domeet webmaster

From barbaric growth to gradual standardization, online education is whistling.

Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “Blackboard Insights” ID: heibandongcha) , author: spiritual encouragement No. 2 division.

Introduction

2013, as the first year of online education, is of great significance to the entire education industry, opening the door to capital in the education industry, and then online education ushered in the first wave of capital. Even in the face of the cold winter of capital in 2015, With a healthy cash flow and a counter-cyclical ability to resist risks, the education industry can still quickly attract the attention of capital in the short-term economic downturn. The enthusiasm for investment and financing of the education industry in the “cold winter” has not extinguished.

Investors and entrepreneurs are constantly evolving in a changing environment. Investment logic and the company’s profit-making and hematopoietic capabilities have been placed in a more important position. Today, capital is pushing the education industry to make rapid progress in the fields of AI and big data. The “money shortage” does not seem to have a significant impact on the investment enthusiasm of the education industry. So how has online education changed in the past 7 years?

01 From savage growth to gradual standardization, online education screams

According to the data, the scale of China’s online education market exceeded 100 billion yuan in 2014. As of 2017, the scale of China’s online education market increased to 200 billion yuan, reaching 208.91 billion yuan. It took only three years to reach this goal. Some investors once said: “The worse the economic environment, the more willing people are to invest in counter-cyclical and anti-cyclical projects such as education, medical care, and entertainment. Moreover, the cash flow in the education industry is relatively good. From the perspective of primary market investment, Look, the risk is relatively low, and everyone is willing to invest. “

The education industry has experienced high levels of investment and financing for 16 years.After the peak, as of 2019, the number of industry financing events has clearly shown a downward trend. Even only 332 financing events occurred in 2019, compared with the same period last year, the drop has approached the 50% mark and reached 47%. The decrease in financing events has occurred for three consecutive years, compared with the previous year, a decrease of 21% in 18 years and a decrease of 10% in 17 years. The tide of investment has gradually receded, the capital market has returned to rationality, and the industry track has also ushered in the cold winter. How to break through the frozen ground under the deadlock has become the biggest issue in the education industry.

Capital has accelerated the development of the industry, and we have also seen negative effects in the development of online education. Education is both result-oriented and process-oriented. A large amount of financing has made online education companies focus too much on the number of product users and user activity indicators. The focus of operations has shifted to the expansion of the market size. In the process, the business review of “long-term thinking” has been ignored, including the quality of teaching, industry Supply chain accumulation and other directions. Under the circumstance that online education users have not been fully nurtured, capital inflows have allowed a large number of institutions to follow, exacerbating the market’s shift from the blue ocean to the red ocean.

In contrast, in the first year of online education in 2013, the influx of the capital market, the growth rate of the number of investment and financing events in the education industry from 2014 to 2015 was almost crazy, which is in stark contrast to the current industry situation. On the one hand, it is the weakness and rationality of the capital market, on the other hand, it is also the result of the sharp increase in the competitive pressure of the market-leading companies. After the development of the entire online education industry has been promoted by capital, model innovation, and model verification, the industry’s maturity has entered a new stage. The era of ppt financing with the concept of online education is gone. return. The Matthew effect of online education is beginning to become obvious. Institutions with neither a profit model nor a capital background are struggling. They are gradually eliminated by the market and resources are more inclined to head enterprises.

With the continuous penetration of the Internet into the education industry, they learn from each other, integrate, and improve. Our learning and teaching scenes have gradually broken through the constraints of time and space, and the way of acquiring knowledge has become more flexible and diverse. Online education and offline education have also experienced constant collisions and frictions, and they have finally reached a consensus: online education will not subvert offline education, and offline education will not die out. The two are complementary and eventually merge with each other. In the process of integration, the underlying technology, business models, customer acquisition methods, and even teachers’ teaching methods in the education industry have undergone tremendous changes under the influence of the Internet. Among them, the impact on teachers is particularly obvious.

02 Online education is changing the future of the teacher profession

Some people think that compared with traditional education, online education makes students and teachers lack interaction, unable to build relationships, and difficult to supervise. Traditional teachers’ teaching methods are not limited to simple oral presentations. Activities, small competitions, etc. can greatly improve students’ verbal expression ability and brain-handling ability. At the same time, we can intuitively feel that students and learningThere is also a lack of interaction between students. Facing such problems, teachers of online education have begun to make new explorations on business competence and industry standards.

With the rapid development of online education, the news of “high price” online teachers has also come into our field of vision. While raising teachers’ professional income, they also encountered some new difficulties. A senior online education teacher said: “A one-hour course usually takes 30 hours to prepare a lesson. Online classes are under great pressure. It is necessary to keep dry goods to maintain the wonderful level of the class, and students who are not motivated are willing to listen.”

Online teaching is very different from traditional classroom teaching and offline tutoring and training institutions. Classes on the Internet platform are very focused, and students or the public have the right to evaluate. It is easy to magnify the characteristics of teachers, whether it is advantages or disadvantages. So this puts very high demands on the teaching ability of online teachers. The traditional copybook teaching method has no market in the environment of Internet teaching.

Compared to teachers of online education, practical and responsible teaching methods and education methods are far from meeting the industry’s requirements for teachers. In addition to professional literacy, teachers in the online education industry also need to have the ability to select and use network resources, the ability to create teaching environments, the ability to learn online tutoring, and the ability to organize students to coordinate learning. At the same time, strict requirements have been put forward for tone of speech, image habits, teaching rhythm, course content, and even “pause” and “emotional control”.

The online education that screams is changing the future of the teacher profession.

03 Behind the “forced” online business, the thirst for norms of online education

Affected by the new crown virus, at the same time responding to the call of “non-stop classes”. The Ministry of Education encourages teachers and students to “go to school at home” online, and tens of thousands of online teachers take on the responsibility of teaching primary and middle school students nationwide. Many offline institutions and schools have moved their positions online, and teachers have been “forced” to operate online.

Facing the sudden “encounter” of the virus, I believe that most of the offline institutions and public institutions are new to online education. Lack of experience can not start, I do not know how to start the “first lesson” of online education, there are many problems in the course explanation, technical operation, course display. On the other hand, a large number of user demands are pouring into the online education industry, and the courses and faculty levels of online education institutions are uneven, which will inevitably affect the healthy development of the entire industry.

Transitional schools and institutions urgently need a standard guide. Such reference manuals are usually shared internally as secrets of major institutions. Even if some vague sources are found on the Internet, the authenticity and reference of its content will be questioned.

Chen Weihao, a partner of Dasong Capital, once said in an interview: “If it comes to online education, or the 1-to-1 track, the key point of development is actually to do a good job of teaching.It is the most important to improve the training of teachers and improve the technical means to make education more effective. Why do head companies have an advantage?

First, the head companies can use the most resources to do a good job of teaching and research. Teaching and research requires a large team to do, and the resources and energy required are far from what some small companies can afford. This is also One of the scale effects mentioned earlier.

Second, the technical team of the head company can really make the consumer service experience very good. Let me give an example, to ensure that the class is not disconnected from 45 minutes to an hour, many companies are not sure. So it contains a lot of technical details, including thousands of people based on data. Only the head companies are willing to spend a lot of time doing this, so that their educational effect will be better. .

The same is true for teacher training. If I have only twenty or thirty teachers, it is certainly good for training. Once I expand to hundreds of teachers, will I manage them? Only after the system is established, a very powerful teacher management team will be formed to manage thousands of teachers, so that the accumulation of experience can help my teacher training to achieve the best. Whether the winner-take-all will occur in this industry, I don’t know, but I think the gap between the head companies and the companies behind them will certainly widen. “

Recently, the head of education has for the first time published its own teaching team construction methodology-“Online Teacher Behavior Standard Standards and Teaching Skills Reference Guide”, the entire content is based on the head of intelligent learning platform of massive teacher teaching data and student learning data, Combining scientific theory, data analysis, teacher experience and other multiple factors. It has helped the “forced” online businesses and schools.

Zhang Yi, founder and CEO of Head Education, said, “Building a teaching team with outstanding professional literacy and high teaching standards is an important part of improving the comprehensive ability of the head. Standardized and systematic teaching standards can effectively help online teachers. Further standardize behaviors and habits, and improve the professional ethics and professional ethics of online teachers. We also hope that the entire industry can work together, attach importance to teacher training and improve the quality of courses, and jointly create a healthy and ecological environment for online education. “

In the current special period, this is the beginning of a good practice of social responsibility. We have reason to believe that more online education head institutions will participate in the discussion and formulation of online teacher behavior standards. , It will also provide a broader and clearer path for many institutions and schools in transition.

Conclusion

At the same time as the impact of the epidemic on online education institutions, we should also see that more and more standardized requirements will promote the positive development of the entire industry. With stricter policies, each track will be gradually standardized and systemized. The education industry will also enter the era of fast-running compliance operation under the balance of “market regulation” and “policy control.”

Long-term development on the track, intensive cultivationFine work, cultivation of internal skills is the main trend. External high-quality resources can promote the positive development of education companies, but user recognition is the core guarantee for sustainable development. Technological changes have led to the systematization and institutionalization of the education industry.In addition to the expansion of the volume, it has also brought better services and effects, as well as the regularization of company operations. In turn, it has brought more peace of mind to consumers. And safety. Teaching methods that are more interactive and better able to meet individual needs have also become the primary requirement for users to choose online education.

For the future, we are optimistic about online education. After all, no winter is insurmountable, and spring is coming.