How to Build an Online Education Platform for Schools and Key Features

With the advent of technology, the education sector has gone through massive changes in the last few years. Nowadays, students prefer the online mode of learning over traditional methods, which are limited to four-walled classrooms and textbooks. Learners are preferring online learning because of the fact that it offers convenience, saves time, and reduces expenses.

Also, as per a research, around 70% of students prefer online learning over traditional learning, hence, creating a huge demand for online schools that can cater to learners' needs effectively. Parents are also inclined towards enrolling their kids in online schools that provide dynamic and interactive learning.

Considering the growing popularity of online education platforms we can anticipate that demand for online schools is going to rise in the coming future. Hence, it’s high time for entrepreneurs as well as existing offline schools to start their online schools, in order to gain the maximum profits this lucrative industry has to offer.

Further, in this blog, we share information on how you can build your own online school effortlessly. But first, let’s see what is the major difference between the offline and online modes of schooling.

Offline Vs Online Schooling

Various advantages of online schooling are making it a popular choice among students as well as their parents, leading to significant popularity for online schools in the industry.

Necessary Features For An Online School Platform

For a successful online education platform, it is very important to carefully build your online education platform and include the right set of features and functionalities. Highlighted below are some of the essential features of an online education platform for schools:

User Registration

The users should easily and securely register or log into the platform via email, Facebook, or Google account. At the same time, the users must navigate smoothly and be able to create their profiles and add relevant information on the platform.

Interactive And Collaborative Features

These features are extremely important for maximum user engagement on an online education platform. Some of the essential collaborative features for an online school are:

Virtual whiteboard: This feature allows learners and teachers to effectively interact during the sessions. Various tools offered with the virtual whiteboard like highlighters, pens, shapes, etc. make the learning process even more engaging.

Video chat: With this feature, teachers and students can connect in real-time for a more personalized experience either in a group or individually.

Text chat: Teachers and students can use this feature to interact and resolve their doubts respectively.

TextPad: With textpad teachers and students can create notes for future reference.

Quizzes, assignments, and discussion forums: This helps teachers understand areas of improvement of their students and track their performance.

Multiple screen sharing: Teachers can share their screen while presenting lessons or other study material.

Assessments and Feedback

Monitoring and assessment are important aspects of the learning process. With this feature, tutors can share detailed feedback reports with students and their parents. Students can analyze their performance and improve by working on their weak areas.

Admin Dashboard

School admin would need a dedicated dashboard for the effortless management of an online school. Some of the useful features of a dedicated dashboard are:

Reports and analytics: For making strategic business decisions.

Profile Management: Managing profiles of users on the platform and adding or removing users.

Session Booking Management: The admin can manage the booking of the sessions.

Courses Management: The admin can manage, approve, and remove the courses on the platform.

Multipayment

It is crucial to offer multipayment options like net banking, eWallet, credit/debit card, etc. for seamless financial transactions on your platform. Various payment APIs like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, etc. can be integrated for maximum convenience.

Multi-Lingual And Multi-Currency

With the multi-lingual feature, your online education platform can reach a global audience, breaking the language barrier and making it accessible to learners all around the world. Similarly, multi-currency support allows learners to pay in their preferred currency, making it convenient for them to do transactions on your platform.

Security

Students will enter their personal details on your platform, hence, it becomes extremely important to offer high cyber security to your users. Make sure your platform is GDPR compliant and must fulfill all legal requirements.

Time Zone Synchronization

Teachers and students get reminders for upcoming sessions according to their time zones. This feature eliminates the communication barrier between students and teachers from different time zones.

Ratings And Reviews

After the students complete a session on your platform you can ask for reviews and ratings for the teachers. Rating and reviews also act as social proof, which can help learners make an informed decision. Additionally, it builds trust and credibility in your platform among learners.

Now that you are familiar with essential features you should incorporate into your online school, next, let’s see how an online school works.

How Does An Online School Work?

The online school works just like an offline school with the added advantage of a high-tech online platform. Students can enroll from anywhere around the world and can get constant academic guidance supporting their unique learning style. Admin lists teachers on the platform as per the grades and subjects.

Students can choose their desired subjects, course, and teachers and make payments to get enrolled in the class. After successful enrollment, the students can attend live classes, complete assignments, attempt quizzes and give examinations to track their progress.

How an Online School Can Earn Revenue?

There are several ways for an online school to earn money and grow financially, some of the most popular revenue streams include:

Subscription fees: Online schools can charge a certain amount of fee from students on a monthly or yearly basis. This fee can also vary depending on the grade the students are enrolling for.

Private Tuition: Students can pay extra fees if they want to take individual guidance from the teachers in a separate class.

Advertisement: School admin can advertise services or products of relevant third-party brands on their platform by charging an advertising fee.

Crash Courses: Fees can be charged for providing short and quick courses to learners.

Extra-curricular Activities fee: A certain fee can also be charged to students if they are interested in learning any new skills like arts and craft, dance, music, etc.

Till now, we have gained in-depth knowledge about the features, working, and revenue model of an online school, next step is to know how you can create such an online school hassle-free.

How Yo!Coach Can Help You in Starting Your Online School?

Building an online school may seem a daunting task, to begin with, and requires the involvement of various experts having technical knowledge and experience. However, another easiest and most cost-effective way to launch an online school is to go for a ready-made online tutoring software solution like Yo!Coach. This solution is a reliable solution to launch any online learning platform, however, with minor customizations, it can build an online school platform too.

Yo!Coach offers all the essential features required for managing an online school. Some of the exemplary features offered by Yo!Coach includes a virtual whiteboard, textpad, screen sharing, video and text chat, quizzes, discussion forums, and many more. Yo!Coach has helped several entrepreneurs launch their online learning platforms and is eager to help others who want to enter this lucrative industry.

Check out Wtutors which is an online education platform that was built with Yo!Coach. This Hong Kong-based education platform is breaking geographical boundaries and reaching a wider audience around the globe. Wtutors has onboarded more than 20,000+ students and 600+ teachers on their platform.

This video testimonial testifies to how Yo!Coach helped them transform their idea into a successful online business. Read this case study to know more about Wtutors and their successful journey with Yo!Coach.

Final Thoughts

The eLearning industry is booming tremendously and online schools are becoming extremely popular among students and their parents. We can anticipate, now is the right time to launch an online school and enter this lucrative industry. With the right approach and information we shared, you can establish and run a profitable online school.