The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in the education industry. Education is now all about critical thinking, creativity, and connectivity, rather than just attending lectures, taking notes, or doing assignments.

What was once only feasible within the four walls of a classroom is now accessible from any location on the globe, thanks to technological advancements and internet connectivity. 

The advent of online education apps has transformed the education industry and made it easier for learners to understand new concepts and get access to education from anywhere, anytime. 

When we talk about e-learning apps, there are a few names that come on top of our heads almost instantly – Coursera, Udemy, Lynda by LinkedIn, etc.

All these names that hit our thoughts belong to the sub-category called MOOCs. Massive Open Online Courses have played a significant role in the transition from brick and mortar classes to digital.

The several benefits offered by MOOC apps have made them quite popular among students and instructors around the world. Such apps also help train and monitor students remotely while providing a continuous flow of education. The growing demand for MOOC apps has also made it one of the most quickly flourishing industries in a very short amount of time. 

So in case you are also planning to develop an e-learning platform for your business, you can hire a trusted education app development company like Appinventiv. Our experts will guide you through the entire process and make your app development journey easier. Get in touch!

Recent Funding in the Field of mLearning and MOOCs

The market scenario that you just saw is one that has not just attracted market players, but has also warmed up the investment world.

The ease that these MOOC platforms offer to the world full of learners and instructors, both in terms of convenience and cost-saving, is something that has not gone unnoticed by the investors’ community. Time and again a number of funding rounds have been happening in the edutech platform, keeping the momentum of Coursera clone app builders high.

Let us look at some of the recent ones –

A. Emeritus, a U.S-Indian company that partners with universities to offer digital courses, raised $650 mn in Series E funding led by SoftBank and Accel in 2021.

B. Udemy, which offers more than 130,000 different online learning courses from business analytics to meditation lessons, raised $50 million at a $3.25 billion pre-money valuation in a Series F financing in 2020.

C. MasterClass, a platform for online video courses on topics from film directing to tennis taught by iconic figures in each field (like Martin Scorsese and Serena Williams), raised a total of $461.4M in funding over 12 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jul 22, 2021, from a Secondary Market round.

D. In 2021, Edutech start-up Unacademy raised $440 million in funding led by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.

These funding rounds are simply a peek into how big the MOOC sector is and how mobile apps are changing the future of the education sector, especially from the point of view of educational institutions that are witnessing a change.

 

Top Players of the MOOC Domain

Coursera, in spite of being the most installed app, is not the only one that the users are following, there are a number of other similar apps in the domain that have been keeping the category up and running.

On that note, let’s take a look at the some of the other established names in the sector besides Coursera before we move on to mobile app development cost breakdown –

The names that we just saw to be ruling the edutech and MOOC domain are not restricted. The list is ever-growing and more and more brands are now entering the segment to try their luck in the flourishing sector.

Now, irrespective of the number of players in the edtech market, the one thing that has been driving the attention of both investors and end-users towards the e-learning platform is the set of features that it comes with. Features are also an important factor that decides the overall e-learning development costs.

 

Must-Have Features of MOOC Apps like Coursera

In this section, we have mentioned some of the most relevant features that are best for any MOOC app like Coursera. So, to make your app more user-friendly and intuitive, read about these features carefully:

 

Search, Filtration, and Recommendation

It is the first and most important part of the whole e-learning software building process. All the e-learning platforms – website and application – showcase a whole catalog of courses that require a proper, search and filtering mechanism. There should be multiple ways users can arrive at the course that they are looking for –

  • By entering the keyword in the search bar
  • According to primary and secondary categories
  • Filters and sorting
  • Recommendations

 

Stakeholder Profiles

Usually, you will have to accommodate three profiles inside your application, as the top mobile app developers would tell you – Student, Teacher, and Admin when building an app like Coursera. Let us look at what features the three should individually entail –

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