A step-by-step guide to eLearning platform development

Conor Gately

1 day ago

Table of Contents

In recent years, eLearning started to gain more attention in the education industry. According to global market insights (GMI), the eLearning market size was valued at 399.3 billion USD in 2022, with anticipation to grow at 14% CAGR between 2023 and 2032.

In the words of Altamira’s Education Sector Consultant (Growth and AI Application Specialist), Conor Gately, while traditional education provides a strong foundation, online courses allow students to pursue their desired fields.

But how to build your own online learning platform? Let’s explore the steps you need to take.

eLearning platforms: explanation and types

eLearning (online learning) is a blend of online tools and educational methods to provide students with an accessible way to learn new skills.

Thanks to technologies like artificial intelligence, eLearning platforms provide personalisation and interactive classes for students.

Its focus on accessibility, user-friendly interface, and extensive library of online courses with in-depth information makes virtual education irreplaceable in today’s world.

eLearning is an umbrella term covering a wide range of devices and media for teaching and learning. Let’s examine some of them and look at popular online learning platforms.

Learning management systems (LMS)

LMSs are mostly used by businesses for corporate training. These solutions are usually cloud-based and follow the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

Learning management systems are ideal for planning and managing a company’s educational programs. They are known for efficient management.

The practical implementation of LMS generally can be divided into three groups:

Onboarding new employees to get them up to speed with the company’s internal processes;
Compliance instruction through custom automated online courses;
Customer training frees management from tasks like one-on-one coaching.

Learning experience platforms (LXP)

Despite looking similar to learning management systems, LXP uses a different approach to reach the same goal.

Instead of focusing on administration and compliance training, learning experience platforms shift attention to the content and its management.

LXP gives students over the learning process. This flexibility constantly exposes workers to new information in a more manageable way, taking into account personalized learning.

The two most distinct features of learning experience platforms are:

Social learning components that encourage collaboration and insight sharing;
Microlearning (dividing complex topics into easy-to-understand chunks) to ensure understanding and keeping high retention.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs)

MOOCs are among the most popular forms of online courses. The main reason for this is that they are free to use. Industry professionals act as teachers, giving students skills they will need in the workforce.

The driving force behind MOOCs’ popularity comes from its benefits.

Access to high-quality information. MOOCs are usually created by educational institutions, corporations, or other experts in their respective fields. Competent teachers ensure the credibility and quality of the given information so that students can develop needed skills.
Affordability. Most MOOCs are free, making them attractive to people needing specialised training access.
Diversity of topics. There’s a high chance that anyone could quickly find a MOOC on the desired topic. Various online courses ensure that every student finds something of interest to pursue.

Virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) platforms

In recent years, VR/AR technology has made a massive comeback and is swiftly expanding across industries. It has also found applications in online education.

Digital classrooms are one of the most talked about applications of VR/AR tech in education. The reason behind it comes from two main benefits:

High interactivity. Virtual education environments encourage students to participate in the learning process actively
Realism. Instead of looking at pictures of things, the focus goes on realistic models that respond to student’s actions.

Six steps of the eLearning platform development

Now that we understand the various types of online learning platforms, let’s discuss how to create one. Development projects follow a software development lifecycle (SDLC).

When it comes to SDLC, Altamira stands out. We follow the compressed SDLC model and have ready-to-use components to accelerate time-to-market for your eLearning platform development.

Choosing an SDLC model

SDLC serves as a rough outline of how your development process should go. Depending on a chosen development model, the chronological order of some steps might vary.

The most popular SDLC models are:

Waterfall

Each step of this model depends on the outcome of the previous one. While it’s easy to follow and go through steps, it’s not flexible. Once a phase is complete, there’s almost no room for changes, making it the most suitable for smaller projects.

Iterative

This method relies on the constant repetition of the cycle. Each new cycle brings a new software version, making it easy to change elements during development. However, repeating the cycle might lead to a change of scope and, with it — resource requirements to finish a project.

Spiral

This model combines waterfall and iterative methods. Small, repeated cycles with a linear flow between stages help analyse potential risks during development. The spiral model is perfect for large projects and allows for flexibility. However, it can be expensive to maintain for smaller projects.

Agile

Many consider this model to be the most efficient. It divides all SLDC phases into small development cycles, allowing quick progress. Instead of focusing on the full completion of each stage, the goal of the agile model is to deliver small changes to the software. This allows for quick responses to changing needs.

Step one: planning

Think of which problems you want to solve and how to approach them.

Think of which problems you want to solve and how you want to solve them.

Consider which platform type best suits your goals. At the end of the planning phase, you should have clearly defined platform specifications, estimated project costs, and a development roadmap.

Step two: design

At this stage, software engineers analyze the requirements and seek a way to match them.

Should they use pre-existing modules, or should the project be created from a blank canvas? Which tools are suitable for the project?

These questions will define the architecture of the future EdTech platform. Think of it as a skeleton that will hold together all of the features.

Step three: implementation

Also known as the development phase, this is the stage where your future EdTech platform starts transforming from a paper into an actual project. Achieving development milestones and thorough testing will ensure the platform’s timely release.

Usually, development starts with the project’s core feature. The more time developers spend fine-tuning it, the higher your users’ satisfaction with the end product.

After that, development expands to other features. This phase leads directly into deployment, but another stage works in parallel: testing.

Step four: testing

Testing is usually done throughout the whole development process to ensure quality and bug-free experience for the end users. However, since the importance of testing cannot be overstated, it’s usually highlighted as a separate stage of the development lifecycle.

There are two generalised categories of testing: manual and automation.

Manual testing takes longer to complete since it relies on humans, but it is the main way developers test projects. By creating scenarios of how future users will use the platform, testers can ensure a quality user experience and refine interactions with the platform.

Automated testing relies on machines to ensure quality. Instead of relying on testing scenarios, it directly analyses the platform’s code. While test automation is faster and can run hundreds of tests at the same time, it’s expensive and requires a lot of computing power.

Step five: deployment

The deployment stage, also known as the release, is when the end users will see your platform for the first time. Pay close attention to their interactions with the platform and response to your product.

While it seemingly should be the last stage, work still needs to be done. During the deployment, developers prepare for what comes next — maintenance.

Step six: maintenance

Maintenance ensures the longevity of your platform. A part of the development team is allocated to fixing bugs, resolving issues, and deploying updates with new platform optimisation features.

This process is constant and helps businesses to adapt to ever-changing user demands.

Challenges you might encounter during development

While creating an online learning platform, you might face some obstacles. Let’s talk about the most common ones and how to solve them.

Scalability and performance

When developing an eLearning platform, it is easy to underestimate the number of students it should handle. Given time, your platform will have more reach and more courses, which could be problematic if the initial design didn’t account for constant growth.

Optimisation will work as a temporary solution, but eventually, the students will notice a drop in performance, leading to frustration.

Solution: The best way to solve this problem is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Ensure your online learning platform can easily scale to match the number of simultaneous users and the number of courses stored on it.

A good call would be to utilise cloud services since they provide dynamic scaling and are easy to expand when needed. This way, your platform will perform smoothly under pressure, and user satisfaction will stay high.

Data privacy

Data privacy is a common concern for eLearning platforms, as they hold a lot of sensitive student information. Insufficient data protection and an inability to comply with regulations can lead to legal troubles and substantial fines.

Solution: Strong encryption and security protocols are a must. Regular security audits and updating security protocols will ensure student data safety.

Additionally, review your local data protection regulations, like GDPR for the EU or ADPPA for the US, and ensure compliance with them. To avoid further legal issues, clearly communicate your privacy policy to software users.

Content creation and curation

After building your online learning platform, you can begin creating courses. Students expect high-quality, engaging, and accurate educational programs on your platform.

Failure to match their expectations might lead to dissatisfaction and low engagement.

Creating interesting online classes can be very expensive and time-consuming, as it requires professional talent. Additionally, the content should be aligned with educational standards.

Solution: There are two approaches to course creation.

The first involves partnering with content creators and academic institutions for course creation.

The second relies on user-generated content. Both methods provide similar high-quality learning materials and work best combined.

Conclusion

Building your own eLearning platform requires careful planning and robust development. Although it may seem like an enormous task, the results are well worth the time and effort.

Carefully choose which type of platform you want to create and how to create it. Depending on the planned scope and the project’s complexity, the SDLC model may vary, and with it — the steps you need to take to develop your own eLearning platform.

However, some obstacles might occur during the development process. The best way to avoid them is to account for them before development starts. Pay close attention to scaling and compliance with security regulations.

How Altamira can help

With over 10 years of hands-on experience and proven expertise in EdTech domain, Altamira’s team understands your needs and helps transform ideas into reality by facilitating the technical decision-making process.

Over the years, we also learned some tricks on how to develop a perfect eLearning platform:

Personalized learning: our EdTech solutions provide personalized learning paths for students, thanks to advanced analysis and adaptive learning;
Data-driven decisions: discover insights with our solutions and identify trends to make decisions that will actually improve student outcomes;
Inclusivity: the learning platforms we build always account for users with special needs;
Gamification: to keep your students engaged, we implement game-like elements.

Additionally, we have an extensive database of ready-to-use components to accelerate the project’s delivery and a rich repository of prototypes for quick prototyping and concept validation. So, what are you waiting for?