eLearning in india
eLearning in india is growing at a pace which is almost twice of the rest of the world. With only 4.1% penetration, It is supposed to grow much more in coming years. Since taking online courses is a long term engagement for the users, a good User Experience is a must have for any eLearning venture. By giving the users a rewarding expereince, we can contribute to the overall success of the venture.

About Unanth
Unanth is an eLearning Marketplace which connects Tutors and Students. Tutors can create and publish free or paid courses and provide mentoship on hourly basis. Students get to take courses in several indian languages, Live mentorship from educators, placement assistance from unanth and certifications on various skills.

PROBLEM AREAS AND OUR SOLUTIONS

Open Course Creation
Open course creation means anyone can come and create their own course. The course created will then be reviewed by the Unanth team which they will publish after some corrections, suggestions, and improvements. This opens a up a number of possibilities for unanth team and the tutors all over the world. However, The course creation process is not easy, as there are several functions and steps which might confuse the user and finally defeat the purpose. Below is the flow chart of the course creation process that we designed to reduce the friction and provide a seamless experience to the user.

Course Taking, Progress tracking, and Certification.

Taking online courses can become a tiring task if User Experience is not taken into account while creating the portal. People learn in various ways, every user differs from other in the way they approach online learning. Some watch many videos at one go, Some fix their time everyday, Some take notes on paper, Some prefer online tools, several people like to have discussions with the peers and tutors of the course. There are many possibilities similar to the ones stated above. The aim should be to understand the most pressing problems of these all and provide solutions for them. Let’s explore some example user stories and the features we used to cater them.

1. “I forgot what lecture I took the last time I opened this website”
Users generally forget where they left the course when they do not interact with the website regularly. It’s not their fault though, the system should be smart enough to track the activity and progress of the user and let them continue from where they left.

2. “I want to track what lectures i have completed learning - manually”
Taking a lecture does not mean completing it. System cannot know if the person taking the course is actually understanding the lessons. There must be some form of self tracking functionality which users can use to track their progress. This can also be used to revisit some important topics.

3. “I need help with some of the topics, I wish i could reach out the tutor or other peers in this course.
Lectures and assignments are important part of eLearning but an equally important part is interactions and discussions that people have, be it with the teachers or fellow students. eLearning takes this freedom away to some extent. It is important to have a channel of communication where people can discuss the issues and share their knowledge. Creating such a channel also helps in building up for the un-sturctured but important content for the course which can be used as a reference by the people signing up in later stages.

4. “I am learning development, I wish i could practice what i am learning without getting to open number of windows and programs”
Learning to code requires hands on practice along with the lessons and theory. Development is the number one skill that is being pursued by the people in india. Unanth offers a large number of cources which are focused on learning to code. It is explainable that they required a way to let the users practice what they are learning on the site itself. This will help the users focus on learning and save the time they spend in downloading and configuring different programs to practice the skills.