Education is a track that never goes out of style. As long as there is an opportunity, it will jump up.
The industry says that 2016 is the first year of online education. Although many companies and institutions have been working silently for a long time, it was this year that they really took to the battlefield. K12 is a particularly important and extremely special field in online education. It refers to the 12-year basic education stage from elementary school to high school. This stage covers a long time, has a large number of users and is a rigid demand, and the development imagination is very rich.
On the other hand, favorable policies (increased investment in education, second-child policy) and the development of Internet technologies (big data, AI) make K12 education have too many stories to tell. In 2016, the number of K12 students nationwide exceeded 180 million, and this number will gradually increase, and the parents of the younger generation are more and more able to buy and accept innovation.
As a result, after the Internet finally invaded the traditional education industry, which could no longer be traditional, K12 became the most intensive track for startups, and various business models were continuously explored. From online tutoring, to taking pictures and searching for questions, to STEAM education, it has triggered waves of small climaxes.
However, learning is an anti-human thing.
Especially the special group of minors. Different from the prosperity of cultural entertainment and consumer life, the education industry, especially K12, has stumbled on this track, because K12 is actually a kind of "just needed by (parents)".
So, what kind of company does this market need? Or which companies deserve our attention?
1. With strong capital, talents gather, so product quality is high, so as to establish brand trust endorsement;
2. Those who are good at using the Internet to promote changes in teaching methods (content presentation methods, teachers' teaching methods, and students' learning methods) are the real value of online education;
3. Returning to the essence of education, paying more attention to content, and being able to realize paid monetization through high-quality content. Tools can be traffic portals, but content is a good business for the education industry to realize;
Education is a huge piece of fat, and every player wants a piece of it. So, according to the above three standards, what are the current ways of playing for companies that have "run out"?
Online tutoring mode: the closest to realization
Cut into the classroom teaching link, mainly content products. Online tutoring is actually another kind of classroom for students. It is a model that is closest to the content and the nature of education, and it is also the easiest model to realize. After all, through the teaching of courses, students can actually gain something. ".
Judging from the teaching content itself, English and mathematics are already saturated. The former has New Oriental and the latter has Onion Mathematics, leaving no room for entrepreneurship for latecomers. Chinese and various other sub-subjects are subjects that basically no one does it. In this field, other people eat, and you can only eat leftovers.
Therefore, the competition in this field actually focuses on the teaching mode and teaching form. At present, there are four main types: recorded classes, live broadcasts, 1-on-1 and dual-teacher classes.
The marginal cost of recording lessons is low but lacks incentives and interaction. The quality of live broadcast teachers is high but lacks personalization. One-to-one personalization is good but the price is very expensive and the quality of teachers is average. The dual-teacher classroom that combines online and offline solves this problem relatively well, because it combines the advantages of famous teachers in large courses and personalized tutoring, and the effect is very good.
In this mode, the first unicorn in the K12 field—ape tutoring with pure Internet online gameplay has emerged.
Ape tutoring, which is in the limelight, relies on brother software (Little Ape Search Question and Ape Question Library) to attract traffic, and has now become a new unicorn. There are three types of live courses: systematic classes, special courses and one-to-one live courses. The courses provided include primary schools. English, Mathematical Olympiad and all subjects of junior high school and high school. Yuanfudao achieved a revenue of over 100 million yuan (120 million yuan) in 2016, and the cost of acquiring customers is low. Through the low customer unit price model, it has obtained large-scale admission tickets.
On the one hand, there are a steady stream of latecomers such as Head One-to-One, Haifeng Education, and 100 Education, and on the other hand, the two giants in the education industry are eyeing the two giants in the education industry - New Oriental Online and Hao, a subsidiary of New Oriental. The Xueersi system of the future. New Oriental Online is a "late entrant" in the K12 field. In order to avoid relatively strong competitors in first- and second-tier cities, the overall development will adopt the strategy of "surrounding cities from rural areas", focusing on third- and fourth-tier cities.
Tool products: scene entrance with maximum traffic
Of course, the content only constitutes the input part of the entire learning process. Whether students have truly mastered the knowledge still needs to be consolidated and tested by practice. Only by opening up this closed loop can the system truly help students complete their learning tasks.
Therefore, there are two types of products after class: question bank products for exams, and Q&A products for homework.
Question bank products have been facing two problems: 1. Do students have time to use mobile phones? 2. Learning is against human nature. Will any students be willing to take the initiative to write questions? Under the current background of China's exam-oriented education, this approach is obviously feasible. Therefore, we see that there are question banks for K12 such as ape question bank, homework together, and practice every day, but their respective entry points are not very good. In the same way, some start with the capacity and structural system of the question bank, and some start with the students' experience to do self-adaptation, helping students to master the knowledge step by step. Players in this field are playing their own way.
Different from the question bank software, the story of the question answering software is not only sexy, but also competitive. There are about 3 ways to play Q&A:
Among the Q&A products, the best product at present is the photo search question, because the traffic is the largest. Taking photos and searching for questions as the scene, the photos taken by students are converted into questions through image recognition technology, and then the answers are searched, users are accumulated, and a certain active community is formed, and then commercialized. This is a typical 2C gameplay.
Represented by the homework box of learning and thinking, it provides school teachers with solutions for marking and answering homework questions. This 2B model is very popular, but because it stays at the tool level, it is difficult to scale.
The third is the C2C platform game, which is a platform for teachers and students to match. This model has been popular in the past two years, but now it has died down. In 2015, the pocket teacher jointly funded by Xueda Education and Qihoo 360 is still struggling to explore.
The traffic entrance may be the most competitive and ugly place in K12 online education. Recently, the mutual antagonism between Baidu Homeworkbang and Xiaoyuansouti has been fierce , which has brought fire to New Oriental's Youda, Xuebajun , Xuebao, Afanti and other photo search software.
Sogou WeChat popularity of Baidu Homework Help and Xiaoyuan Souti in the past month
STEAM education: still do not understand
Steam Education is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, humanities, and mathematics. Different from the traditional single-subject education method that emphasizes book knowledge, it is an important new branch of quality education in addition to hobbies. There are many kinds of courses, and the market mainly focuses on robot education, natural science, and children's programming education.
Steam education's ability to cultivate children's innovation, independent thinking, hands-on, and effective communication has attracted many parents and schools to pay for it, and the Steam education fever has been set off in China.
At present, the top companies in the steam education income ranking are: Lebo Lebo for robot education, Yulewan for popular science education, Dela College, etc., and Coding Cat for programming; product providers Lego China, Makeblock, Bang Bang, etc. Bao puzzle and so on.
Image credit: Pencil Road
This field is the most peculiar. It seems to have a bright future, but it is not understood. Students don’t understand, parents don’t understand, and capital doesn’t understand. The biggest confusion for everyone is: Will STEAM education popular in the United States work in China, or how long will it take to tell a good business story? Is robotics, programming, AI, VR and other advanced maker education feasible for K12 children?
After the frequent entry of entrepreneurs and the intensive bombardment of capital, a good path may be found.
Conclusion:
The online education model before 2016 was more based on the Internet as a tool, and the original courses, tests and other teaching contents were moved online. This year's Internet education has obviously taken a big step forward.
It is undeniable that, whether it is because of the recent "public relations war" or the renewed attention of capital, with the maturity of deep learning and artificial intelligence technology, the commercialization model with knowledge payment as the core is clear, and K12 online education is bound to be in the future. Usher in a new round of change and reshuffle.
The core of future online education should be the application of big data and personalized services. Build user portraits through big data, and provide targeted services according to the actual situation of users, so that users can achieve their goals with the most peace of mind and effort.
Online education has not exploded yet, but it is on the way.
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