Create a Learning Platform: 10 Tips for Creating a Professional Learning Portal

Learning on the internet has become extremely popular among people, especially thanks to a multitude of high-quality learning platforms like Udemy or Coursera. In addition, the concept of learning online through a learning portal is widely embraced. On one hand, it offers people the opportunity to study from home alongside their work. On the other hand, it can also serve an internal purpose—for example, training employees within a company. As you can see, there are many reasons to develop your own learning platform. In this article, you will receive a series of expert tips to help you succeed in developing your learning platform.

The Essentials at a Glance

Which Online Platform Would You Like to Create?

Examples of Well-Known Learning Platforms

What Exactly is a Learning Platform?

A learning platform, also known as an e-learning portal, is a website or web application that focuses on learning. Such a platform typically offers courses for interested individuals. It not only provides theoretical materials, such as texts, books, or videos, but can often also be used for exams and tests. 

Learning platforms are frequently employed by e-learning providers like Coursera or Udemy. Here, the platform is used professionally, with certified courses sometimes offered for a fee. However, the use of such portals is also conceivable on a smaller scale. For example, many larger companies use learning platforms as a central hub for training as well as the continuing education of their employees. 

The very concept of these portals shows that they are very complex and demanding programs that must handle many functions and sometimes bear great responsibility (for example, in grading an exam or test). Accordingly, the development of these complex portals is both elaborate and expensive. The implementation should be thoroughly planned from start to finish.

Coursera also offers courses and subscription plans for companies.

Tips for the Successful Development of a Learning Platform

There are many reasons to create your own learning platform. You have already been introduced to some of these in this article. You have also learned that this undertaking is a very complex and elaborate project. Thorough planning, preparation, and sufficient capital are important factors. In this section, we will show you our expert tips to help you succeed in the development and planning of your online learning platform.

1. What Type of Learning Platform Do You Need?

There are a multitude of different learning platforms. They vary in functions as well as in complexity. Additionally, there are differences in how the platforms are structured and whether it is, for example, possible to offer paid courses. 

The first decision you need to make when you want to create a learning platform is regarding the type of platform. Should it be a basic platform with simple functions? Or do you perhaps need a platform that is a bit more sophisticated? For professional and paid e-learning portals, however, you typically cannot avoid a more elaborate and complex platform.

You need to consider in advance what goals you want to achieve with your e-learning portal and which functions the platform should or must fulfill. The decision you make here also has a lasting impact on the costs. 

The more complex and extensive the e-learning platform, the higher the effort and, correspondingly, the greater the required capital. If you plan thoroughly from the start, you can save money right at the beginning of the development of your e-learning portal.

Before proceeding with the development of a learning platform, you need to be clear about what type of platform you want to create and where it will be used. In many cases, a simple or medium-level platform is sufficient. Only in truly special cases is it necessary to have a complex learning platform developed from scratch.

2. Financing Your Learning Platform

The next important step you must address, which is directly related to the point mentioned above, is the financing of your learning platform. The development of your portal is very expensive, and costs will arise that you need to cover for the development—typically without your platform generating any income. Financing is therefore an important factor to consider.

Basically, there are two possibilities. Either you have the capital to have your own learning platform developed and pay the resulting costs out of your own pocket—then you can, of course, get started immediately with the development of the platform.

In most cases, however, you will not have sufficient capital and may only be able to show a partial amount. In this case, you need to look for other ways of financing. One option is banks and credit institutions, which usually provide loans to companies without any problems. An alternative, particularly here, is crowdfunding.

This means you present your project on a crowdfunding platform such as Patreon or Kickstarter and have the development financed by interested parties in the form of pledges. For this option to work, you need some equity capital and must create a prototype of your platform. In addition, you need to attract potential investors to your project with information, videos, and marketing, and convince them to support you financially. In return, the backers receive something from you. That could be a free membership or a free course on the learning platform, or something else entirely. This is where your creativity is needed.

3. It’s On – The Starting Signal for Your Learning Platform

Once you have developed a concept for your learning platform and secured financing, the starting signal can be given. It’s time to get down to business and begin the development of your learning platform. It is crucial to work with a professional agency, such as Shopboostr. We have accompanied the development of learning platforms, online shops, and other applications several times and have been experts in this field for many years. However, to ensure the success of your learning platform’s development, you need to consider a few key points. The most important of these are: 

• An excellent idea: Why should someone invest in your project? 
• A strong development team that programs the platform.
• A team for community management and building a community.
• A team of experts and instructors who create and teach the courses.
• A well-written whitepaper that presents your project in detail
• Professional marketing on specialized portals and in social media
• A strong management team
• A professional agency that implements your ideas and concepts.

Masterclass.com focuses on delivering courses by celebrities.

4. Your Idea and Its Implementation

For your project to be successful, it needs a solid idea. This means you must solve a problem or offer a service that is interesting to customers and convinces investors to invest in your venture. You must also take into account that there are now many competing platforms of this kind on the market. These competitors have been established for a long time and offer a wide variety of courses and many features. Often, many ideas already exist. Your idea is almost certainly already represented, so you need to convince investors why they should invest in your platform rather than in a competitor’s project, or why they should choose you.

It is best to ask yourself whether you would invest in your own project and why, or whether you would choose to study with yourself or opt for another platform and why. Look at the problems other projects—especially those with a similar or identical offering to yours—are facing. Then consider how you can solve these problems and outperform the competition. That will put you on the right track. The market is fiercely competitive, and there are many rivals.

In some cases, it is necessary or advisable to specialize in a specific area. For example, there are portals such as CodeCademy, Udemy, and Udacity that specialize primarily in the field of computer science. You could choose to specialize with a platform in other areas such as real estate, cooking and cuisine, etc. This would give you a significant advantage over such platforms.

5. Start Small with the Programming

The development of a complete learning platform is very complex and extensive. This is especially true if you want to have a customized, extended learning platform developed. In this case, you cannot use a CMS or existing software and simply adapt it for your purposes. This means that very high costs can arise. Moreover, many CMS are open-source software and can therefore be used free of charge, so you only pay for the customization. In contrast, with an extended platform, everything must be created from scratch. Programming, therefore, consumes a large portion of the budget.

We recommend that you start small. Develop a prototype and the basic structure (MVA)—everything you need to promote your project and attract investors. Once you have achieved this goal, you can use the prototype to secure more capital, with which you can gradually expand the prototype. Avoid trying to perfect everything from the very beginning. In the worst case, you may end up without capital and without investors because you do not have a prototype to use for fundraising and marketing.

6. Assemble a Team of Professional Programmers

For the programming of your online platform, you need an experienced team of professional programmers. The implementation of your portal, along with its underlying technology, involves complex areas. Accordingly, you need various developers who not only master different programming languages but ideally are also familiar with the respective industry or scene. 

Just like the project team and advisors, your programmers must also convince the investors. The best ideas are worthless if you lack the ability to put them into practice. Experts and investors in the field know this very well and will pay particular attention to whether your idea can indeed be implemented by you. For this very reason, a prototype is often useful. It allows the programmers to demonstrate their expertise in practice.

7. Assemble a Team of Instructors, Administrators, and IT Staff

Before your platform can go live, you need to assemble a professional team. You require administrators who manage new members, registrations, and, if necessary, certificates, etc. You need IT personnel to maintain the platform and handle security as well as technical issues. Additionally, you might need community managers, etc. Most importantly, however, you must have a competent teaching staff. You need professors and teachers who not only create and update courses for you but also record videos, deliver lectures, and be available for questions and answers. The heart of your learning platform is the courses, which are taught and created by the instructors. As you can see, having a good team in this area is very important.

The Most Well-Known E-Learning Platforms

There are already a multitude of learning platforms in various fields on the market. The most common are platforms that focus on IT security and programming. However, there are also platforms, such as Coursera, that offer an extensive range of courses covering languages, mathematics, natural sciences, as well as dog training and computer courses. Many of these platforms collaborate with actual universities and schools that are authorized to issue the certificates and diplomas that course participants receive.  

Analyzing these platforms and their projects or courses gives you insight into the competition and which projects already exist. Additionally, you gain an understanding of various learning platforms, their structure, and functions. Many platforms offer the opportunity to attend a course or part of it for free. We recommend taking advantage of this offer. This is the best way to get to know the offerings and possibilities of the competition.

Udemy is one of the top learning platforms on the market.

Simple, Complex, or Extended? What Makes Sense?

When developing a learning platform, as you have already learned, you have various options. You must decide on a concept or model. Is a simple or a complex platform sufficient? Or does it need to be an extended platform? And which platform makes sense? 

We cannot provide a one-size-fits-all answer to this question in this article. It depends on the project, the functions, and your individual venture. In most cases, in our opinion and experience, a simple or complex platform is sufficient. These already offer many functions and cover all the important options. A custom, individually developed platform is only necessary in the rarest cases—namely when the available simple and extended solutions cannot provide the required functions and cannot be retrofitted.

We recommend that you consult an expert for this decision as early as possible. Shopboostr is your expert for learning platforms, online shops, and other online platforms. Our team is happy to provide you with individual and non-binding advice, and if desired, we are also ready to accompany you with your project. Simple, straightforward, and from the very beginning.

Conclusion and Summary

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