How to Build a Virtual Classroom App

The year 2020 was a turning point for the adoption of digital technologies in the educational sphere. With the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, the entire world realized the true value of remote education and online educational platforms.

Schools, universities, as well as various businesses, started massively investing in the development of their own eLearning applications, including virtual classrooms.

future of online teaching and learning

In this article, we explain why virtual classrooms are among the top eLearning trends and why it’s profitable to invest in these learning software solutions today.

What a Virtual Classroom Is and Why It Matters

Virtual classrooms integrate various training tools in one place and make remote education and training effective. Therefore, apart from educational facilities, virtual classrooms are also widely implemented by companies from various industry spheres. Businesses invest in the development of their own educational environments, ensuring that they provide solid professional training for their existing employees and newcomers.

Advantages of Virtual Classrooms

Virtual classrooms advantages include:

useful tools for learning process management – virtual classrooms make lesson preparation for teachers much faster, largely automating tedious homework checks, providing diverse instruments for knowledge and skills assessment, and alleviating many processes during the class like visual presentations, interactive whiteboards, and much more;
improved communication with students and their parents – virtual classrooms provide teachers with quick access to student information where they can quickly find students’ and their parents’ contacts as well as allow sending notifications on the upcoming lessons, sharing quick statistics, and others;
high-quality analytics for students’ progress – Artificial Intelligence (AI) integrated into virtual classrooms gathers detailed data on each student and learning session and accurately processes it, providing all the data in visual and simple to read statistics;
diversity of content formats – teachers can use video, audio, and visual materials to present information to their students; moreover, during their classes, they can use special tools for drawing quick pictures, highlighting important parts in the text, correcting mistakes, and much more;
flexibility – some classes like lectures or assessments don’t require teacher presence; students can watch videos or do tests whenever they are ready or study the needed materials at the most convenient time;
interactivity – with virtual classroom tools teachers can easily create engaging lessons and divide the information into small and easy-to-remember chunks, involving students to be active participants in the educational process rather than just observers;
timely content updating – the data written in printed books get updated slowly, therefore, students can learn outdated information; digital information, on the contrary, is simple and easy to update; moreover, with virtual classrooms, teachers reach their students much faster and can inform an entire class on the latest changes like schedule arrangements or else within seconds.

How to Make a Virtual Classroom App

When developing a virtual classroom, businesses need to remember about their specificity. They should support various devices and platforms, provide role-based access, and work in conditions of limited bandwidth. There are many more points to consider when building virtual classrooms, let’s have a closer look at them.

Explain Your Idea

The software application market proposes millions of digital solutions to end-users today. Before starting with the development of another one, businesses should explore the existing offerings and make sure that their app is unique in the marketplace.

Once you realize that creating a virtual classroom app is a necessary investment, you need to take your time and describe your idea as detailed as possible. This way, you will quickly explain your business idea to software developers and the project outcomes will better match your expectations.

Consider Must-Have Features for Your Virtual Classroom

There are a variety of features you can add to your eLearning solution. However, you need to choose only those that will be valuable for your app. They can be:

video and audio instruments;
screen sharing feature;
interactive whiteboards;
quizzes;
studying session recording;
live notes;
cloud storage for materials exchange;
calendar, email integration, push notifications.

Apart from essential virtual classroom features, you should also remember that there are two types of users – students and teachers. You have to carefully consider which tools each of them will use. Usually, the role of a teacher includes all tools for students plus wider functionality for effective class management. For example, the ability to invite students for the learning session, deep analytics tools, lesson preparation tools, and many others.

Select Your Tech Stack

When you have a clear vision of your future virtual classroom and you know what features to include in it, it’s time to choose the software development technologies to turn the idea into reality. Fortunately, the software development market offers an extensive number of back-end and front-end development tools for creating an effective and solid virtual learning environment. On the other hand, to build your digital solution in less time and ensure good value for money you’ll need a team of professional software developers.

An experienced team of professional software developers will help you to:

choose a robust tech stack for your eLearning solution and will empower your app with the latest tech innovations such as AI for deep analytics, Blockchain for advanced security, Big Data for effective data processing, VR/AR solutions for visual and engaging education, and much more;
develop smooth integrations with other software based on LMS, APIs, or pre-developed integrations;
create an effective Minimum Viable Product (MVP), test your idea in practice, and gather valuable feedback from the users to map the way for further product development.

What the Shift to Virtual Learning Could Mean for the Future

The eLearning market is quickly developing and has already proved its effectiveness. We believe that in the distant future education systems worldwide will entirely shift to online. Although it hasn’t happened yet here are some quick stats on what to expect from online learning and teaching in the future:

Conclusion

Digital technologies have a disruptive effect on the educational sphere today. Studying isn’t limited to brick-and-mortar facilities anymore and students, as well as teachers, can enjoy the flexibility and interactivity of the educational process. There is a wide variety of eLearning applications and platforms today to choose from, though virtual classrooms have gained the most popularity among educational facilities and various businesses.

Virtual classrooms provide diverse tools for effective studying and training. Students can gain knowledge and practice their skills in various modes from watching online lectures and doing tests on their own to searching for aid from personal trainers. Teachers, in their turn, have a variety of instruments for creating engaging and effective classes and conduct them anywhere, anytime, and for everyone.