University education is becoming more and more expensive. The College Board states that tuition and fees for private and public colleges have increased by 3% in the last two years.
Online courses have become a great alternative to traditional education. The leading eLearning sites are Coursera and Udemy, which attract millions of users looking to learn new skills.
Reading: How to create a website like coursera
So what makes them great examples of educational platforms? How do you build a site like Udemy or Coursera that can compete with these giants? You will find the answers in this article.
What is an eLearning portal?
In short, eLearning or electronic learning is training delivered via digital devices. These devices (computers, tablets and smartphones) should be connected to the internet. Students do not have to be present in class and can study at their own pace.
Today, digital educational platforms are becoming a powerful and practical tool.
E-learning websites like Udemy or Coursera are becoming more and more popular due to their undeniable advantages. Let’s discuss in more detail the main advantages of a website like Udemy:
- Flexibility. Online education websites allow students to take courses anytime, anywhere. You no longer need to travel to educational institutions. Instead, learners learn from the comfort of their own homes. It’s a real catch for people who have a full-time job or can’t attend college or university.
- Self-determined mode. Students are free to set the schedule according to their individual needs.
- Lower costs. Online programs on sites like Udemy or Coursera are often less expensive than tuition in a traditional campus environment. In addition, learners save money on course materials, accommodation and travel expenses.
Despite its high potential and clear advantages, virtual education is not perfect. The most common challenges related to eLearning are:
- Self-discipline issues;
- Lack of personal interaction;
- Reliance on technology;
- The quality of the content;
- Lack of feedback from trainers.
Types of digital learning platforms
- MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), e.g. Coursera, Udacity or FutureLearn;
- Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), e.g. B. Blackboard or Moodle;
- Video streaming services, e.g. e.g. YouTube;
- Visual Instructor-Led Training (VILT), e.g. B. WebEx;
- Discussion forums, e.g. B. Kialo;
- Forums, e.g. e.g. The Teacher’s Corner;
- Podcasts, e.g. B. Hardcore History, Philosophize This.
We have already mentioned Udemy and Coursera as two leading e-learning marketplaces. Other high-profile platforms include FutureLearn, edX, Khan Academy, Skillshare and Udacity.
Udemy and Coursera: an in-depth comparison
Udemy – the world’s largest online learning platform
Udemy’s history dates back to 2007. Back then, Eren Bali had the idea of developing software for a live virtual classroom. Bali noted that gifted people are sometimes unable to hone their skills. So he decided to create a software solution to help adults with their education.
The first attempt to build an online marketplace for education failed. So Bali and his friend Oktay Caglar packed their bags and moved from Turkey to Silicon Valley. There they gave their project another try. Initially, more than 30 investors rejected the idea. Bali finally launched the platform in 2010.
Today, around 57,000 instructors offer courses in 65 languages on Udemy. As of January 2020, the site library contained over 150,000 courses. For example, Udemy boasts over 50 million students.
Udemy and Coursera Success Factors
So what makes them different from similar online learning platforms? Let’s find out.
- Advanced technology. It enables students to have a better learning experience.
- The competitive pricing policy for Courses with free educational options.
- Rating system. It allows evaluating both the expertise of the educators and the quality of the content.
- Educational content translated into different languages. Students have the opportunity to learn from the most qualified experts from around the world to learn from the world.
- Course creation toolkit for creating free and premium courses.
- The extensive database of experts, who are eager to share their experiences.
The following table shows the main similarities and differences between Udemy and Coursera:
Udemy vs. CourseraCriteriaUdemyCourseraFoundation year20102012Number of courses150,000+3,100+Number of users50M +47M +CategoriesAnyoneAnyoneWho ContributesIndividual InstructorsUniversitiesBachelor’s and Master’sNoYesCourse Price$20-$200$29-$99
How to Build an E-Learning Website Like Udemy or Coursera
1.Define your niche
So you’ve decided to build an e-learning platform. First, think of the courses that will be available there. Will they cover a wide range of topics from arts and crafts to health and fitness? Or do you want to start an industry-specific education marketplace?
If you decide to go the second route, it would be a good idea to choose one of the most popular niches. You will attract many students and bring much profit to your platform.
- Computers and Technology
- Business and Entrepreneurship
- Personal Development
- Writing and Content Creation
- Arts and Crafts
- Social Sciences
2. Choose a monetization strategy
Initially, MOOC providers didn’t charge their users. They supported the idea of free and open access to learning materials. However, when reputable universities started joining their platforms, providers started monetizing their websites.
Let’s see how online learning marketplaces like Udemy or Coursera are raising money.
Paid Certificates
Some platforms, e.g. B. EdX, allow learners to review their courses for free. However, if students wish to receive a certificate of completion, it costs $50. Verified certificates support their idea of free education for all.
Class Central, a search engine for locating various online courses, defined Coursera’s profit from a single course. You have tracked how many students have purchased a certificate, paid for a degree, and signed up for admission to a degree.
As it turns out, a single iMBA course brought Coursera more than $20 million. Impressive results, right?
Monthly Subscription
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Udacity offers some of the Nanodegrees on a subscription basis. Learners can become experts in everything from marketing analytics to data visualization for $399 per month.
Premium Account
Skillshare offers very limited users Access to the Service. At the same time, the account upgrade brings many additional opportunities. You get unlimited access to thousands of courses. Also, learners can download lessons to their devices and watch them offline.
Below are the main benefits of Premium account on Skillshare:
Donate
Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization. All of their resources are free. How can they make money? Well, they receive donations from users and other non-profit institutions. For example, in 2010, Google gave Khan Academy $2 million to create new content and translate it into other languages.
In 2015, American multinational conglomerate AT&T donated $2.25 million to Khan Academy. The money was spent on building the mobile version. As a result, online courses became available for mobile users.
Corporate eLearning
It is a common practice for large companies to train their employees. E-learning websites like Udemy serve this purpose effectively. Both Udemy and Coursera provide tools and materials necessary for employee learning.
Corporate eLearning has become a good source of income for Coursera. For example, Forbes states that this online educational marketplace earned $140 million in 2018 thanks largely to its partnership with 1,800 companies. For example, Adobe Coursera paid $150,000 to provide machine learning courses to Adobe employees.
3. Select feature for e-learning website
If you want to know how to create a website like Udemy, take a close look at the core features of similar educational platforms. This feature will help make the learning experience lively.
- Autocomplete search. Don’t let users search an endless list of irrelevant options. Instead, help them find the course they want with a predictive search feature.
- Filter. Allow students to select courses based on different criteria. The most common of these are Theme, Subcategory, Level, Language, Ratings, Price, Features and Duration.
Below we see several search filters offered by Udemy:
- Recommendations. Create lists of popular courses and the most popular certificates. Highlight best-selling authors and thought leaders. These recommendations help learners to discover exciting things. At the same time, new users have a good starting point.
FutureLearn invites students to explore their best online courses:
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Feedback and Rating system. This feature is necessary to promote high quality courses on a site like Udemy or Coursera. In addition, it becomes easier to weed out useless or irrelevant courses.
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Categories. With an extensive system of categories, students can quickly find the courses and classes they want.
Below you can see a large number of categories provided by edX:
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Just report it Sign up for both students and faculty. Allow users to sign in via Facebook or Google to save time. student profile. Allow students to view the selected courses and achievements. Wishlists and purchase history should also be displayed there.
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Teacher Profile. It should have a forum for communicating with students and the teaching community. It’s also a good idea to offer educators valuable resources like articles on how to teach.
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Course Page. Provide users with general information about courses, their curriculum, ratings, and enrollment options. This data helps learners choose the right lessons.
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Dashboard. With its help, instructors can track their activity on a site like Udemy. The dashboard also provides you with analytical data. It can include student count, ratings, views, and conversions.
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Course Creation. Add the specific functionality to create online courses. Trainers should be able to define the structure of classes and upload learning materials in different formats. Also, make it easy for them to create engaging quizzes and assignments.
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Multiple payment options. Provide students with convenient and secure payment gateways. It would be a great idea to allow course purchases through eWallets (Apple Pay and Google Pay) which have become a popular development trend in eCommerce marketplaces.
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Management panel. This important part of any e-learning website like Coursera is required for content and user management. You can add students to the blacklist, generate statistics reports, add new content to the blog and assign user roles there.
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Blog. It stays learners about the latest Courses and specializations informed. Also, users can find useful tutorials there and read success stories of other students.
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Support. It is a challenging task to provide a large number of enrolled participants with excellent customer support. However, ignoring their questions and concerns is not an option. Otherwise, students will feel frustrated and leave your platform. It’s a good idea to implement a system that sends automated emails with recommended steps to fix a specific issue.
4. Take the development approach
When building a website like Udemy or Coursera to offer online courses, you have two choices. You can create it from scratch or use one of the dozens of ready-made solutions available on the market.
Let’s look at the main advantages and disadvantages of each option.
Custom Software Development
Suppose you want to make specific functionality available to a large number of students. In this case, custom software development is the best solution to create a website like Udemy or Coursera. Sure, it’s more expensive and time-consuming, but it allows you to implement all the required functionality.
For example, you want visitors to be logged out after 200 hours of their login time to avoid leaking credentials. If you are building your eLearning website from scratch, you can easily add such a feature.
Ready-made products
With these solutions, you can create a Website Like Udemy for education in few days. Such open-source software as Moodle or Joomla already has basic student management functions. They also come with plenty of free plugins that can come in handy, but the custom themes aren’t free. In addition, problems may arise when adding certain functions.
5.Define required technology stack
What technologies are Udemy or Coursera using? This is an exciting question for companies looking for the most suitable programming languages, frameworks and tools for advancing e-learning platforms. Well, let’s take a look under the hood.
Technical stack for building a website like Udemy
- Back- End
You can choose any programming language to create server side of your online education platform. For example, at Codica we use Ruby to build scalable, fast loading and secure online marketplaces.
What about building a website like Udemy? What platform is it built on? In the early days, Udemy chose PHP as the main programming language. It was used in conjunction with a custom MVC framework. However, with the advent of Python, the company decided to switch to this language and the process is ongoing.
When it comes to databases, MySQL is the ultimate choice for Udemy. Also, ElasticSearch is widely used for search and analytics.
- Frontend
On the client side JavaScript , AngularJS, HTML5 , CSS3 are the core technologies for Udemy.
- Third-party tools and integrations
It’s worth noting that the list third-party tools used by Udemy is not just limited to the technical aspect. Trello, Dropbox, Slack, Salesforce, Zendesk – this is the incomplete list of tools and applications that help the education market to achieve various business goals.
Technical stack to build a website like Coursera
- Back End
What platform does Coursera use? Well, Brennan Saeta, an infrastructure engineer at Coursera, states that the first few lines of this e-learning platform were written in PHP. As the engineering team grew, the developers used Python and Go for some time. Her final choice, however, fell on Scala. It is still used by Coursera along with the Play framework.
Similar to Udemy, Coursera has also chosen MySQL for managing relational databases. In addition, the company uses such HTTP server as Nginx and such cloud storage as Amazon S3.
- Frontend
When it comes to client-side technologies, Coursera chose JavaScript, ReactJS, and Bootstrap.
- Third-party tools and integrations
After all, Coursera uses such popular collaboration and productivity applications as Jira, Slack, G Suite.
How much does it cost to build a website like Udemy?
The total cost The cost of the Development of e-learning websites follow the functionality discussed above. To make it easier for you, we’ve created a table with the approximate cost of creating must-have features for an online education marketplace. You can see it below:
How much does it cost to build an e-learning website like Udemy or Coursera?FeaturesTime, hoursCost, $50/hourDesignUX Development64 hours$3,200UI Development96 hours$4,800ArchitectureProject Setup16 hours$800DB -Structure32 hours $1,600IntegrationsPayment (Stripe or PayPal)64 hours $3,200Main FunctionalityAuthorization and Security72 hours $3,600User Profiles42 hours $2,100Home84 hours $4,200Search and Filters64 hours $3,200 Product Page96 hours $4,800 Reviews68 hours $3,400 Cart64 hours $3,200 Notifications 32 hours $1,600 Course Page (course overview, course content, Q&A, Announcements, Bookmarks) 96 hours $4,800 Course Authoring (ability to upload content in multiple formats, quizzes and quizzes) 124 hours $6,200 Teacher dashboard (analytical information on student en) 124 hours$6,200Course Management64 hours$3,200Administrative Panel124 hours$6,200Non-developmentProject Management 64 hours $3,200 Quality Assurance 96 hours $4,800 Code Review 48 hours $2,400 Total1534 hours$76,700
Therefore, the cost of creating an online education website is around Udemy costs $76,700. Of course it is a rough estimate and only your development partner can give you the final amount. Nevertheless, we hope that our article helped you answer the question of how much it costs to create an online learning platform.
In summary
Coursera and Udemy have joined the world’s leading eLearning providers developed providers. So building a website like Udemy or Coursera can be a good business idea. However, making her clone will not be enough to achieve the same achievement. Create a unique product with exceptional functionality. If so, you have the chance to succeed in this highly competitive environment.
Are you looking for a development team to set up and launch an e-learning marketplace? Codica specializes in developing online marketplaces for various industries, including e-learning platforms.We know how to build a website like Udemy or Coursera and we are happy to help you become a leader in e-education. Check out our finished work or contact us to discuss your project.
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