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About Educational Apps – Features, Benefits And More

What Are Educational Apps?

Remote learning has touched every age group, especially during the past two years because of pandemic and lockdown. Technology has reformulated the education system, giving people greater access to facilities for learning. Any mobile software that can be a remote learning platform is called an educational app. This integrated learning system offers complete knowledge and end-to-end learning solutions.

Educational Apps cater to a varied age group – toddlers, kids, teenagers, professionals seeking new learning, and specialists trying to gain a knowledge edge. Everybody who wants to ‘learn’ some skill or achieve new knowledge turns to an app. It is perhaps not the brand that always matters so much, as does the knowledge. This trend or attitude of app seekers is more evident in the post-pandemic times.

As social distancing becomes the new norm, there has been a high demand for educational apps’ production and availability. Having said that, the distinguishing features of Educational Mobile Apps plays an essential role in offering the best learning experience.

Features of an Educational App

Screen Sharing

Screen sharing makes it easy for the tutor to get everyone on the same page. It improves teacher-student engagement and increases the attentiveness towards the teacher. At the same time, class-room presentations have become very easy and convenient as students can directly share their screens hence eliminating the need for a projector and juggling with wires and adapters and connecting teachers from anywhere around the world.

 Session Recording

Session recordings give students the comfort of knowing that they can get back to the material post-face-to-face session. Hence closing the gaps as students can go through the problematic concepts after the live session. Session recording also promotes the flipped classroom approach where teachers deliver core information before a face-to-face session, followed by student-centered activities. These recording sessions prove to be very helpful to students for preparing during exams and assessments. It also relieves the student from taking down notes manually. Hence an ideal education app should support session recording to maximize student engagement.

 File-share

File-sharing comes in handy for teachers when there is a need to share images, multimedia content, or other essential files right over the group chat. Hence all the students get access to the content immediately. Students can download/ upload the material and tasks quickly. The file share feature eliminates recurrent tasks and allows teachers/ students on the actual activity.

In-Session Chats

One of the advanced education mobile app features is the in-session chat that allows students to interact with their peers during an on-going glass. During the session, students can also raise their queries and get them addressed. This feature encourages real-time collaboration and discussion, leading an in-depth understanding of essential material. This scenario also promotes an interactive experience as teachers get feedback on a real-time basis.

Live Streaming

The internet has eliminated geographical barriers for most industries, if not all. The education sector and domain is one of the many to witness a positive impact of globalization. Most of the teaching platforms/ apps lack interaction, which is the most critical factor for effective learning. One of the most advanced education mobile app features was introduced to address this need, i.e., Live Streaming. It has a vast potential to impact learning with the right focus and strategy. Live Streaming enables real-time interaction, massive reach, and efficient learning.

Chat Admins

Tutors/professors are given the authority to be the chat admin wherein they can have a private conversation with students. Teachers can filter out students in various projects and monitor the progress regularly right from the app. Teachers can be well informed about their daily reports and other matters.

 Non-verbal Feedback

For enhancing the user experience of any app, non-verbal feedback is the most honest in educational apps. One of the essential features for the mobile education app is the personalized experience that engages the user. A hand signal system proves to be an excellent way for the students to communicate and raise their concerns without disturbing the flow of learning. Hence, the message gets delivered quickly, and therefore the feature serves the purpose.

Polls

Polls are an exciting way of engaging students to post live sessions. Teachers can publish flexible questions, discussions, and live polls once the live sessions are over. This scenario will quickly engage students, and they can see the results/ responses instantly – a great way to create an active remote classroom.

 Breakout Rooms

Breakout rooms feature within the app enables and teaches to distribute students based on the various topics. Teachers can shuffle/ enter different student groups in between to check the status of the assigned tasks. This feature allows teachers to monitor class assignments remotely and ensure learning is student-oriented, even in a virtual environment.

Mock Test and Practical Exams

Evaluation/ exams are an integral part of traditional and modern learning methodology. Hence the new feature that students can expect within the app is “Exams.” The app can have a dedicated section apart from Polls and questions.

 Offline Schooling

Since the lockdown, it has been noticed many students have limited/ no access to the internet. Offline schooling can be beneficial to such students where they can download a limited number of modules at a time and take maximum advantage of the app even in the absence of an internet connection.

Push Notifications

Push Notification has become an integral part of almost all the apps. These notifications grab the user’s attention as getting a gist of the message in a short text. The basic overview can be in the form of numbers/percentages. In terms of education apps, students can get notified regarding the course completion, the number of tests appeared and pending a reminder on pending submissions and upcoming deadlines. No wonder these push notifications can be altered from the settings, but these are efficient in keeping the students informed at every stage.

Gamification

It is a proven fact that kids of a certain age learn faster through a play-way method. You can soon expect Gamification to take over the overall concept that will help students learn faster through games and fun experiments. Gamification is expected to attract more students and enhance their user experience.

 Personalization

The success of an educational app largely depends upon the personalized experience of the students. Educational apps mostly cater to learners of all age groups. Nowadays, most of the app offer personalization based on user’s convenience; however, soon, you will see educational apps have features such as custom learning. Students can alter the app based on the student’s study manners and methods. The ever-evolving technological advancements have witnessed immense growth from the time pandemic was declared, and educational institutions started looking for options to mirror the in-class teaching experience. As the need for education apps grow, the demand for advanced educational features is also increasing to make the learning experience more enjoyable, fun, and interactive than ever.

Having an app for a school, college, or institute is no more a luxury; it is a necessity. Many institutes still refrain from having an education app due to the cost factors, complexity, and lack of resources to take up the development in-house.

Benefits Of Educational Mobile Applications

These are the few benefits listed below:

  • They give the opportunity for discussion.
  • The use of mobile devices sparks students’ interest in learning, especially those who lacked passion during a traditional presentation.
  • They allow for the sharing of information, and for learning without an internet connection.
  • They can sort information to facilitate search based on certain criteria.
  • They allow for practical work with different types of technologies—students have access to resources, not only about the topic being studied, but also additional knowledge, as well as the possibility to use different types of technologies, allowing them to obtain the appropriate level of education.
  • They offer an overview of the different forms of resources (visual and audio educational materials).
  • They offer the possibility of development in line with the times.

Best Educational Apps of 2022

Conclusion

The e-learning industry has progressively grown in the past two decades thanks to rising technology. And it continued to grow with better approachability and enhanced learning apps that cater to the requirements of people of all ages. They make learning more fun and interactive than it ever had been. The above-given educational mobile app features will be valuable and motivate learners to download them for better learning prospects.

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