From Ideal to Reality: What Do Teachers Need to Do for Online Education Entrepreneurship?
Recently, news reports that teachers' monthly revenue from online teaching does not exceed 5,000 yuan have drawn widespread attention. Undeniably, this is the current reality of online education, but it does not represent its future. With the emergence of online education platforms such as education O2O and live streaming, teachers, as content providers and service deliverers, have become the "resources" pursued by these platforms. For a teacher (or a teacher's studio) to achieve high revenue, promotion by online education platforms is essential. This promotion, in turn, depends on whether the educational services provided by the teacher are high-quality and efficient. Therefore, for teachers to realize their entrepreneurial dreams through online education, two key points must be addressed: (1) high-quality products (content); (2) familiarity with existing online education tools.
The Nature of Education: Product (Content) as Service
Based on current information analysis, online education experienced its explosive year in 2014, and 2015 is expected to be a period of consolidation. The competition among major online education platforms has shifted from strategy and capital to products and content. To put it bluntly, the current competition in online education is a substantive battle. As Huang Jiajia, founder of 51Talk, stated: "In the next three years, we will focus our efforts on products and services, continuously upgrading our self-developed core courses, actively enhancing our technology platform and IT systems, and steadily improving our ability to manage teaching staff."
For teachers to stand out on various education platforms, they must strive for perfection in the teaching services they provide. By continuously refining and optimizing their course products, they can offer students higher-quality content and demonstrate excellent service. Only in this way can they gain recognition from parents and students, and thus have the potential to be strongly recommended by online education platforms. Analyzing teachers who earned over one million yuan in revenue from online education in 2014 reveals a common trait: the uniqueness of their courses. For example, the course "Qiu Ye PPT," which reportedly generated millions in revenue, became synonymous with PPT creation. It is this course quality that commands a high premium and enables teachers to achieve high revenue.
Since education and training is also a very special field, the content generated itself serves as excellent media material. In the current era of mobile internet explosion and the growing prevalence of social media, teachers can fully leverage various social media and self-media platforms to effectively output content, building word-of-mouth among parents and students. This turns these self-media platforms into precise marketing tools for teachers. Besides WeChat public platforms, QQ Spaces, Sina Blogs, Baidu Wenku, and Baidu Zhidao are all excellent content marketing platforms. Teachers should value and integrate the use of these platforms.
Technology and Tools: Enhancing Learning Efficiency
Technology and tools are the genes of online education and its advantage in improving efficiency. After the explosive growth of online education in 2014, it is clear that a teacher (or a teacher's studio) cannot independently develop a set of teaching tools. The current focus for teachers is to skillfully utilize third-party technologies and tools to enhance learning efficiency.
In 2014, I wrote an article titled "The Business Logic Behind Free: Rich Content, Learning Plans as the Core," arguing that the roles of education platforms and teachers shift from knowledge transmission to learning plan development. A survey released at the 2015 "LIFE Education Innovation First Summit" further validated this view. The survey results suggest that teachers will no longer be the embodiment of knowledge but will design learning projects in more creative ways, assist and guide students in personalized learning, and foster a more democratic relationship between teachers and students.
Therefore, the greatest significance of teachers in online education lies in recommending personalized learning tools for students, formulating effective plans for using these tools, and improving learning efficiency through technology and tools, rather than letting students experiment on their own. For example, if a student struggles with physics, the teacher should know which tools can improve their physics learning efficiency. If a course is designed for self-study, the teacher should know which platforms enable students to achieve learning goals through self-study. If a course is primarily face-to-face, the teacher should be clear about which O2O platforms can achieve seamless online-offline integration and which live streaming tools can provide a good course experience.
For teachers to achieve teaching goals and generate revenue through online education platforms, two key points must be firmly grasped: high-quality courses and efficient learning plans.
What are your thoughts on this?
Excerpted from Duozhi.com
Facing the surging wave of online education, how can teachers actively involved in it better position themselves at the forefront of its development and take off? Beyond their own dreams and motivation for action, they also need a suitable platform and technology for support.
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