For decades, the education industry has been considered stagnant and not worth big investments. This changed with the era of the digital — now educational apps and websites are some of the most popular ones. On Apple App Store, Education has been constantly the third most popular app category; on Google Play the second.
This popularity translates directly into ROI. According to a TechNavio report, the e-learning market size will grow by $93.64 billion during the years 2020-2024. However, it’s important to keep in mind that this report has been done prior to the COVID pandemic. Because of the forced remote work and remote learning, the downloads of education apps significantly surged since the Q1 of 2020.
What makes education apps so popular?
There are at least a couple of major reasons that make the education apps top all the rankings. These are:
- They make users (students) feel that they spend their time effectively — thanks to gamification features, it’s easier to learn something while actually having fun.
- Educational apps and websites are more accessible and usually more affordable than other learning solutions.
- The social aspect is also important — many education apps and websites allow students to compare their results with peers.
- The digital learning solutions are incredibly versatile. One day, you can start learning Spanish, the other pick up a guitar course, and finally even start learning web development yourself!
- Many digital education solutions deliver a more interesting way of studying than traditional means.
However, be aware that these mostly relate to the apps dedicated strictly to students. If you are considering investing in edtech, you might also choose to build a product focused on improving the efficiency of the teacher’s work or a middleman platform between teachers and students.
Why should you hire education app developers?
Whatever type of education app you want to develop, your best bet to make it perform exactly as it should is to hire experienced education app developers.
Some of the tasks that education app developers can handle for you are:
- Build a robust back-end for your app, whether it’s a mobile or a web project.
- Tailor the front-end of your website, e.g. by implementing the layout proposed by a designer.
- Manage your data pipelines and make sure your data is stored the right way.
- Protect your data and other digital assets from cyberthreats.
- Update your app with new features on a regular basis.
- Advice on the technical solutions to be chosen, if you haven’t picked any specific ones just yet.
- Tailor your mobile app or mobile version of the web app to make it feel native-like to each of the platforms.
- Test your solutions before releasing them to a wider public.
Before you hire education app developers
Before you start hiring education app developers, you must clarify your requirements for the candidates.
First, choose the platform you are targeting. It’s best if you have an app for both the web and the mobiles — this way your customers can truly access your product whenever they want, both from desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
You can approach the world of mobile in different ways, e.g. by developing native mobile apps for each platform, investing in cross-platform app development (the iOS and Android versions share then a significant chunk of code, speeding up the development), or make your web app a progressive web app (PWA) which shares many amazing features (e.g. notifications) of a native mobile app but doesn’t require installation via the official store like Apple App Store or Google Play.
The most important hard skills for education app developers
In the end, you will most likely have to hire at least a few education app developers, including separate groups for both the mobile and the web side of the project. Because of this clear distinction, you will also need to have a bit different hard skills requirements for both of these groups. The categories to consider, however, will be pretty much the same. These are:
- Programming languages
You have a really vast choice when it comes to picking the programming languages to power your education app. When it comes to the web, the front-end will most likely be built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (alternatively TypeScript). Back-end, however, can be developed using many different languages, including C#, PHP, Python, or Java. Finally, there is the case of mobile — you might choose a native technology (Swift for iOS, Kotlin for Android) or cross-platform development (e.g. with React Native+JavaScript).
- Frameworks and libraries
Popular front-end frameworks include React, Angular, and Vue. In the case of the back-end, the frameworks are often linked to a specific programming language. For example, you can use PHP+Symfony or Ruby+Rails. When it comes to mobile, when building native apps you are bound to use the official solutions of Google and Apple. However, if you choose cross-platform mobile development, you can choose between tools like React Native, Xamarin, or Flutter.
- Data management tools
Your education app developers should also have the knowledge of the data management solutions you pick for your company. First, you have to choose whether you want to use SQL or NoSQL databases; then, specify the tools you will be utilizing for the management of these databases (e.g. MySQL, MongoDB).
- Experience with the cloud
Most digital products nowadays are leveraging the power of the cloud — by storing your data and software in the cloud, you can streamline the delivery of new updates and features as well as improve the overall performance of your app. There are many cloud solutions on market (including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud) and you should hire education app developers experienced with the solution you decided to choose for your company.
All these, of course, are just the most basic hard skills categories to consider when you hire education app developers. Your project might require additional, more specific technologies. Because of this, we highly recommend discussing your needs with a software consultant or an IT project manager prior to starting the hiring process.
The importance of soft skills for education app developers
While technical excellence is important, so are soft skills. These can significantly improve how your whole education app development team operates — how well they cooperate and how innovative they are.
To truly power up your company, hire education app developers with especially the following soft skills:
- Attention to detail
To write reliable, issue-free code.
- User empathy
To think of the needs of the users (students/teachers) first.
- Researcher’s attitude
To bring to the table unique concepts based on the recent industry developments.
Finding education app developers that truly fit your business
Besides both the hard and the soft skills, you should also look into how well your candidates actually fit your company. Consider especially the following areas of company fit:
- Product and industry fit
When you are building an edtech company, you want to onboard talents who have already experienced working in the education sector. Only they will have the knowledge of the unique aspects of the industry that you always need to remember about when developing an education app. The more extensive the industry experience, the more efficient the work of your education app developers will be.
- Company culture match
Delivering innovative solutions in an efficient way is the key to being a significant player in the edtech market. Power up your company by assembling a team of like-minded individuals. The best way to do it is to clarify the values that drive your business for success and then hire education app developers and other experts who also consider these values important. Consider things like the preferred style of management, approach to remote work, or focus on team diversity.
Who else will you need to onboard?
A team of talented education app developers is the first step to make a mark with your new edtech product. But there is so much more that can be done to improve your chances for success. Onboard experienced digital designers, data scientists, IT project managers, and machine learning engineers, and together build a product that truly makes a difference for students worldwide.
Do you want to make sure that the people you hire are truly up to the task? We can help. At Ideamotive we connect businesses with top IT talents from our industry-leading network. After you get in touch with us, we will closely review your company profile and any unique requirements of yours and get you in touch with candidates who truly meet your needs.
Revolutionize the education sector with our pool of education app developers and other industry experts.
