As the Development of Internet technology continues to mature and people pay more attention to education, the new mode of “Internet + education”, namely online education, has been born. The traditional single offline education method has been unable to meet the requirements of the current era of rapid development. In 2014, as the first year of online education, funds from all sides began to flood in, and online education was exploded. So, what secrets are hidden behind the explosion of online education?
Online education prospect is good, big guy from all walks of life has layout early
According to the “2017-2022 China online Education Market Prospects and Investment opportunities research report” released by China Business Industry Research Institute, the size of online education market in 2016 has reached 185.34 billion yuan, an increase of 27.7% compared with the same period last year. It is expected that China’s online education market will continue to maintain rapid growth in the next five years, and is expected to exceed 300 billion yuan in 2018.
It can be seen that China’s online education has a promising future. For the online education of this new favorite, big coffee from all walks of life has long coveted, and already in advance layout.
Alibaba established Taobao Education in 2000, Baidu launched Baidu Library in November 2009, Tencent launched Tencent High-quality courses in September 2013…
The new education mode of online education attracts a large number of users and the army of educational institutions to participate. Data show that from 2012 to 2016, the user scale of Online education in China developed rapidly, increasing from 59.57 million in 2012 to 112 million in 2016, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.18%. The number of online education users reached 112 million in 2016, up 19.8% year on year. The number of users is expected to exceed 160 million in 2018.
Compared with developed countries, China’s per capita investment in education is only one tenth of the level of developed countries. It can be seen that online education in China is still in its infancy. With the continuous increase of family income, the proportion of investment in education is also increasing, and China’s population of about 1.4 billion, it can be seen that China’s online education has a large space for future development.
It is surprising that so much money is pouring into online education that the industry is still losing money across the board. According to CCTV Finance report, the market agency’s survey of 400 major online education companies showed that by the end of 2016, 70% of online education companies were still in loss, 10% were able to stay even, only 5% were able to make a profit, and even 15% were on the verge of bankruptcy.
After the storm, many investors will start to wait and see at this stage. If they find that the profitability of the invested company is weak, the possibility of withdrawal will increase. But online education certainly has its own advantages to win over investors.
Behind the loss of online education: The secret of capital Still pouring in like crazy
Statistics show that China’s online education has received more than 150 public financing deals in 2017, with a total fund of more than 7.5 billion YUAN. Among them, the recent financing of online education enterprises are: Homework Together, Onion Math, CreativeLIVE, The Times Think Tank, pocket Rat…
In the early stage of online education, technology development and market expansion require a large amount of capital. In addition, in the face of fierce competition in the market, foreign capital has to be introduced in order to survive and develop. Although online education generally suffers losses at present, it still hasn’t affected investors’ favor. The main reason is that online education has the following advantages compared with traditional education:
First, interactivity is getting better. For example, in the form of live teaching, users can interact with teachers in real time, making students feel that they are involved in real time rather than bystanders. Online education is not mainly teacher-centered or class-centered, but educatee centered. All according to the specific situation of users to choose the teaching content and teaching methods. Problems encountered by users in the learning process can be answered and solved in the first time, greatly improving the efficiency of user learning. Users do not need to memorize knowledge, as long as they master the learning method, all resources on the Internet can be adjusted out, rich classroom content, greatly broaden the user’s vision.
Second, break the regional restrictions. Teachers and students can conduct normal teaching and learning even though they are thousands of miles apart. For live courses, teachers only need to give a notice on the platform, and users all over the country or even the world can register and participate in learning on time, without being affected by the distance. It also helps promote equality in education. Due to the unbalanced development of economic education in various regions, the educational resources that users in different regions can receive are also unbalanced. Online education solves this problem, allowing users in different regions to enjoy high-quality teaching resources. For example, the less educated areas in the west need only a computer to connect to the Internet to receive high-quality education from the more developed areas in the east.
In addition, due to the flexibility of online education, it is also conducive to the personalized development of students. One-to-one education mode can be designated online, and teachers can make appropriate teaching plans according to students’ needs and actual situation. Students can also choose training courses and teachers according to their preferences, so as to give full play to their personalities.
To sum up, online education is a new education model derived from the Internet era. Compared with traditional offline education, it has many advantages. However, due to its “new” characteristics, it cannot avoid many shortcomings.
Online education still has many shortcomings
As the online education market is still mature, there are many problems to be solved.
According to sina, Chinese online education users value teaching quality, faculty and sensitivity to price more. At present, offline education is still dominant, and online education as a supplement, shortcomings are inevitable.
According to the survey, the common problems in the online education market are as follows: 1. It is difficult to interact with teachers and answer questions, accounting for 47.9%; 2. 2. About 38.7% of online classes have no classroom atmosphere; 3. About the effect of network speed on viewing effect accounted for 38.3%; 4. About 36% of people have problems with concentration and persistence; 5. About 26.6% of the students said that the teaching content was not of high quality and the effect was not good. Specific analysis is as follows:
First teaching content, teaching quality, and teaching form. These are things that machines can’t do. Teaching content and teaching quality are the core of teaching and the purpose for students to sign up for learning, so the content of teaching is extremely critical. The quality of teaching and the design of teaching content belong to the level of teachers’ teaching skills. How to teach so that students can easily and quickly master the teaching content, which is also an unavoidable problem of online education.
Secondly, students’ own problems, such as inability to concentrate, it is difficult to insist on attending classes on time. For students with poor self-discipline, online education is far less effective than offline education, and such students need proper supervision to complete their learning tasks successfully. There are also responsibilities of the platform and teaching, such as whether the software provided by the platform is practical, whether the design of teaching content is reasonable, and whether the teaching method is lively and interesting.
Third, online education cannot teach by words and deeds, and moral education is gradually separated. The essence of “education” is not only to teach knowledge and skills, but also to cultivate students’ moral character. Online education cannot teach by words and deeds, especially in art courses that give full play to personal imagination and feelings, such as Chinese poetry appreciation, music, calligraphy, etc. From this point on the line is absolute advantage. Online education will also be affected by network speed and computer hardware, if these aspects are not well guaranteed, there will be disconnection and other phenomena, unable to guarantee the smooth progress of the course, greatly reducing the teaching effect. Some online education platforms even appear false propaganda, fraud phenomenon.
In a word, due to the continuous updating and development of Internet technology, online education can not avoid some hard problems, but also face the brutal competition in the market, so it is extremely important for enterprises to grasp the focus of online education in the future.
What specific work should online education do to enhance the value of teaching?
Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said in an interview with China Business News that capital investment and the development of online education itself are two different things. The development of online education should return to education itself.
A lot of money is pouring into online education, and many investors care more about how much money they can make from hyped concepts and themes. And as the market tide recedes, which enterprises in “naked running” which enterprises wearing swimming trunks will be exposed. Capital will be withdrawn from less profitable businesses and rearranged. In this way, those with weaker profits are likely to become the “abandoned children” of investors and eventually have to be eliminated by the market.
Therefore, online education urgently needs to adjust its strategy and find the best way for its own development. Returning to the essence of education, re-focusing on the quality of education, teaching content and teaching form has become the focus of enterprises. Only by improving the quality and teaching skills of teachers can the satisfaction of the students be improved and the students be recognized by the market. This is the long-term solution for the development of online education. Otherwise, it is very likely to face the risk of being eliminated from the market.
First of all, research rich content and teaching quality and formulate a reasonable and effective supervision mechanism. Improve the degree of satisfaction and trust of the educated, so as to create a good reputation and brand. In this way, users’ habits can be cultivated, market demand can be expanded, and online education can enter a benign development stage. Therefore, service is the first lifeline of online education, rather than blindly expanding financing and seizing the market.
In addition, it is also necessary to standardize the management mechanism of teachers and do a good job in the audit of online education, such as the audit of certificates and qualifications, personal ID cards, academic certificates and teacher certificates. Teachers can also be trained uniformly, and only those who meet relevant standards can be qualified for online teaching. It is also a good way to perfect online education to set up a mechanism for teachers and students to evaluate each other objectively. For teachers with a high rate of bad comments, the platform should remind them or suspend them temporarily, and they can continue to obtain the online teaching qualification after passing the review of the platform again.
Secondly, the combination of online and offline mode. For example, the service type of gently tutor is positioned as door-to-door one-to-one and high-end online education service. Its one-to-one service features: according to the personalized tutoring of children, the hard journey is spared, the class time is flexible, so that teachers and students have more free time; Professional teaching assistant service: through professional teaching assistant, we can understand the characteristics of parents and children, and provide suitable teachers for children. The combination of online and offline can make teaching more diversified and more flexible, which not only makes up for many defects of pure online education, but also makes students’ learning and teachers’ teaching easier and more convenient, which is an important trend of the development of online education in the future.
With the continuous development of AI technology, the introduction of AI technology in the future will also be a good help to online education. The introduction of AI technology can make both teachers and students feel like they are on the scene, and also make up for the problem that students can’t concentrate in class and lack the sense of participation. Let the classroom become more flexible, but also increase the freshness of teaching and interesting, so as to improve the teaching effect.
Finally, establish their own core teaching and research team. Invite experts to research and develop teaching content and explore teaching methods, so as to ensure the quality of teaching. Regularly audit and train teachers who are freely registered on the platform to improve their teaching skills. Teachers may also be required to offer one or two free experience classes. This can reduce the cost of trial and error for students and attract users to participate more actively. In addition, awards can be given to the “most popular teachers of the year”. This can improve the enthusiasm of teachers, thus ensuring the quality of teaching.
It can be seen that online education has a good development prospect, but blindly following the trend is likely to be hit by a broken head, and eventually become a victim of the storm of market economy rather than profit from it. Therefore, it is critical for online education enterprises to explore a suitable path for their own development, rather than blindly follow the trend to seize the market.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110