Epidemic Surge Online Education Huge Incremental Market: National Educational Institutions Demand Burst Tencent Education "Emergency Recruitment" 7 Days To Build Air Classroom

Technology war epidemic: the strength of platform economy eight

The new crown pneumonia epidemic is causing changes in the technology sector. Take online education as an example, offline classrooms are "forced" to move online. National educational institutions are coming to demand, online education platforms are overwhelmed, and huge incremental markets have been opened.

It can be seen that this change is a key "training". Technology, traffic, word of mouth, cash flow and so on have all become the criteria for consideration. Under the surging demand, all the giants have entered the war, but who can grasp the opportunity and finally stand on the "C position"?

In January 31st, a volunteer recruitment order appeared in the Tencent internal forum. The recruitment order wrote: with the promotion of the new national epidemic prevention and control measures for coronary pneumonia, the time for enterprises to resume work and school opening time is postponed, and the whole society needs blowout for collaborative office and online education related products. To this end, Tencent education and Tencent meeting team urgently need to recruit a group of volunteers within the company to cope with surging product demand. Among them, the Tencent conference recruited more than 36 volunteers, involving 12 specific posts, while Tencent education recruited over 65 people, involving 13 jobs.

Behind the recruitment order is the overload operation of the relevant product teams. In February 19th, Wang Tao, vice president of Tencent education, told an exclusive interview with the economic report reporters in twenty-first Century. Since January 23rd, Tencent education has been receiving the demand for educational products from all over the country, and the whole team has entered the high pressure working condition and has continued to this day.

"Everyone is already in a 24 hour shift, and some colleagues work more than 16 hours a day," Wang Tao said. But even so, the new demand is still overwhelmed by them, so they have to seek help from inside the company.

The Tencent education brand, released in May last year, has aggregated various educational related resources within Tencent. But during the epidemic, the most important new demand came from the online teaching scene of the official education institutions, which is a field less visited by Tencent education in the past.

Therefore, in this battle against the epidemic, the Tencent is also experiencing a great challenge from the education business. For Wang Tao, "the time is tight and the task is heavy" is the most profound feeling in the past month.

According to the data disclosed by Tencent education, from January 22nd to February 16th, the total length of online classes through Tencent class lasted longer than 38 million hours. As of February 10th, the number of teachers and students using online classroom learning in Tencent during the new crown epidemic increased by nearly 128 times compared with the same period last year.

Online teaching needs surge

In January 23rd, on the same day in the "city of Wuhan", Tencent education received the demand from the Education Bureau of Wuhan.

Affected by the epidemic, the spring primary school in Wuhan has been postponed, but under the request of "suspend classes and not stop learning", after the outbreak of the outbreak, the Education Bureau of Wuhan began to build "air classroom" platform with several enterprises. Tencent education is one of them.

Wang Tao told the twenty-first Century business news reporter that after receiving the needs of Wuhan Education Bureau, the whole team began to act on New Year's Eve. Colleagues in front were responsible for communication and the rear colleagues were responsible for the solution. Finally, through the selection of solutions, technical debugging, design curriculum content and other layers of work, the entire platform is built in just 7 days.

Through cooperation with Wuhan Education Bureau, Tencent education has also felt the "complexity" in this strange field. "In the process of providing solutions and products, we found that the needs of the other sides are very diverse." Wang Tao said, "for example, students in grade three and grade three need the interactive teaching mode with small classes, while students in lower age groups need large class teaching."

Therefore, in the process of building the platform, the Tencent education program is also constantly improving. After completion, the platform has carried out numerous cycles in the "test improvement test".

In February 10th, nearly 900 thousand primary and secondary school students in Wuhan started the online course. Behind them, four platforms, including Tencent education, were doing technical support. But Wang Tao told reporters that Tencent Education Day carried the entire "air classroom" platform 80% user volume, which means that about 730 thousand primary and secondary school students in Wuhan completed their first lesson through Tencent education.

In fact, not just in Wuhan, online education has also become the common demand of educational institutions throughout the country during the epidemic.

Zhao Haitao, director of the information center of the Beijing people's Congress attached to the Central Committee of the people's Congress, started the preparatory work of the online commencement from the second year of the new year (January 26th). He told reporters that because of the relatively large number of students, he decided to prepare several technical solutions at the beginning to cope with the risks that might arise.

When choosing the external cooperation platform, Zhao Haitao has two main considerations, one is nails and the other is Tencent education. Zhao Haitao said, "because this is a nationwide suspension, the demand for online courses will be very large, so the first thing that comes to mind is the big platform, and the performance will be more reliable."

After further assessment, Zhao Haitao decided to use Tencent education as the main program and nail as a backup. He explained to the twenty-first Century economic report reporters that it was mainly because of the need to use the nail to download the client, but not all the students and parents had been fitted with nails, and basically the products of Tencent were available.

After the demand was confirmed, Zhao Haitao took the initiative to contact the Tencent education team during the holidays. Then the two sides began to cooperate. Up to now, more than 7000 students from two schools in the middle school attached to the NPC have completed online learning through the Tencent classroom.

From the national perspective, more than 20 provinces and cities, including Hubei, Jiangsu, Henan, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanghai, etc., and nearly 100 district education bureaus have already launched the Tencent education solution.

Tencent's "family bucket"

Tencent is no stranger to education business. Its earliest layout can be traced back to 2003. At that time, Tencent online, Tencent through its education channel began to provide educational information.

Subsequently, Tencent started from educational information, and extended the relevant information services such as university information base and question bank. In 2012, the Tencent excellent course was launched, which is also the first true educational product of Tencent.

2015 is an important node in the development of Tencent's education business. At that time, the chairman of Tencent's board and CEO Ma Huateng put forward the concept of "Internet +" for the first time in the two sessions of the country. This has also become the main development direction of all related businesses in Tencent. In the same year, Tencent's smart campus, Tencent classroom and other blockbuster products were launched online.

In September 2018, Tencent Inc adjusted its organizational structure and completed an important restructuring of its education business. By rearranging more than 20 educational products originally scattered in 6 business groups, Tencent has constructed a relatively complete educational business layout.

In May of next year, the "Tencent education" brand was officially released. According to the twenty-first Century economic report reporter combing, Tencent education's products include Tencent classroom, teaching and business cooperation, smart campus, intelligent universities, youth artificial intelligence, Tencent English king, Penguin coaching and Tencent ABCmouse, which basically cover all educational scenes from preschool education to adult education.

During the epidemic, Tencent's classroom and smart campus were also the main products of Tencent's online education demand for education and education institutions. But the reporter noted that in Tencent education for the epidemic launched online class "family bucket" solution, in addition to Tencent education products, but also includes enterprise WeChat, Tencent conference, Tencent questionnaire, document, QQ and other business team products.

In this regard, Wang Tao told the twenty-first Century economic report reporter, Tencent internal products are very rich, in addition to Tencent education products are specifically for educational scenes, and many other products, although not specifically for education, but also can be applied in educational scenarios.

From the actual needs of the school, during the period of suspension, students will have educational management needs such as epidemic reporting management, student attendance, teachers' collaborative office and so on. "After the outbreak of the outbreak, the Tencent head office began to coordinate and integrate products that span different BG and jointly provide services to the outside world." Wang Tao said.

Therefore, in the actual application cases of primary and secondary schools in all provinces and cities, besides Tencent education, you can also see the Tencent, PCG, WeChat, PCG (platform and content business group) QQ, TEG (Technology Engineering Group), etc.

Opening huge incremental market

Online teaching is not something new, and the relevant technology and platform have already matured, but the official educational institutions have been very few.

The sudden outbreak made the cautious official education institution "forced to go online". Wang Tao told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that the national online course is actually a process of deep integration of information and education, especially in such a short period of time, so that teachers, students and technology platforms can be adapted to each other.

For last year's Tencent education brand, this is also a key "training" opportunity. After all, the whole industry is competing with each other. Many schools are more than one platform at the same time.

With the traditional advantages, Tencent education has won many product reputation. As a product user, Zhao Haitao told reporters that the biggest advantage of Tencent platform is easy to get started, simple operation, and seamless connection with WeChat QQ, which greatly reduces the use cost of teachers and students.

For example, Tencent education for the epidemic customized Tencent class "extreme version", according to the introduction, this is the Tencent classroom team after 48 hours of continuous work, developed more adapted to the current epidemic version. Teachers only need to register by mobile phone number, and then create a teaching Live Room in 10 seconds. The link between live broadcast can also be shared directly between WeChat and QQ.

In an interview with reporters, Zhao Haitao also pointed out some shortcomings of the Tencent class extreme version, such as relatively few teaching resources, and the need to improve the data analysis function for teaching scenes.

In view of the development of online education platform, Zhao Haitao suggested that "these platforms should set up teaching and research departments, and open up with local teaching and research institutions, so that institutions within the system can realize more about the advantages of online education, thus eliminating some concerns".

The essence of educational informationization is to improve the efficiency of teaching. Through the epidemic, online education has proved that it can replace some offline education links. If the online education can be further integrated with offline education after the end of the epidemic, and truly improve teaching efficiency, instead of increasing the burden on teachers and students, the platform of Tencent education and education will also open a huge incremental market.

In Zhao Haitao's view, online teaching has reached a critical point of outbreak. Through this epidemic, the value of related products has been recognized by the school, and some larger platforms will gain more market opportunities in the future.

As for Tencent, in the process of fighting the epidemic, whether the linkage between products or staff inter departmental reinforcement can feel the resultant force formed within Tencent. This "group army" campaign atmosphere is particularly important for the current Tencent, because it is not only related to the efficiency of fighting the epidemic, but also to the competitiveness of Tencent in the future.