How to do education: online school is not only video

The intermediary transaction SEO diagnoses Taobao guest stationmaster buys the Cloud host technology Hall

Article | CBN journalist 邹曈 intern journalist Song Jing

Three years ago, Voyayary, founder of the network, felt that online education should not be just a video on demand, and that his ideal online education should be a low-cost way to achieve an offline education and training experience, while doing more.

The opportunity he sees is to provide targeted users with more cost-effective online solutions than traditional language training institutions. If the trainees do not want to pay thousands of yuan for the online training institutions such as New Oriental, the net will provide hundreds of Yuan course.

Unlike the usual online training course, the courseware is not a simple video, but it includes the teacher, the teacher, the teaching assistant, the teacher, the monitor, the Civic Committee, the study Committee and the same table. These better experiences have made a good growth in the online language training business of the Web.

According to the figures provided by the network, the company's overall revenue in 2012 billion, the net business accounted for the total network of 40%, the other two major business platform and advertising revenue accounted for 40% and 20%. Among them, net pay user 1.5 million, nearly two years of income growth rate of about 150%. Voyayary said that the network currently has 500 full-time staff and nearly 2000 part-time staff, is currently in the C round of financing, before the total financing amount of more than 100 million yuan.

In 2001, "Arnold", an English department at Shanghai Polytechnic University, established a forum for Voyayary to meet the needs of some users to learn foreign languages and exchange foreign language learning materials online. Although the copyright issue, but it is a lot of free information to the forum has become more and more popular. Even now, the study data outside of the online courseware is not charged to the user (some particularly good learning materials need virtual currency Shanghai yuan, users in the site to complete the exercise, answer or invite others to download and other methods can be obtained).

Prior to the establishment of an online business in 2009, the company relied on the traditional advertising model, based on traffic and the language training institutions of those entities talk about advertising price.

"At that time, advertising was the only way we could survive," he said. We are not too worried about advertising, are people to find us to advertise. At that time the specialized website of education is very few, but you have that traffic, can only do that point advertisement, so want to big is very difficult. "said Choi Rui to the first financial weekly." At the same time, the various costs incurred in the development of the company's own network, such as the 2009 office of the Zhangjiang, moved from the residential community to the house, and the rent rose from 10,000 a month to 100,000-allowing him to start thinking about the online business for individual fees.

Xu, vice president of the Chinese schools, was also the Japanese version of the forum moderator, and Volt is the old knowledge. 2007, Fu persuaded at that time also in Tcl mainly do Japan and Korea Market intelligence collection and analysis work Xu. From entering the network to 2009 to take over the company's business, Xu is responsible for advertising sales work.

In the net, Flash courseware is a very good embodiment of the core of the school curriculum characteristics. The special thing is that it does not put the content of the teacher's lectures into the internet, but for the teaching experience of reprocessing.

There are several small professional studios in the campus office. The staff will take the teacher's lecture recording to reduce the noise and check the pronunciation and articulation errors, and then make Flash.

In the courseware, the teacher lectures only accounted for 1/3 of the other 2/3 is interactive and testing, it includes the interaction between students and teachers to answer comments. The current use of the network is the second part of the 2010 research, it added a relaxed illustrations and cartoon image, but also joined the practice, in the course of the class can do review, enhanced interactive effect, students can use the mouse to copy on the courseware. The third substitute will be put into use this April, and it will have the ability to eject the human mouth type video.

In the courseware, the students can not see the teacher's appearance, only to hear the teacher's voice. The idea is that the CEO and founder of Voyayary in want to open an online business, the results of the market survey also confirms this view: The students for the teacher looks and movements do not care, for the teacher sounds very concerned about.

Flash also solves the cost problem. Take a 40-minute courseware For example, if the video is made of 200M, and audio Flash is only 30M. It saves bandwidth and resources, and can also accommodate the speed of different parts of the country.

In addition to the courseware, the network thought of many ways to simulate the experience of the entity classroom, increase user stickiness. There will be a opening ceremony before the start of the course, and you can know the sex, learning goals, current level, etc. of your classmates. If you want to have a deskmate, you can even write the requirements of your deskmate, if the course exists to meet the requirements of the trainees, the system will automatically match.

"We are very concerned about the rate of renewal (the second class rate) and the escape rate, because, like the fitness, many times the students buy the course, and learn one or two times will not come." We let them form a natural social relationship on the Internet, urging each other to reduce the proportion of the halfway. Xu, vice president of the schools business, told the first financial weekly.

In these virtual classes, the network set up a class teacher and teaching assistants such a realistic role. Most of the class teachers are held by the staff, they are responsible for more than 10 classes, the main task is to urge students to learn. The class teacher will set up review posts in the classroom, and will open QQ group and students to communicate and answer questions. The role of the TA is similar, but the team is mainly a part-time person.

More than half of the part-time team of 2000 people in the network are serving online schools, including college teachers, students with excellent English scores, and users of deep net friends and so on. Their part-time role also includes teachers, teaching assistants, class teachers and so on.

Although there are more than thousands of part-time team, but assigned to each course also only 4 to 5 teaching assistants, with the management of the background system, the basic can be smooth operation.

The net will be a one-time settlement or billing and other forms of part-time teachers to settle, for teaching assistants and other volunteer part-time users, is to pay wages in the way of learning currency. The learning currency is the virtual currency used by users to redeem courses after they have paid to recharge.

In the web-based course of the professor, the teacher in the lecture became less important. They come from a team of full-time teachers (about 20 to 30 people), part-time teachers and teachers from partners. The teachers ' team will develop some experimental courses, and other types of teachers are fully determined according to the market demand.

In order to control the level of the part-time teacher, the net formed an audit system-part-time intention of the teacher came to the net first to the mixed community, the user can be recognized after the approval to apply for certification, the last and the net cooperation. There are many ways to collaborate, including writing books and teaching. Just like in Taobao can register, you just start no need to open a shop, and then you open a shop, you need certification, and then make money, then the level of a little bit higher. "said Choi Rui.

Such a large part-time team also gives the network the ability to extend language training courses to more detailed areas in the short term. In addition to English, Japanese and Korean, the network also covers more than 10 other languages, a total of more than 200 courses.

Xu and Choi Rui like foreign languages and love technology. Fu Cai Rui is a foreign language department, but very much like technology, but also self-study of the PHP programming. The background of the start-up team has made the Web a great focus on technology and learning laziness. Online schools, more than 200 formal staff, of which the technical team accounted for more than half, and even a special number of people responsible for collecting the latest foreign Internet dynamics and technical reports to the Fu Choi Rui.

In the process of the transformation from BBS, Fu Choi Rui has been trying to integrate the latest trend, the Hu tribe is the SNS of the Hu, it is earlier than happy Net has. In the 2007, with the advent of Twitter, the network also released a "broken" reading.

After the formation of large-scale users and courseware number, the network attempts to use technology to explore the accumulated data to find more requirements, improve the user experience. For example, in the course setting, the common practice is to gather a group of users and do a questionnaire survey, so in addition to the regular 46, business English, there will be some watching American drama learning English, gourmet Japanese courses.

The data analysis team exists in various departments of the company, and the team provides data support for various decisions made by the firm. They can even directly analyze the user's data, through the form of text messages or phone calls to their target customers to do a survey.

In addition to improving the core competitiveness, Choi Rui has been trying to extend its business to the country. Online education itself is very suitable for areas of uneven educational resources, after the market saturation of large cities, sinking to other cities is inevitable.

The first time the price of the net for schools has been to infiltrate the national plan. "At that time, the future will certainly go to the three or four-line city, as long as they can afford to use broadband, can bear a monthly rent of 60 yuan, as long as he can afford 60 yuan, it means that every day to afford 2 yuan." "he said.

The popularity of mobile devices in recent years has brought an unexpected breakthrough to Choi Rui. Last year, on the three platforms of iOS, Android and WP8, the network launched a total of about 60 of non-overlapping apps, generating 15 million mobile users, while the PC end grew by 5 million users. At present, PC end users are only 20 million.

Voyayary's success with mobile apps is due to the single function of the Web app, where one app may provide only one function. At present, the download volume and the use of a high number of happy Word field, the hearing of the cool, etc. are such products.

"If the app has too many functions, the user will feel tired, too many features app will become very large, download time is very long, users will not be enough, the impulse to learn is very short." "I haven't figured out how to make a profit for the mobile end," says Fu Choi.

For the web, it is still more important to maximize the number of users and the coverage. Whether the PC or mobile end, the main users of the network is concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Jiangsu province, Zhejiang Province, Wuhan City, such as large educational resources-intensive provinces.

"The most important task since we started our business is to develop more users so that new users can reach the Internet more quickly," he said. "said Choi Rui.