed automatically or by the tutors/course authors. The learners should also get live feedback and have one-on-one interactions, so that they can practice more, redo a chapter, etc. These features keep the learners connected and contribute to the success of a course. Learners should get assessed periodically to enhance their engagement and knowledge.

5. eCommerce integration

If your eLearning app has eCommerce functionality, the tutors can sell online courses and live classes. The app owners too can generate massive revenue from this. However, it is necessary to ensure that these courses and other sensitive information like bank account details, contact details of users, etc. are highly secured.

6. Collective Dashboard

If your eLearning app has a collaborative dashboard, the users can access their course collateral and get overall information about their progress. They can know if the course is pending or is completed. A collaborative dashboard allows the users to share study material, assignments, quizzes, useful links, etc. with others for an enriching learning experience.

7. Crucial Data Insights

Data tracking and analysis helps to monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of the courses and the app. The app should have an efficient data tracking and reporting process in place for collecting critical data like popular courses, customer rating, clicks/views on a particular content, etc. It must also keep an eye on the attendance of the learners, their progress, assignment completion, etc. which helps in analyzing their weak areas and work accordingly. Also, these reports help the tutors or course authors generate better revenue, which contributes to the high ROI of the app.

8. Engaging Content to Motivate Learners

Keeping the learners engaged and connected until the end of the course can be highly challenging at times. They need continual motivation through tests, assessments, feedback, evaluation of work, rewards, etc. Using motivational triggers like scores, progressing to the next levels, virtual gifts or currencies, competition with fellow learners, etc. are outstanding ways to make learners stick to the course.

9. Appointment Scheduling

In several distant learning apps, the learners need to choose a tutor from a number of tutors available and book appointments with them. Hence these apps must have a fast and simple appointment scheduling feature using which, the learners can instantly book appointments as per the available slots of the tutors. It also helps to generate meaningful reports for tracking profitable courses and clients.

10. Flexible Payment Options

The payment process must be kept as simple and less time-consuming as possible, but also ensure high security of the eLearning apps at the same time. The app must have multiple payment methods that include debit, credit, net banking, etc. It should also integrate new-age options like PayPal, Google Pay, Stripe, etc. Always use popular gateways to ensure the credibility and authenticity of the app.

11. Multiple Language Support

To ensure that your eLearning app has a wider reach, the app must have multiple-language support. If the content and the videos are available in multiple languages, it can benefit a large number of users in different countries and the app owners can generate multiplied revenue from it.

Final Words:

The future of the eLearning industry is indisputably bright. The eLearning solutions are revamping the learning experiences by imparting knowledge on the go of a click. We can say, education is now in everyone’s pocket. For creating an excellent eLearning app, one should use the right blend of strategy and technology. So, to ensure that your eLearning app is one of the best online learning platforms, it should include all the features from the aforesaid list as well as the latest trends in this domain.
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So, are you interested to build eLearning apps using various technologies, connect with a leading Mobile App Development Company, Biz4Solutions and share the ideas with them to build a cutting-edge app.

React Native App Development: Benefits, Challenges and Mistakes to Avoid!

React Native App Development: Benefits, Challenges and Mistakes to Avoid!
React Native App Development
React Native is undoubtedly one of the most widely used cross-platform frameworks for creating native-like apps. This framework can be easily used for developing brand-new apps from scratch and even in existing iOS or Android projects. So, it is immensely popular and loved by beginners as well as experienced developers. Consequently, the demand for the development of React Native apps is on the rise. Here are the top benefits it offers to one and all.

Foremost Advantages of using React Native for app Creation

  • Use of JavaScript and easy learning curve, especially for new developers
  • Code re-usability for a speedy development process
  • Pre-built components and third-party plugins to create feature-packed good-quality apps from scratch
  • Creation of performance-based apps with higher reliability and stability
  • Technical goodies like modular architecture, declarative coding style, and ‘hot-reload’ feature to enhance the productivity of React Native app developers
  • Rich and friendly UI/UX design
  • Powerful and knowledgeable community to support
  • An easy and direct installation method
  • Faster time-to-market
  • Creates solutions that allow adaptation to Android and iOS along with smart TVs, VR devices, etc., since it is a cross-platform framework
With so many outstanding advantages to offer, this framework has a bright future. But like any other framework, there are several challenges or limitations that are inherently associated with  developing apps using React Native. Here we have outlined a few of them.

Probable Challenges in the React Native App Creation Process

One of the challenges in this framework is the dependency on native app developers, especially while dealing with complex and heavy computational processes. Another challenge, rather limitation, is that this framework does not support parallel threading or multiprocessing. So the performance of the apps slows down while executing multiple processes simultaneously.
Also, the abstraction layers in React Native have certain limitations. They have a dependency on third-party services and libraries. Finding bugs in abstraction layers is quite difficult; hence resolving them too is time-consuming. Another challenge while using this framework is faced during iOS deployment since testing the iPhone apps on any other testing service except Apple’s TestFlight is quite annoying.
Despite these challenges, React Native is a preferred choice of mobile application development agencies for writing robust and natively rendered applications. Moreover, these challenges can be handled well by experienced developers, whereas, a beginner or an unskilled developer tends to make more mistakes.
So, for the development of a flawless end-product, react native developers, particularly the newbies, must have prior knowledge about these probable errors. Let us have a glimpse of the commonest Development mistakes concerning React Native that could be avoided while building apps using React Native.

React Native App Creation Mistakes to Avoid

React Native App Development Mistakes

Improper image optimization

Image optimization, despite being a crucial step in app development, is commonly ignored by developers. But optimizing the images is necessary for reducing the load time of images. It helps in resizing the images locally and then allows uploading them automatically on the cloud storage like Amazon S3 by the server. After this, the developers get a CDN link that can be returned through the API. This entire process makes the app lightweight and boosts app performance.

Presence of console log statements

Console log statements allow the developers to easily detect bugs while debugging. These make the apps glitch-free during app execution stages. These also help to detect the reasons behind the low performance of the apps. But, in case the developers fail to remove the log statements after completion of the debugging process, it can cause blunders. If the logic and the render methods are kept inside the apps, they can lead to congestion in the JavaScript thread and ultimately slow down the app performance.

Inappropriate Redux store planning

Redux is quite useful in React Native for managing the apps effectively, handling and storing the gathered data correctly, debugging app states, etc. But Redux must be planned well for utilizing it to the fullest, or it may lead to issues, especially in small projects. This is so because Redux demands writing long codes even for the smallest of modifications. So, it isn’t suited much for small-scale projects but is a good choice for larger apps and projects.

Inaccurate or wrong project estimation

The chances of committing mistakes while estimating for project in React Native are higher for various reasons as given below:
  • The layouts and structures of app pages for iOS and Android are different. Also, several common components can be interchangeably used for development but the design of the app in most cases will not be alike. As a result, estimation for both platforms can be different.
  • The code to be written in React Native is usually larger as compared to the code required in the development of a Hybrid app on Cordova. In such cases, the assessment of the validation layout also must be considered.
  • All the endpoints offered by the backend must be checked. Other vitals like understanding the data structure, connecting the entities, handling the logic, etc. must be considered during estimating the project.
If the developers handling the React Native framework are not aware of these differences, they can estimate incorrect dates for project completion, leading to hassle in the later stages.

Utilization of stateless components

A stateless component means that the components don’t extend any class. These always render the same thing and print out only what is provided to them through props. These are also known as dumb components. But, stateless components can be implemented faster, reduce the amount of boilerplate code to be written, and enable easy testing. In the app creation process, it is advisable to use pure components instead of stateless components. This is so because, for stateless components, rendering happens after the re-rendering of the parent component. But for pure components, re-rendering takes place when a change is detected in the states or props.

Not verifying external module codes

The app developers working with React Native commonly use external modules as this makes the development faster and easier and thus, saves time. But these modules may not work as expected or even break at times. Hence, the developers must read and verify external module codes before using them.

Not considering unit testing

One of the most common mistakes developers can commit while crafting apps using React Native is not writing a unit test. The apps can still function irrespective of whether unit tests are conducted or not, but such apps may not provide a great experience to the users and could be less competent in the market. Unit testing enables assessing different parts and functionalities of the apps and ensure they work as expected. It also helps to detect bugs in advance and make sure that the app segments run independently.

Final Words:

React Native has the potential to become “The Best” framework amongst all the available frameworks in the market. It is already being used by big players like Facebook, Delivery.com, UberEats, Bloomberg, Skype, Instagram, Tesla, and many more. It has some downsides as well, but those can be minimized to a great extent if every React Native app development firm trains its developers on diligently handling the common mistakes well in advance.
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