Steps to create an integrated educational platform Comprehensive guide

The recent period has witnessed the development of the traditional education system to online education, and it is expected that in the coming period there will be a comprehensive change in the education system gradually to online education.

This opened the door for trainers and owners of scientific content to be part of educational development and have their own education academy by creating an educational platform on the Internet and publishing training courses on it.

If you are a certified trainer or owner of scientific content and want to create an integrated educational platform, but cannot determine the starting point, we will provide you with a comprehensive guide to answer all your questions, including how to create an educational platform, the steps required in an organized manner, and so on. But first, let us explain to you the benefits of creating an educational platform. .

Benefits of creating an educational platform

Educational platforms are not only linked to trainers and students, but most companies have come to rely on them to train employees and gain practical experience, as well as to be linked to successful investment projects, and they have many benefits, the most important of which are the following:

An open education source: Educational platforms are an open education source, as one educational platform can include a large number of trainers, and the trainee has the opportunity to choose the most appropriate trainer for him in any country around the world, without any geographical borders.
Saving and organizing time: Creating online educational platforms saves a lot of time for trainers and trainees, as the lesson is not linked to a specific course, requiring the hassle of transferring to the trainee or trainer, as well as the possibility of organizing time, as the trainee can access online courses at a time that suits him, so it will be a better educational option. for him.
Appropriate learning speed: The trainee can learn at the appropriate speed for him, as he can complete more than one lesson in the same day, and he can also repeat the same lesson more than once until he gets the maximum possible benefit from the training course, and this makes him move away from the traditional learning routine.
Flexibility in education: Due to the previous points from the open education source and determining the appropriate time for the trainee and the trainer, the trainer can combine work, study, and online training. He can also study the required specialization without being restricted by a required level of education or otherwise. Therefore, online education is the most flexible method of education for trainees.
Reduced costs: The cost of establishing an educational platform may initially be relatively high and you can make it economical as well, but after that the costs will decrease depending on the expansion of the academy and will most likely be less than the costs of traditional academies that require rental, transportation, use costs, etc., and this is also reflected. It reduces the costs of the courses for the trainees, so the cost is lower for the trainer and the trainee.
Possibility of expansion: Online educational platforms are not linked to a headquarters with a specific training capacity, a specific place or country, nor are they linked to a specific number of employees. Therefore, you will have complete freedom to expand the scope of the educational platform without any restrictions, but it must certainly be taken with pre-studied steps in order to achieve the maximum possible benefit. From expansion.

All the previous points show that e-learning fully adapts to the needs of the trainee, and this explains the secret of the great demand for trainees on online education platforms instead of through traditional education, and this is the reason for the success of most online education platforms, whether personally or as an investment, but in order for the platform to be successful, it must be planned for. Correctly, and this is what we will explain in the following paragraphs, so continue reading with us.

Steps to create an educational platform

After we have explained to you the benefits of creating educational platforms and the reasons for the spread and success of these electronic projects, we will now show you how to create an educational platform in orderly steps so that it is part of the current educational development.

First step: Create and prepare a training course

The first step in creating a training course is to allocate sufficient time and effort to research and delve into the various fields in order to reach the appropriate training course specialization and build the content of that course in a way that suits the needs of the trainees and is distinguished from the content of competitors. This step is divided into 5 main sections that will be discussed in detail. In the following paragraphs, continue reading with us.

Determine the training course specialization

The point of specializing the training course is the essence of the idea of creating an educational platform, and searching for this specialization should not consume a lot of effort from you because you must specialize in a field that you already specialize in and it is not new to you or you need to start learning in it so that you have sufficient experience to transfer. To the trainees.

Of course, you can start a new specialty, but this requires a very great effort from you in order to start learning, studying, and practicing. Here you may depend on your training skills to compensate for the lack of professional experience, because some trainers have a good ability to explain and communicate information, which helps them gain experience. New ones quickly and you will find many educational platforms in which one trainer offers more than one different specialization, but specialization will certainly be better, especially for emerging projects.

But in all cases, you must think about the point of specialization of the training course from a larger point of view, and ask yourself why the trainee needs to pay the cost of that course, and the answer will certainly be because you will provide him with distinctive training content that is not available to competitors, and he will get the return he needs, and thus he will pay the cost of the course. It helps make the educational platform successful.

Study competitors

After determining the specialization of the training course, you must move to the point of studying and analyzing competitors. We mentioned in the introduction that the field of online education has become the basis of education at the present time, so you will find many educational platforms in different languages that contain the specialization of your educational platform.

You must study and analyze all competitors from all aspects, for example, professional experience, is it a general educational platform or specialized in the field, the extent of the popularity of that platform for trainers, especially on social media, and the number of specialized educational courses and trainees on the educational platform.

The strength of the work team must also be examined, for example, the advertising strength, which is represented by the budget and various marketing means, and the strength of technical support, for example, the platform provides technical support and communication with the trainer over a large period of the day, and so on.

And you determine whether you can outperform competitors or not? You should not outperform them in all aspects, but at least in a large part of them, because the interests of the trainees are not the same. Some are looking for follow-up, others are looking for the educational curriculum, and so on.

You can also learn from that study, as you may find training courses that achieve good sales with competitors and other courses that do not achieve good sales. This point may help you determine the appropriate training course specialization, but the training course content must be analyzed first because the training course content may be poorly planned. It is the main reason for poor sales, and this is what we will explain in the next point, so continue reading with us.

Planning course content

Through the first and second points, you must have collected a wide range of information about the course specialty for which you need to create an educational platform.

You must study and analyze this information in terms of the curriculum. For example, you identify the strengths of competitors as well as the weak points, for example the quality of explanation, but on the other hand there is weakness in practical applications. Here you can combine the quality of explanation and practical applications in order to give a reason. The trainee can purchase your training course in exchange for other training courses.

Here we return to the point of experience and specialization in the field of the training course. If you specialize in the field of the training course, you can prepare and plan the content of the training course based on your experience in the field without the need for competitors except in analyzing weak points. You must make sure that the lecturer’s experience appears clearly during the explanation. Application within the training course.

When determining and planning the training course chapters, you should not exaggerate the number of chapters. Certainly, some students prefer a training course that has 10 practical applications over another training course that has only 5 practical applications, but you must know that the effort of creating and photographing the training course chapters requires a lot of effort and time. This will therefore be reflected in the price of the training course, as it must be balanced between the number of classes and the price of the training course.

You will find a group of service providers for writing educational lectures at a cost starting from $5. Choose a service provider who specializes in the field of your training course and has a good rating and discuss what is required with him via messages.

Determine the price of your course

The final point in preparing the content of the training course before production and its final output is determining the price of the training course. Here you will find the markets divided into two main parts.

The first section offers average scientific value for low cost and that category targets high number of sales with low profit margin since the price of the course is low but high number of sales will bring high profit at the end of the path.

You may also find this section appearing in educational course platforms that integrate a group of courses at a moderate cost. Here, the cost of one course will be low, and therefore it also targets a large number of sales so that it can achieve profits that cover the cost of production and marketing.

The second section provides excellent scientific content with very high quality, technical support, and many other features for a relatively high price, and here you need a trainee who is looking for quality more than price.

Opinions differ on this point, some depend on price and some on quality, but I advise you to rely on quality, as a low number of sales from the second division may equal the profits of the first division, and therefore your training course will not spread widely in the market, which will preserve it for a longer period.

Certainly, you will find that the student who chose the low price, if he wants to specialize in the field more, will look for quality the second time. Therefore, we advise you to pay attention to the quality of the training course content and set a price that is appropriate for your efforts in building the course content, as well as appropriate for the extent of your experience in the field, but the price should not be exaggerated either. It should be accessible to the majority and commensurate with competitors, with the quality of educational content close to your educational content.

The cost of creating an educational platform

In the previous paragraphs, we presented several options that will help you create a content management system for your educational platform, whether you rely on platforms for creating educational platforms or rely on content management system “LMS” plugins in WordPress. The costs of implementing both of these systems vary relatively.

The cost of building an educational platform using ready-made educational platform builders starts at an average of $35 per month for a basic plan. However, the Basic plan may usually have restrictions on the number of courses that can be published, as well as commissions on money transfers made through the educational platform. So, if your expected platform size is average, you may need to move to the Medium plan which usually costs around $90 per month.

In the case of relying on content management system “LMS” plugins in WordPress, you need to obtain the basic requirements for creating a WordPress website in addition to the requirements for the content management system on WordPress, and this cost can be divided into the following:

Hosting : You need web hosting in order to store the educational platform files on it, and we are referring here to the educational platform management files itself and databases and not the content of the platform’s courses, whether videos or otherwise. The average cost of hosting that is suitable for an educational platform, for example, at Cloudways or Digitalocean, is $35 per month
Domain : You need a domain name designated for the educational platform in order to direct hosting to it. The average cost of a domain is $10 per year.
Content Management System : The WordPress system is free, but you need an LMS add-on that helps you manage the platform’s content on WordPress. You can use free add-ons, for example, the LearnPress add-on, or paid add-ons with advanced features, for example, the Masterstudy add-on , depending on the requirements of the educational platform. The average cost of paid WordPress content management plugins is $69, a one-time payment.
Educational platform template : You need to purchase a custom WordPress template for the platform at an average cost of about $49, paid once, and most educational platform add-ons provide a custom template that is compatible with the add-on and the educational platform’s requirements as well, and that is included in the basic cost of the add-on, as in the Masterstudy add-on.
Hosting the contents of the educational platform : You need to host the contents of the platform’s courses on an external video platform, which can rely on the free YouTube platform, or rely on more advanced platforms with customization and protection options, for example the Vimeo platform or others, at an average cost of $20 per month.

By comparing the cost of each system, you will find that the cost of creating an educational platform using WordPress LMS plugins is significantly lower than educational platform creation platforms in the long run, but the larger initial investment must be taken into account when relying on paid plugins or templates.

Build your own course content

Now that you have been able to determine the specialization of the training course, plan the classes, study competitors, and determine the appropriate price for the course, the next step is to start producing the training course. Producing the training course requires 4 points as follows:

Sound quality: The first step in recording the training course is to take into account the sound quality. The trainee may not care about the quality of the image, but he may be disturbed by unclear sound, vibration, or high noise, so you must take into account recording the training course in a place that is well-maintained or has a low noise rate as much as possible. It relies on a professional microphone suitable for recording, and it is not necessary to purchase a professional microphone at a high cost, but a microphone with average capabilities and cost may suit you at the beginning of the journey of creating your own educational platform. For example, the Boya M1 Mike has a price that does not exceed $5, but it provides suitable quality, and after that you can buy Mike is progressively better.
Image quality: The second step is to take into account the quality of photography. Here, if you do not have a photography studio or a professional camera, you can rely on the phone camera with good lighting. You can produce an image that suits the trainee. You can ignore that point and rely on recording the screen only, but it is preferable for it to appear in Some quick shots during the explanation are better.
Editing: You must learn editing programs well so that you can process the video clips that you have worked on before uploading them to the educational platform. This will certainly save you the cost of editing educational videos by specialists. The quality will certainly vary, but you can also produce medium quality that is suitable for trainees with little experience in editing. You can learn it in two hours of study on average.
Experience in delivery and explanation: The fourth point, which is the essence of building the content of the educational platform, is experience in delivery and explanation, and this depends on the extent of the trainer’s experience, for example, the speed of explanation, breaks, method of delivering information, etc., and if you do not have previous experience in the field of training, you must register The lecture more than once, and you watch the lecture yourself and put yourself in the position of the trainee or through your friends so that you can identify errors, review them, and re-film until the video comes out with the appropriate quality of explanation, and you will find that the topic gradually becomes easier after a while.

Now, through all the previous steps, you have complete experience about the training course specialization, competitors, and pricing. You have also prepared the training course content well and suitable for the trainees. You are ready for the second step, which is creating an educational platform suitable for your educational content. This is what we will explain in the next paragraph, so continue reading with us.

The second step: Create a specialized educational platform

When creating an educational platform, you must take into account many points that affect the user experience within the platform, as well as the extent of your technical experience and the available budget, and we will explain these points during the following paragraphs.

Select an appropriate content management system

First of all, you must select a content management system for the educational platform, and you will find a set of options available to you. The first option is to program an educational platform completely from scratch, and here you must rely on an external programming company to create the educational platform for you.

This option is distinguished by the fact that it enables you to create an advanced educational platform with all the required features in the required form without any change, but one of the disadvantages of this point is that its cost is high compared to other options. The cost of creating a special programming educational platform is almost 10 times that of an educational platform on WordPress or platforms for creating educational platforms. Therefore, it is not preferable to rely on this option at the beginning of creating the educational platform.

The second option is to rely on platforms for creating educational platforms. You will find a large group of ready-made platforms that help you create and design the educational platform by controlling a set of ready-made settings and designing the interface by dragging and dropping and then modifying. The most famous of these platforms are the following:

Skillshare platform.
Teachable platform.
Podia platform.
Thinkific platform.

These platforms make creating an educational platform much easier, but they force you to pay a monthly cost for their services, and I do not prefer to rely on that method.

The third option, which is the best, is to rely on content management system “LMS” plugins on WordPress. This option does not require much technical experience either, as you can perform all the settings of the educational platform by following some technical explanations. If it relies on a special programmer, the cost will be low compared to the previous option. .

It is also an open source system that you can fully control to suit the needs of your electronic platform. It may be more difficult than relatively ready-made educational platform creation platforms, but it is more cost effective as you are not obliged to pay a subscription when creating the educational platform other than the hosting cost only.

The price of content management system “LMS” add-ons varies depending on the add-on features, for example the ability to add grouped offers, discounts, profit points, assignments, tests, curricula, etc., but their cost ranges around $70, paid one time.

The most popular content management system plugins for WordPress are the following:

There are many other add-ons, so you must choose an LMS add-on that suits your needs. You can review the following guide to choose the best LMS add-on for your educational platform.

Certainly, you may find that dealing with LMS add-ons may require some technical experience, so you can start a new project on an independent website and request to contract with a WordPress programmer with previous experience in designing educational platforms to carry out this step for you in a professional manner.

Firstly, you enter an independent website and then register a new account or log in to your account on the Hassoub platform if you have a previous account. After that, you click on Add Project and write the project title and project details accurately, as well as specify the required expertise, cost, and expected period for the project, and attach Any files that help the freelancer understand the nature of the required service and then publish the service.

The freelancer’s technical support team will review the service and it will be published after the review. You will find freelancers submitting offers that include details of the service they provide, as well as the proposed price and service period.

Examine the offers presented and communicate with the freelancers until you choose the freelancer that best suits you in terms of experience, cost, and time period.

Choose a suitable template with an LMS add-on

Now that you have selected the best content management add-on for your educational platform, you will adjust all the educational platform settings to suit you, and then you will set up the educational platform interface.

Here, it is preferable to rely on a WordPress template dedicated to creating educational platforms, as it provides you with many features, the most important of which are the following:

Saving a lot of time in designing the interfaces of the educational platform because it provides you with multiple ready-made interfaces that suit the specialization of the educational platform and does not require some simple modifications to suit the general taste.
Providing ready-made pages for most users, such as the trainer, trainee, and admin, that enable them to deal with the entire platform in a simple way without entering the main WordPress panel.
Its cost is not high, averaging $60 one time.

Here you must make sure that the template is compatible with adding the content management system for your educational platform. You must also make sure that the template is responsive and compatible with all devices and the template speed is good. You can review the following guide to choose the best template suitable for your educational platform.

Determine the appropriate payment methods for your educational platform

Now that you have prepared the interface of your educational platform, you must think about the payment methods that the trainee may need to complete the process of purchasing the training course. These are among the most important technical points that must be taken into consideration because you will lose the customer and all your efforts if the trainee does not find the method that suits him.

Here, the target country must be taken into consideration, for example Egypt needs to provide the payment method Vodafone Cash, if Saudi Arabia must provide the payment method Mada, and so on.

Also, international payment methods must be provided that are suitable for most trainees around the world, for example, PayPal, payment by Visa, MasterCard, etc.

You can review the following guide in order to add and adjust all the payment methods you need on your educational platform, whether local or international, as well as with or without a commercial register.

Read also: Adding global and local payment gateways to educational platforms | Comprehensive guide

Determine the appropriate protection strategy for the training course

The fourth and final step in creating the educational platform is to determine the mechanism and strategy required to protect the training course from theft and illegal spread in order to secure the educational platform in the long term.

You will find more than one strategy to protect the course content, and this affects the cost of the course, as there are some intermediate protection methods that can be applied for free, for example preventing copying of content or direct access to links.

But there are other important methods, for example, preventing screen recording or downloading educational videos, and most of these methods can only be applied with special programming or by relying on third-party platforms to upload videos, as they provide you with these features, but at additional costs, and these costs are related to the number of views, the duration of the video, and the quality. And so on.

These features cannot be applied to a course that costs $5 and is available for life because the cost of protection will be greater than the cost of the course itself, but they can be allocated to courses of high value, as well as restricting the number of times the course is viewed or the course viewing period so that you can control the price of protection and it is a percentage of Total course price.

We talked in detail about protecting training courses from theft and downloading in the following guide, so you can review it in detail.

Now you have finished setting up the training course and creating an integrated educational platform. The next step is to start marketing the course content, which we will talk about in detail in the following paragraphs, so continue reading with us.

Step Three: Marketing and selling online courses

The third step is marketing the training courses online, which is the last essential step that exposes the educational platform and all the previous points to the public, and it is what the success or failure of the educational platform depends on, especially if there are long-term plans for it.

Identify your appropriate audience

The first step in marketing online courses is to identify the appropriate audience for your practical content. The appropriate audience is the audience that needs your scientific content without modification and gets the benefit it needed from it.

Identifying this audience saves you high financial costs that go to no benefit to an audience that does not need the service you provide. For example, you offer a course for applicants, but you rely on advertising resources to explain the basics, and therefore they will not enter the correct category for your educational platform, and if they buy the course, the final evaluation for the educational platform will be bad. Long-term.

You can easily identify the appropriate audience by periodically analyzing the performance of the educational platform. You determine the age that visits your site the most and provides content suitable for them, as well as the country that visits your site the most, providing them with payment methods that are more appropriate for them and the most interactive courses and lessons. Thus, you collect information and on the basis of it determine the target audience.

You can also contract with a specialized marketer from freelance sites, for example, the Khamsat website or the Independent website, where he works to identify the appropriate audience, organize advertising campaigns, and all matters related to marketing.

Determine and organize the specialization of the work team

You must determine the work team for the educational platform and organize the roles in advance. For example, you determine the team specialized in technical support, responding to customers, and the available technical support times, and follow up on this matter periodically. You can rely on a sub-add that organizes technical support for you, for example, the Zaytoun application.

It also defines the marketing team, their roles, the method of following up on trainees, assignments, tests, live lectures, etc., and always with good planning you will find excellent results.

Use offers and discount coupons for marketing

Most of the content management system “LMS” add-ons provide you with the feature of adding individual and grouped offers, as well as discount coupons that you can rely on to market your educational platform courses.

You can also collect data about your target audience from the educational platform and provide them with offers specific to their country, for example, special offers for Saudi Day that show trainees from the country of Saudi Arabia, etc.

Free direct lectures are one of the best marketing methods that you can rely on to market your educational platform courses, and you will find the most famous major educational platforms offering complete courses and lessons for free.

This is because these lessons give a general impression of the lecturer’s explanation style, presentation method, method of dealing with the educational platform, etc. In this way, the trainee has a complete general impression of the educational platform, and this helps him complete the decision to purchase paid courses.

Periodic follow-up and questionnaires on the educational platform

The educational platform must be monitored periodically, identify strengths and weaknesses, and work to address and improve those points to develop the educational platform in the long term.

It is also preferable to periodically request questionnaires from the trainees that appear to them while browsing the educational platform, and you can give them equivalent points, and ask about the general opinion of the training courses, the appropriate time for live broadcast, the required means of payment, the suitability of prices with them, etc., and through the data that is obtained. From the questionnaire, she is working on developing the educational platform.

Conclusion

Educational platforms are among the most personal and investment electronic projects that you can rely on to publish your training courses and establish your own academy that is compatible with the modern online education system.

In order to create a successful educational platform, you must study all aspects of creating the educational platform, arrange them correctly, and prepare a complete plan for the project to establish, launch, and gradually expand. We have explained to you the most important steps in an organized and detailed manner.

It is not required that you have experience in all aspects of establishing the educational platform or undertake all of these aspects personally, but it is preferable that you specialize in key parts and allocate part of the educational platform’s capital in seeking the assistance of the required expertise from Khamsat or Independent to form an integrated work team that helps in the emergence of The project has the required quality and shape as quickly as possible.

If you have a special question or inquiry that was not answered in today’s article, do not hesitate to comment below the article, and your comment will be answered by technical support as soon as possible, God willing.