The global pandemic that is still afflicting the world has changed the face of civilization transforming not only nearly all segments of the economy but re-shaping out comprehension of human relations and values as well. Yet, bizarre as it may sound, we are lucky to encounter this scourge today. How come? Innovative technologies that are increasingly employed both on industrial and personal scale cushioned the blow that COVID-19 has dealt, mitigating the damage which could have been much greater if it happened a decade ago.
Digitalization that has deeply penetrated virtually all spheres of human activity made us realize that being marooned in your apartment isn't doom. The distance that separates us can be rendered non-existent thanks to gadgets connected to the worldwide network. Apps of different kinds help us shop, work, have meals, and entertain ourselves, bringing fabulous revenues to their creators. The education sector doesn’t stay aside from the ubiquitous e-drive, so if you are considering the fields of possible investing education app can turn out a most successful venture.
Why Invest in Educational Apps?
To realize how bright the vistas are that edtech opportunities open for business implementation, you should answer two easy questions. What is the age group the typical consumers of educational services belong to? Definitely, these are people under thirty. What is the favorite toy and even obsession for young people like that? Of course, gadgets and, more specifically, mobile phones. Moreover, the popularity of smartphones isn’t limited to youngsters only. Today, people of all ages are gadget-savvy enough to provide as wide an audience for your piece of educational technology as you could wish.
What makes educational apps so appealing?
- They are a fun way to study. No tedious lectures or edifying teachers. Instructive games and puzzles that an educational app contains keep the pot of students’ interest boiling, turning learning into an exciting and engaging activity.
- They are accessible 24/7. After downloading an app, you can study whenever you have a mind to. Moreover, you can regulate lesson frequency and the time you spend with this or that subject (or with a certain level of it) yourself. Perhaps, you are familiar with some topic so it makes sense just to skim it, but dig deeper into an unknown domain. Choose the pace of learning yourself and never have a bother of waiting for the lagging-behind or feel the urge to move on from those who are quicker at the uptake.
- They are accessible everywhere. The edtech industry has turned the whole world into your classroom and eliminated the need to waste your valuable time for commuting or visiting libraries. With an educational app, you don’t need either pens and pencils that are constantly lost or textbooks and notebooks that are too heavy to carry. Moreover, less paper used spells more trees surviving – environment awareness is as trendy as e-learning, after all.
- They show the world from a different perspective. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) software allows users to transform the objects in their immediate environment, enriching their student experience with images, videos, and animations. Thus, exploring the world is increasingly becoming a hands-on affair.
Entrepreneurs have quickly fathomed these evident benefits of the digital approach to studying, which significantly told upon educational apps market size & statistics.
Global Edtech Market Size
Embarking on any business project presupposes a preliminary analysis of statistics manifesting the industry’s current state and an overview of the prospective market growth.
As for the edtech business, any research report focusing on a certain region or adopting a global approach portrays a very promising picture indeed. Last year, education software enriched its creators yielding an astounding figure of $6.5 billion and all e-learning market trends and forecast predict further growth up to $7 billion within the next two years. And if we consider the global size of the mobile e-learning market, this year it is expected to top $37 billion with a total estimated value of over $250 billion!
Since the size of global e-learning market is likely to expand, investors are eager to offer their capital, hoping for their share of the edtech revenue pie. In 2019, private investment in e-learning technology providers equaled $18.7 billion and is expected only to increase in the year when the global plague boosted the demand for education app ideas and their subsequent implementation. Among such ideas, investors value Artificial Intelligence projects especially, having invested in their development almost $4 billion in 2019. Such tremendous sums resulted in the rapid surge of the number of edtech apps that only on the App Store exceed 200,000.
Although being definitely on the robust rise, the development of the edtech industry can’t be called problem-free.
Challenges of Development Education Apps and Software
In the long run, investment in educational software is extremely rewarding. However, before plunging into it headfirst, it is prudent to realize what pitfalls your startup is likely to face.
Cut-Throat Competition
Don’t imagine that you are the only one who tapped this ever-expanding market. So if you believe that you can add one more classroom management tool or learning platform to the available heap and reap the revenues, you are deeply mistaken. To conquer the e-learning market, you must stand out among the rivals offering solutions that can do what others can’t, or can do it better than anyone’s product.
Reluctance of Consumers
Strange as it may seem, being ostensibly the propellants of innovation, educational establishments remain largely conservative. Comfortable with the time-honored book-and-blackboard (or today, whiteboard) approach, school administrations and teachers have to be persuaded in the value of the technology you offer by showcasing its learning-enhancing benefits and explaining that it presents no threat to their position or school traditions.
Scarcity of Budgets
Even being enthusiastic about your products, schools (especially public ones) are often limited finance-wise, which puts a halter on their innovative aspirations. Realizing this, you should introduce pricing strategies and partnership models that will make your education software affordable to your primary consumers.
Privacy Concerns
Universities are particularly worried about the security of their students’ and professors’ data. If you manage to demonstrate that your technology is perfectly safe to use and incurs no data integrity compromising, they will cooperate with you more readily.
Unidentified Cross Purposes
There is always a gap of ideologies between academia and the startup world. While developers emphasize the importance of results, action pieces, and deliverables, the academic realm focuses on discussing and learning. To comprehend the mindset of educators, app builders should communicate with them sharing their developments and trying to elicit their feedback. Having teachers on the development team is still better.
Lack of Novel Approaches
Aspiring to create an education app, many developers may not realize that e-learning doesn’t boil to transferring curriculum online, converting textbooks into video lectures, and introducing online tests. The value of such software is in improving the quality of learning and enhancing the speed of studying. Once you are aware of it, you should tailor your app-building goal and strategy correspondingly.
Education App Ideas for Startups
If you aren’t sure what edtech startup ideas to choose for implementation in your app, consider the following list.
Language Learning App
In the global world, where international travel (either for recreational or business purposes) has become a routine and communication with people from other countries via social media has developed into everyday practice, proficiency in a foreign language (or even languages) is rapidly turning from a forte into a sine qua non. That is why apps that help learn a language are sure to find a grateful audience.
While developing such an app, it is critical to provide a choice of proficiency level (from beginner to expert) as well as speech directives for word pronunciation. Native speakers should be involved at higher levels to guarantee the authenticity of the experience.
Courses App
A very popular domain where apps can excel is related to enhancing education standards by improving management and communication within an institution hierarchy. Yet, to build an app of this kind you will have to enlist the services of a specialist in the field with sufficient expertise in such matters. And since such knowledge is outside the school curriculum but is related rather to administrative and team-building practices, finding an expert may be quite challenging.
Online Tutor App
Having a personal teacher in any subject who can tailor the education process to the unique needs and purposes of a learner is a coveted dream of many students and their parents. Apps of this kind typically provide an option of chatting with a prospective tutor to select the one, whose teaching strategy and personal touch appeal to you most.
Solutions/Queries App
As often as not, people may not desire to get a profound and prolonged instruction in a field, but need to complete a project within it and have some concrete questions to be answered. Having Quora as an example, you can develop an app where an experienced teacher or a specialist in some trade can help a person out with their narrow-scope queries.
Educational Games/Puzzles App
Fun but instructive learning is an approach that students value most of all, so if you think the game app, it is sure to appeal to numerous consumers. One of the advantages of opting for this app type is a wide choice of possible fields in which it can test students’ knowledge – mathematics, science, logic, grammar, etc. Yet, it is not as simple as it may seem at first sight. Building such an app, you should be aware of age psychology and physiology peculiarities the target audience has to make the game challenging enough but not a too hard nut to crack.
AR Educational App
Augmented Reality is a cutting-edge technology extremely popular with smartphone users and it is a felony not to utilize its educational potential. Making visualization and interaction key constituents of the learning process, it is honed for hands-on teaching in various fields of knowledge or modeling everyday-life situations.
As you see, there is a whole gamut of options to invest in and start getting an inflow of revenues. Seasoned experts of Multi-Programming Solutions can help you implement your educational app idea and obtain a top-quality product at a reasonable price.
Conclusion
In the 21st century, the quick pace of progress in all spheres of life makes people’s store of knowledge obsolete within a short time, so the idea of life-long learning to keep up with it is gaining universal recognition. Educational technologies provide a convenient and innovative way of upgrading your skills and getting new expertise, at the same time offering entrepreneurs a promising field of investment and a source of revenues that is likely only to grow in the foreseeable future.
