Along with food and health, education is a crucial industry in everyone’s life. The necessity of gaining specific knowledge cannot be overestimated or put on hold. People in any part of the world need access to up-to-date information which may help them become better in their mastery.
And they need it fast, or at least in time for an affordable price. That’s how education met tech.
The latest statistics provided by Research and Markets show that the EdTech market estimated worth is 141 billion USD, with the possibility to reach 264 billion USD evaluation in 2026. Demand shows no intent to go down, and the market seems to become even harsher for emerging startups.
Even though the EdTech ecosystem includes various apps that are designed to teach different things, the key principles of learning are always the same (you can find out more by reading “Learning how to Learn”). As well as the ways to attract more audiences and make your product user-friendly are alike to any EdTech platform.
We gathered 10 must-have features that will improve any EdTech product’s usability and make it more satisfying for users. Let’s dive into it
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Gamification of progress tracking
Have you heard about the productivity technique, which requires awarding yourself after making a small step to success? The same works in education. Motivate people to accomplish their goals, give them valuable prizes and show their progress among the others in leaderboards.
For example, you can add mini-games to your app, but to play them, the user must pay with in-game currency. Surely, this currency can be obtained by completing your learning plan.
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Content flexibility
Users have different schedules, time zones, and learning preferences. Some of them may like to learn from long reads, while others like to watch lots of 5-minute videos. You cannot tell which education form will be suitable for a specific user before asking them.
Invest in adapting your educational content for different needs. At least, create both video and text versions of content where it’s possible.
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Communities and discussions
Communities are a great power. Some people may struggle with an original explanation of the topic, and the first thing they’ll do is search for answers somewhere else. Prevent this by adding replies, comments, and forum sections. Lots of community members are ready to help other people because all of them were in the same situation when relevant help can be hard to find.
However, don’t forget about investing in moderation. If you want, these features may turn against you, by giving fraudsters the possibility to hurt users searching for answers.
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Discoveries and findings sharing
When users learn well, they possibly can teach well. Give them a space to share their research, discoveries, and thoughts. Make it easy to engage with their posts by adding comments and reactions. Later, you can incorporate the course creation feature for the best creators.
Again, even though this feature can skyrocket your community growth (which is a trendy marketing strategy for startups in 2023), you still need to invest a lot in moderation and content proofreading.
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Memory cards and quizzes
Every field of knowledge has its own essentials which are crucial to memorize. In that case, the learning apps can assist their user by implementing a memory cards feature.
It’s a simple set of reminders that can appear any time a user logs into the app. You can make them both predefined (important notes highlighted by educational materials creators) and adjustable (a user can outline a specific piece of content and add it to his memory cards collection).
To see how it works with adjustable memo cards, we recommend testing Headway, one of the biggest EdTech apps in the world. They have a great repetition feature worth noticing.
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Learning pathways choice
Allow people to browse through the lessons, and let them try to choose what they want (of course, only if this section doesn’t require completion of the past section, like in vocabulary learning apps). Lots of people will need a piece of specific information in one section, they don’t need the essentials because they either already know it, or they just don’t need it.
Also, it will be a good decision to adopt the courses for different needs. For example, you can divide almost any course into a fast-paced version, only essentials version, and full-scale learning. When, let’s say, an experienced product manager wants to freshen up his knowledge and buys a course about product management, probably he won’t be interested in a section about a career path.
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Competitions and challenges
People love to compete, and even more, they like the taste of victory. Whatever subject you want to teach via your product, you can benefit from human excitement by incorporating community competitions with valuable awards (for example, additional lessons or exclusive content).
The best thing is that those competitions and challenges will be the reason to keep the app on the phone or website in bookmarks even after the completion of the learning path. The only thing to remember is that you’ll need a separate expert or a team of people who will be the architects of those competitions.
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Disabilities adaptation
Education must be inclusive and adaptive to everyone’s needs. You must take into account that people can have various disabilities or struggles while consuming information. Consider adding different color scale schemes for people with Daltonism, text notes or subtitles for deaf people, and add more visuals for people with dyslexia. Start with a simple font size adjustment for people with bad eyesight.
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Conclusion
Every startup must go through many challenges, including raising funds, building a talented team, and navigating the highly competitive EdTech industry. Entrepreneurs need to stay focused on the long-term goal, continually iterate and improve their product, and be willing to adapt to changing market conditions and user needs.
The world of EdTech is dynamic, and changes can happen swiftly. It is essential for startups to stay ahead of the curve and keep up with the latest trends, technologies, and user demands.
By staying agile and proactive, startups can create innovative solutions that are highly sought after in the market and contribute to the advancement of the education industry. Despite the challenges, the potential benefits of creating a successful EdTech startup are immeasurable, including the opportunity to make a positive impact on millions of learners around the world.
If you’re an established or even young startup trying to get to the heights of the EdTech world, Pecode is always ready to cover your tech side. So that you can focus on growth and funding, while we will take care of product excellence.
Let’s create together, text us via hello@pecodesoftware.com
