TechEdu Community Platform Development

Jagadeesan S., Sanjay Kumar K., Sanjay Kumar V. and Thangarasu P.

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Nandha Engineering College, Erode, Tamil Nadu, India

Keywords: Online Learning, Community‑Based Education, Collaborative Learning, Gamification, Digital Portfolio,

Knowva Platform, Social Learning, Peer‑To‑Peer Interaction, Educational Technology, Student Engagement.

Abstract: The incredible growth of online learning platforms has transformed the education delivery structure, but many

of them still struggle to foster authentic engagement, collaboration and opportunities for students to showcase

their progression. To tackle these problems, traditional learning and social media style interactions are blended

together into one community driven learning platform by Knowva. By introducing gamification features and

being actively involved in learning communities, this platform increases student motivation, and promotes

peer-to-peer collaboration with real-time discussions and individualized portfolios. Besides encouraging

greater engagement, Knowva provides students a unique opportunity to showcase their efforts to be seen by

potential employers via a portfolio that they can control and share. Knowva wants to update online learning

with these features to be more transparent, interactive, and collaborative. In this essay, a reflection on

Knowva’s innovative approach to learning and the effect it will have on the future of online education, I will

share how Knowva allows students to thrive both professionally and academically while developing an active

learning community.

1 INTRODUCTION

Online education platforms such as Coursera and

LinkedIn Learning have transformed the education

industry. But amidst their success, several of such

platforms have concentrated greatly on just

displaying content rather than creating community-

based interaction for the learners. This

disengagement from their peers and mentors leaves

education feeling isolating and passive, creating a

fragmented experience that does not engage them

enough for deeper understanding or long- term

retention.

Moreover, while there is an abundance of courses

available on these platforms, they do very little in

assisting students to showcase their skills and

accomplishments to potential employers in a format

that can be presented. Knowva can solve these

problems with a community-based learning platform

that builds more than just content

Knowva reinforcement collaborative learning

through the social learning tools that allow students

to interact with mentors and peers in realtime. This

would facilitate continuous discussions, sharing of

knowledge, and peer-to-peer support, helping with

the transition from passive consumption of content to

active and engaged learning rather than just relying

on passive content consumption.

One of the key innovations in Knowva is the

personalized portfolio, which allows students to keep

track of progress, reflect on accomplishments, and

showcase an entire portfolio of learning throughout

their lives. The portfolio showcases not only

completed courses, but also skills learned, projects

undertaken, or significant achievements reached.

2 RELATED WORKS

The Last Decade of Online Learning Platforms In the

last decade, online learning platform has evolved

quite a lot with more emphasis on career readiness,

collaborative engagements and custom learning

paths. While most platforms offer lectures or courses

as the vehicle for knowledge, they rarely offer the

features that can foster authentic student engagement

and collaboration, and the ability to create a bit of a

public portfolio of the unique path each learner takes

through the materials. In this section, we look into the

gaps that Knowva aims to fill and existing platforms

that have attempted to solve these issues. 2. 1.

Platforms for Online Learning Education has been

S., J., K., S. K., V., S. K. and P., T.

TechEdu Community Platform Development.

DOI: 10.5220/0013916800004919

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Research and Development in Information, Communication, and Computing Technologies (ICRDICCT‘25 2025) - Volume 4, pages

565-568

ISBN: 978-989-758-777-1

565

transformed by traditional online learning platforms

like Coursera, Udemy, and edX, which give students

access to excellent content in a variety of subject

areas. Delivering courses developed by organizations

and business experts is the main goal of these

platforms. But when it comes to peer-to-peer

communication, in-the-moment teamwork, and

experiential learning, they frequently fall short. For

instance, Coursera has tried to include social elements

like peer evaluations and discussion boards. These,

however, frequently only apply to particular courses

and don't build a cohesive collaborative environment

for students in different fields. With few tools to

encourage communication between students outside

of the classroom, Udemy and edX likewise prioritize

information consumption above teamwork.2.2.

Platforms for Social Learning Social learning sites

like Khan Academy, Stack Overflow, and GitHub

have effectively established settings where

knowledge sharing and teamwork are essential

elements. Through user-generated material, these

platforms promote peer-to-peer learning and place an

emphasis on community-driven content. For instance:

By enabling users to share programming-related

queries and answers, Stack Overflow fosters a vibrant

community of experts and students. However, there is

a vacuum in other fields due to this platform's extreme

specialization and primary concentration on technical

problem- solving.

As a social platform, GitHub allows engineers to

work together on code and keep track of version

histories. Although GitHub's pull request mechanism

promotes collaborative coding projects and peer

evaluations

Although these platforms are excellent at

fostering collaborative environments, their emphasis

on specialized subjects (technical subjects, coding, or

academic learning) makes space for a more all-

encompassing, cross- disciplinary platform where

students can exchange knowledge, highlight their

accomplishments, and raise awareness of their

educational endeavors.

3 PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

The online application Know a has the following

essential features:

Community Creation: Based on their interests,

users can start or join communities that are tag- based

for convenient searchability.

Social Media-Style Feed: To increase engagement,

learners can submit their answers, queries, and

accomplishments in a feed that mimics social media

posts.

Portfolio Building: To let peers and employers see

their accomplishments, users can manually create

portfolios that highlight their shared posts, badges,

and active days.

Gamification is the process of motivating users

through positive reinforcement by integrating

achievement systems and badges.

To guarantee a smooth user experience across

devices, the platform is developed with a responsive

frontend and a Java-based backend. It incorporates a

tag-based community system that lets users look for

and select communities that are relevant to them.

Workflow:

1. Users join a community according to the subjects

they are interested in learning (e.g., data science,

coding).

2. They communicate by posting queries,

exchanging answers, or taking part in debates.

3.1 Model/Proposed Solution

The main innovation of Knowva is the integration of

community-based learning and social media like

interaction. By allowing students to communicate in

real time and share their learning experiences,

Knowva creates a collaborative environment that

increases motivation and engagement.

Special Qualities

1. Immediate engagement: When questions and

answers are posted in a community, learners

can receive instant feedback and answers,

which helps to eliminate barriers to learning

more quickly.

2. Portfolio Feature: Users can curate and display

a portfolio to visualize their educational

journey. Prospective employers and hiring

managers can see such portfolio, it becomes an

online CV.

3. Tag-Based Communities Enabling users to

discover communities and resources base on

specific areas of interest, Knowva’s search

technology helps make learning experiences

more relevant.

4. Gamification: A badge system is used to

reward active users and encourage continued

engagement.

Creating a digital education community platform

requires an approach that marries the core tenets of

agile development, user- centered design, and

continuous feedback loops. A stepwise approach

ICRDICCT‘25 2025 - INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN INFORMATION,

COMMUNICATION, AND COMPUTING TECHNOLOGIES

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may be recommended as follows:

Perform Market Research: Market research is a

vital part of the process, to understand the needs and

issues of your target users’ students, mentors, and

educators. During this phase, you can conduct

surveys, interviews, and competitive analysis to

understand finding gaps that existing platforms have

and opportunities for innovating on top of the that

Design the platform: Users friendly setup that

includes participatory tools for team-building such as

message boards, real-time chat, and collaborative

projects. The interface must be easy to use and

intuitive for diverse groups of users. At the same time,

achievement badges, skill tracking, and personalized

portfolios the three pillars of skill validation and

professional visibility should be fed to it.

Agile Development Consider breaking the project

into iterative sprints for feature development, testing

and refinement. This enables rapid adaptation in a

way that responds to consumer feedback and market

trends.” It is best to test early prototypes with a few

users to gain feedback and make necessary changes.

Testing and Launch Conduct extensive user

testing to ensure the stability and usability of the

platform. After any issues are resolved, open the

platform focusing on scaling it to ensure it is able to

grow with an increase in user demand.

Iterate: Post-launch, review the user feedback and

update regularly, adding new features, enhancing

existing ones and ensuring that the learning process is

a dynamic one.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This proves the importance of a community platform

for technology education and is a great step towards

addressing the changing needs of students in this

digital era. When traditional e-learning platforms

emphasize information, they only provide students

withoclicks on a browser and misses the point limited

interaction/real-time participation, collaborative

execution of tasks and verifying skills. On the

contrary, a community-driven approach has a lively

learning framework that promotes capacity building,

colleague engagement, and mentoring these are all

essential components of deeper and impactful

learning. In addition, these platforms which can track

students' progress and commonly feature tools for

saving accomplishments in a tangible format, can also

help students display their skills and achievements. It

adds value to their academic journey and provides a

more noticeable spot in the job market, thereby

closing the gap between school and work. Meeting

like-minded peers, participating in projects, receiving

mentor feedback, living in a cohort that highly values

knowledge sharing these all contribute to the

experiential nature of learning communities that takes

the education experience far beyond the consumption

of knowledge. Last but not least, Tech education

community platforms guide students and motivate

them to achieve success in their journey of learning

while giving them the sense of much-needed

community. These platforms will play a crucial role

in defining the future of education and professional

growth as the demand for flexible and interactive

learning continues to grow rapidly.

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