How to create an online platform for learning English

EnglishDom is an online English language school on Skype, we have been teaching since 2010. Now there are more than 300 people in our staff, we spent 600,000+ Skype lessons and helped 10,000 students achieve their goals in learning English.



In September 2017, we developed and launched our own online English learning platform - EnglishDom Class . How we created it, we will tell in this article.

User Survey

We already had Skype lessons, conversational clubs and an online English tutorial. All this helped to create the platform, because we were tracking which types of tasks were the most popular for students.



In the top tasks included:

• choose whether the offer is true;
• put the proposals in the correct order;
• insert the word in the right place in the text.
• choose the correct option;
• enter the desired form of the word.

We decided to leave these types of tasks as basic for working with audio, video and text content, because, according to a survey of our students, they turned out to be the most effective.

Pain and solutions

Pain 1. A stack of books or many files for a lesson

They brought everything together in a platform to focus on the lesson and the topic of interest. This also included a dictionary in which you can add any word from the platform and then learn using the application on your phone or in your personal account.

Pain 2. Unfamiliar new topic and lack of time for homework

The concept of an “inverted classroom” , when everything can be read and executed before the beginning of the lesson, in order to ask questions about the case in class, and not to get acquainted with the material from scratch. As a result, the lesson is more productive, but the student is not afraid to come to class, because he knows everything in advance.

Pain 3. Selection of content that the user likes

Users and teachers are directly involved in the formation of content. We gave them the opportunity to evaluate each stage of the lesson and separately the whole lesson - a rating system using stars and likes / dislikes. Based on these estimates, we added another type of tasks - to find an error in the sentence.

Pain 4. Track class history, performance, number of lessons learned and topics

In the private office, we updated the scale of achievements and showed the nearest macro and micro goals. For example, there was a lesson - the scale grew and became one step closer to the goal. I missed the lesson - stayed at the same level, or even took a step back, because you have to repeat the material of the last lesson.

Pain 5. Paperwork teachers

We got rid of her. Updated the schedule and automated as much as possible routine processes . The teacher has only to mark the lessons and monitor the student's status, and the system will remind you if the student has not been engaged for a long time, or that he has a zero balance. In addition, we simplified access to teacher resources and reduced the number of steps as much as possible in preparation for the lesson (choosing a course — choosing a lesson and clicking “view”).

Pain 6. Incomprehensible tasks and complex topics in the course of English

They laid the possibility of the system to fix the most incomprehensible moments, mistakes and reissue them, both in the classroom and in the home task. As a result, the student gets more time to fix the most difficult topics and tasks.

Welcome to EnglishDom Class

Occupation structure

We brought out the final structure of the lesson, which should last 50 minutes:

• Warm up
  
  This is a text task for immersion in an English-speaking environment (up to 5 minutes) and its task is to make contact between the student and the teacher, to tune in the desired way to work in the class.
• Vocabulary
  
  A selection of 15 words on the lesson with tasks to them (up to 10 minutes). Section to form an active vocabulary with the help of interactive exercises, supported by voice acting and pictures.
• Get to know
  
  Here you can find a grammar or new lexical constructions with tables for them (up to 10 minutes). Information is provided using tables and examples with translation and voice acting, and the format of the presentation is more like a dialogue, not a lecture.
• Let's practice
  
  This is an interactive assignment to consolidate the theory (up to 10 minutes). Three types are presented - tests, writing the correct word and searching for errors in the sentence. The main task is to work out the previously studied theory and vocabulary and practice writing.
• Life story
  
  Audio, video or text on the lesson with interactive tasks (up to 5 minutes). This section helps to improve listening skills, contextual perception of vocabulary and a quick acquaintance with the text.
• Role play
  
  The main task is to simulate a real dialogue on procurement (up to 5 minutes). So the student fixes the learned vocabulary and learn how to properly build a dialogue.
• Discussion
  
  Here are a number of questions on the lesson topic, so that the student learns to express his point of view (up to 10 minutes). This section helps you to form detailed answers in English and discuss.
• Game
  
  These are tasks of various types with a positive emotional message that make a student creative (up to 10 minutes). The key goal of the assignment is to teach the student to improvise and speak correctly in English.

This is enough to familiarize yourself in detail or to fix one grammatical subject.

Control in class

We made the teacher a process leader and assigned the role of task navigator. In addition, the teacher can directly in class choose content that is more suitable for a particular student.



For example, a student does not want to come up with examples today or get involved in games in English - you can pass a role-playing situation or discussion, and vice versa - if you wanted to be creative - go into games.

Full sync

All work in the classroom has become synchronized:

• the student sees what the teacher is doing and vice versa;
• you can highlight the cursor with individual words, phrases and other content for the student;
• you can see which words the student adds to the dictionary and writes to the chat;
• The chat history of the lesson is available to both parties.

Thus, the teacher becomes a mentor, whose main goal is to select the right type of assignments, to motivate and engage in the educational process. The platform will do the rest, because, thanks to its clear structure, the student is guaranteed quality and progress, which is 40% faster than traditional teaching methods.

Resources spent

Since we created a platform based on our online courses for self-study of English, the entire development process of the EnglishDom Class took 4 months (8 sprints and 6 pre-releases) - a team of 10 developers, 2 product managers, 3 designers, 7 content managers. writers.



Development department:

• 1,500 hours of pure coding;
• 20,000 lines of Javascript;
• 20,000 lines of CSS and 30 thousand lines of PHP.

Content Writers:

• 1,200 hours to create lesson plans;
• 400 hours of proofreading;
• 100 hours of making adjustments to the tasks.

The total budget from the development of the idea to the implementation was $ 500,000.

Future plans

Ahead of our students are waiting for such updates:

• Replacing video and audio Skype for communication via WebRTC;
• group and corporate lessons;
• new specialized courses;
• a record of lessons learned and their assessment;
• updates of our word study and homework app.

The platform will continue to grow into features with an emphasis on gamification and analytics.



And with the help of Big Data, we will analyze how students and teachers fit each other according to their psycho-type, how educational content is perceived and how to better control academic performance.



On the basis of the data obtained, it will be possible to predict the learning rate and understand the average student involvement in each course. This means that we will be able to accelerate learning, improve the quality of courses and timely update content that is outdated, tired or just did not like the students.



Our students are already engaged on the EnglishDom Class platform.

Of course, not everything is perfect and there are a lot of improvements ahead. But the training is already going on cool and interesting.



By the way, you can see for yourself and try the most modern way of learning English, and at the same time express your wishes for improvement - we are always happy!

Sign up for a trial lesson .

Reader Bonuses

Online Courses

We give you access for three months to the course of English for self-study "Online course". To access, simply follow the link until December 31, 2017.

Individually by Skype

We invite to English courses for IT-specialists.

Sign up for an introductory lesson and select a teacher and program of study.