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Many years later, people may look back to the spring of 2020, and may feel that in addition to the indelible effects of that epidemic, it has also become a turning point in many collective ideas, industry changes, and individual behavior.

One of these things is education.

Affected by the epidemic, colleges, universities, and elementary and middle schools in various provinces and cities across the country have postponed schooling to varying degrees. With the purpose of “suspending classes without stopping school”, online education has become a universal “new” attempt.

Simple people’s teachers, put mobile phones on the web and become unfamiliar webcasters; students who are used to watching live sandcasting have to sit tight and turn the Internet into class. For a while, there were endless sections about online class rollovers, and “not adapted” became the most direct experience for people.

However, in the eyes of entrepreneurs and investors, “online lessons” are not new. Thanks to the development and support of technical means, online education has actually existed for six or seven years, and has already penetrated into the K12 field.

“Because of the epidemic situation, many new users may still try online education tentatively, but once it is tried, it is likely to be irreversible.” I have invested in online education such as head education, onion math, and squirrel AI. Dong Zhanbin, founding partner of Unicorn’s Qingsong Fund, said so.

“Online education should usher in a spring.”

Overturning of online lessons does not mean that online education is not good

01 What impact will the epidemic have on the domestic education industry?

Dong Zhanbin: The impact is obviously due to the suspension. It turned out that normal on-campus courses and extra-curricular training courses could not be started, but many students still faced the pressure of further studies and urgently needed to find an alternative teaching service, that is, online education.

02 Recently, many schools have begun to test live online lessons. There are many large-scale “rollover” scenes of online lessons on the Internet. It seems that teachers and students are not used to online lessons / online education. What do you think about this?

Dong Zhanbin: In fact, anything new is the same and requires a learning and familiar process. Because the epidemic came suddenly, the teachers who were accustomed to traditional teaching also rushed into battle. Obviously, they were not familiar with the emerging class methods. Some talked for a long time without opening wheat, and some of them forgot to close the wheat and then live broadcasted by the way.

In addition, from the perspective of live broadcast tools, teachers start working with a mobile phone. There are also a variety of auxiliary teaching tools. Many use glass and walls as whiteboards. There are no systematic network courseware that can be used. In fact, if it is a mature online education institution, teachers need to go through several weeks of training before conducting live webcasts.

So this is a limitation of objective conditions and does not mean that this form of online education is not good.

It is difficult for online education companies to enter elementary and middle schools

03 What is the difference between the online teaching system currently used in primary and secondary schools, and extracurricular online education companies such as Qingsong Investment’s head education?

Dong Zhanbin: The difference in the general direction is that the current campus uses a one-to-many teaching / interaction method, which is equivalent to a large class. One person lectures and the other listens. The information basically belongs to one-way transmission. The main education at the head is one-to-one teaching, which will have better interaction, and both parties can transmit signals in real time. In addition, the head system is developed by a team of several thousand people after several years of research and development. The functions are very complete. All the standardized courseware developed in the course are used in teaching and can be directly called in the system. External auxiliary tools are not required. .

04 Is it possible for an extracurricular online education company to actually enter classroom teaching in elementary and secondary schools during this special period?

Dong Zhanbin: It is very difficult for extracurricular online education companies to directly enter the classroom. From a national perspective, I still think that a top-down main platform is needed to provide learning tools, but within this framework, the content developed by extracurricular online education companies can do some good grafting. For example, the Onion Academy invested by Qingsong entered primary and middle school classrooms through the development of high-quality content.Formerly has more than 30 million students, 950,000 teachers and users, covering 190,000 primary and secondary schools across the country.

In addition, online education is one of the important means to solve the problem of unequal teachers in China. In the future, if primary and secondary schools are to teach online, unified network multimedia courseware will also be required. These development tasks are very time-consuming and labor-intensive. Therefore, this is a good opportunity for extracurricular education companies. As long as they develop good teaching content that matches the classroom of primary and secondary schools, it will be easier for schools to purchase or use it for free.

Long-term opportunities exist in “post-epidemic” online education

05 At this moment, is the current peak in online education traffic a special phenomenon at special times, or is there a long-term opportunity?

Dong Zhanbin: I think this impact is very long-term. Because of the epidemic situation, many users may only experience online education on a trial basis at first, but once they try it, they may not be irreversible. They can clearly feel the benefits of online education, especially on the parent side. It can be said that in the short term, online users will surge; in the long run, the penetration rate of online education will also increase.

In the past, we all said that online education is developing very fast, but its penetration rate among users is actually very low. In many places, the penetration rate of subject-based online education was within 10%, but after this “epidemic”, the penetration rate may reach 20% or even higher. The effect that was expected to be achieved in five years has accelerated.

06 What are your predictions on the development trend of the education industry in 2020?

Dong Zhanbin: I think online education should usher in a spring. Because of the impact of the epidemic, this wave of online education traffic conversion will continue. Even after the epidemic is under control, people ’s fears will continue for some time. The direct penetration of online education to users may continue into this summer. From a macro perspective, letting everyone gradually receive online education has its own profound impact. From the data point of view, online education should be improved regardless of income or model. A number of online education companies will be sought after by the market this year.

Thinking about the future can change the future

07 At present, there are not many online education companies in China. What kind of companies have the opportunity?

Dong Zhanbin: I think there are still opportunities for surviving companies. But at the same time, your opponents are also relatively strong companies. If you want to surpass your peers, you still have to take some special measures, and you may have to reverse the model slightly. Judging from the performance of some of the companies we invest in-

The first category is “content”. For example, Dora Reading and Onion Academy, a company that originally provided interactive content online. During this time, the number of users has increased significantly, and it is at a stage of obvious benefits.why? Because from the perspective of user behavior, those new users who have never contacted online education may be more inclined to the content category in the first stage, and the threshold for participation is relatively low.

The second type is “services”. For example, companies that focus on one-on-one and one-to-several teaching will also increase the number of users, but the effect is not so straightforward.

The third category is “disciplinary”. I think it will usher in the most direct benefits, because this is the immediate need for students to face the pressure of further studies, and this change can activate the areas that were difficult to reach in online education. .

08 What do you think about the phenomenon of “” teachers assisting Hubei “in some educational enterprises during this epidemic?

Dong Zhanbin: There are many ways to reach out during the epidemic, and free teaching support is one of them. Leading education of the Qingsong family, squirrel AI, onion college, Daoyuan classroom and other companies also have their own actions. I think this is a kind of compassionate action for the students in the affected areas, and it is also a way for the enterprises themselves to obtain customers.

I always think that those irreversible lifestyles that may be caused by the epidemic will have more long-term investment value, and this is the case for online education. The Black Swan incident gives everyone more time to think about the future, especially its long-term impact on people’s lifestyles and thinking concepts, which may change the future.