At the beginning of this year, a pandemic disrupted the normal educational order, and schools across the country delayed the start of classes. Students generally switched to online courses, achieving “no suspension of learning despite class suspension” during the pandemic. Faced with the enormous demand for online learning, schools and enterprises have joined hands to explore, and internet-based online education companies have entered the field, leading to explosive growth in the industry. In the later stages of the pandemic, online education companies are actively exploring and trying to meet new needs and challenges.
On August 26th, at the “2020 New Economy Conference” held in Chengdu, senior executives from Zuoyebang, VIPKID, and Moremom gathered to share their insights on the theme of “Online Education During the Pandemic.” They deeply analyzed the new changes and developments brought to online education by emerging technologies.
Teaching Products and Teachers are Core to the Platform’s Healthy Development
During the pandemic, online education and training institutions have seen a surge in users. However, in the face of this sudden influx, the guests unanimously agreed that products and teachers are the two core elements for maintaining the platform’s healthy development.
“The pandemic has accelerated user awareness and acceptance of online education, bringing it to more people,” said Jiayao Wang , Vice President of Public Relations at Zuoyebang. He believes that the essence of online education remains unchanged: it is still about doing a good job in education, refining products, and maintaining the original intention of education to ultimately gain users’ trust.
Na Yao, founder and CEO of Moremom, which focuses on customized education for children aged 0-6, also stated that the greatest opportunity and challenge for the education industry in the post-pandemic era is to think based on the essence of education and to launch educational products truly aimed at the future. Firmly grasping the two core elements of teachers and educational research, and applying them in different scenarios to customize education for each child, is what truly constitutes education for the future.
Yongpeng Diao , Director of Teaching and Tutoring at VIPKID’s Dami Online School, believes that consistently adhering to high quality and high standards for products and services will lead to better results. In the future, companies will continue to attract more users through good products and learning outcomes on one hand, and on the other hand, achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement in internal management with the help of technological empowerment.
AI Empowered Technological Innovation is the Trend in Online Education
Speaking on the impact of new technologies on the industry, Jiayao Wang stated that the comprehensive application of advanced technologies such as search engines, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and big data can help students improve their learning efficiency without the guidance of teachers or parents, thereby promoting educational equity.
Yongpeng Diao shared the same view, stating that the core competitiveness in the “new education” era is technological innovation. As the education industry has achieved informatization, internetization, and mobilization, AI integration has also become an inevitable trend. Currently, AI is deeply integrated into various aspects of education, forming a chain-like application scenario that truly realizes the concept of “teaching according to students’ abilities.”
Na Yao believes that the development of internet technology is heading in two directions: one is extreme AI and intelligentization of internet products, which makes human interactions more distant; the other is the scenarization of internet products, significantly enhancing human emotional interactions. “Personally, I prefer to develop internet products that enhance human emotional interactions,” she said.