How to help offline education and training institutions to transform online?

The year 2020 has had a huge impact on most offline industries. Large-scale education and training institutions have already provided online courses, while more traditional education and training institutions still only have offline teaching mode. The epidemic is severe. For the safety of teachers and students, offline classes are not allowed in various places, which makes the economic situation of offline education institutions, which already have a single channel for obtaining courses, even worse. However, good online live streaming platforms are expensive, and many institutions cannot afford it. This situation is a matter of life and death. The online transformation of the traditional education industry has become an inevitable trend, and how to make the online transformation has made institutions extremely anxious.

The institution for which I provide digital transformation consulting services has also been troubled by this problem recently. I heard an article on Himalaya titled "How offline education institutions can transform online and break through the siege of the epidemic amid the wave of suspension of classes but not learning", which was of great help to me. Today, based on our own understanding of the current situation of offline institutions, we would like to provide ideas and suggestions on what kind of institutions are easy to transform online, how to transform, the key to transformation, and the services that the products can provide to institutions.

1. What kind of institutions are easy to achieve online transformation?

1) Institutions that focus on exam-oriented education and where students have a certain degree of self-control

The biggest advantage of online courses is that knowledge can be conveyed to students more efficiently, avoiding the impact of offline equipment on teaching quality, such as microphones, large screens, and distance from the blackboard. Educational institutions that focus on examinations usually have a complete and more systematic knowledge system and a more complete teaching syllabus. Online live broadcast is very convenient for real-time Q&A, reviewing lessons after class, and transferring materials. It is very easy to implement online teaching and is also suitable for online teaching.

However, educational institutions that focus on children, especially those aged 3 to 5, have weaker self-control. In offline classes, if the teaching content is a little boring, students will not concentrate. Teachers need to spend a lot of effort to add more interactive games to attract children, and constantly come up with more creative and attractive forms of interaction based on the children's performance. During the growth period of young children, more physical contact and real-life experience are needed for teaching. Interactive games between young children are very important for their habit formation and social learning. Moving online is a huge challenge for both preschool teachers and preschool teaching models.

2) Institutions with a large number of creative, inspiring and adaptable teachers

Online live teaching is a big challenge for most teachers. When switching from offline to online learning, whether students are drowsy, often skipping classes, or maintaining their enthusiasm for learning, the teacher’s ability to “catch students” becomes very important.

3) Institutions with online operation capabilities and experience

Relying on the weather and the flow of people in the area, operations have always been the shortcoming of offline institutions. There are many ways suitable for online operations. Most institutions usually lack awareness of online operations. They need a lot of program research and consume a lot of manpower and material resources to cram for online operations. However, offline courses are moved online in a short period of time, and the online teaching experience is insufficient, and the teaching quality is difficult to guarantee. Once customers are lost, they will turn to other institutions with rich online education experience, which will be a major loss for the institution. How to respond quickly to crises, guide students and parents, and ensure retention; how to improve online interactions and increase student stickiness are all keys to the successful online operations of educational institutions.

4) Institutions with strong financial resources

Well-funded institutions are able to develop apps and online courses more quickly, and access live streaming platforms that are more suitable for teaching needs; well-funded institutions have more high-quality teachers, operations teams, and sales staff; well-funded institutions are able to develop a transformed teaching outline suitable for their own institutions based on the characteristics of online teaching more quickly; well-funded institutions can place more online channel advertisements to easily increase their visibility and influence; when well-funded institutions are transforming, the customer service team promptly appeases parents and patiently guides them, reducing the chance of refunds. For institutions with weak profitability, moving online is a high-risk proposition.

5) Institutions with their own teaching characteristics

Traditional institutions move online, just like businesses open online stores. Before online shopping became popular, offline store competitors were similar businesses on the same street; after online shopping became popular, competitors became countless businesses across the country or even the world. The biggest problem that educational institutions will face when moving online is that the giants of educational institutions control the majority of student resources. Due to the impact of the epidemic, school teachers have also participated in the competition. It is difficult to win by comparing professional or online accumulation. If they have their own teaching characteristics, it will become a breakthrough.

2. How can traditional institutions achieve online transformation?

1. Institutional perspective

The course content is differentiated from that of many institutions, and the differences between online and offline teaching are clearly defined. The online teaching process includes: online course preparation, pre-class warm-up, student viewing, student interaction, online-specific emergency handling, storage of screen recordings, and follow-up tutoring. The form of online interaction is somewhat different from that of offline interaction, and there is little that can be utilized based on past accumulation, but online interaction has its own advantages. For example, the New Oriental Cloud Classroom live broadcast platform has dice, quick answer, one-click medal distribution, one-click grouping, raising hands and microphone ban.

After the transformation, what the institutions are most worried about is customer refunds, but early customers are still in a wait-and-see period and will not get refunds immediately. During this period, the institution strengthened its contact with parents and proactively provided learning plans for students when offline classes were suspended to reassure parents. During online classes, value-added services can be provided to students through WeChat activity tools, public account activities, etc., such as free learning materials and free after-class consultation, to enhance the sense of value of the course, thereby establishing a good teacher-student interaction relationship and reducing refunds.

Provide more and more diverse teaching content. In the early stages of transformation, it is not necessary to aim to sell courses. Maintaining better contact with students is the key to the next step of development. In addition to live teaching content and follow-up tutoring, institutions can also publish recorded classes, public welfare lectures, and strengthen after-school tutoring. This requires institutions to quickly and extensively search for live broadcast tools and select live broadcast platforms suitable for their courses; reorganize the online teaching system according to their own course system and the characteristics of online courses, and prepare new courseware; change the way homework is submitted, and select online tools that are easy for teachers to track.

2. Product perspective

We can help organizations build brand official websites. Beautiful official websites make people feel more reliable among Internet information. Create mini-programs for homework publishing, clocking in, homework submission, etc. to improve communication and tracking efficiency. Help institutions prepare online marketing tools and design online marketing activities, such as sharing tuition reductions, lucky draws, etc. We build online school systems for institutions, move offline learning scenarios online, and create online learning platforms. From enrollment and customer acquisition, teaching assignments, classroom learning, teacher-student interaction, classmate interaction, grade rankings, payment and refunds, academic tracking, report analysis, etc., we break through the limitations of time and space and even create a closed loop of teaching and learning that is better than offline.

Most live broadcast products have good stability, support multiple people online, no lag, and clear images, which can meet the basic teaching needs of most institutions. When designing the product, the complete teaching process should also be considered: attendance before class, answering questions during class, students raising their hands to ask questions, and grading of homework after class, so that the process can be tracked and the results can be evaluated. For the early childhood stage, more organizational and game tools to mobilize learning enthusiasm and concentration will be an excellent help for institutional teachers.

Conclusion

Under the epidemic, the transformation of offline institutions to online is an important way to break the deadlock, and maintaining student stickiness is a key goal for the survival and development of institutions.

Some organizations believe that the epidemic is temporary and that they can simply find temporary online alternatives. However, institutions should still be alert. The outbreak of SARS caused e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com to rise overnight, and some offline stores also set up their own online shopping platforms. After SARS ended, these stores immediately resumed pure offline operations.

As online shopping platforms become increasingly standardized and people pursue more convenient shopping methods, online shopping has had a dramatic impact on offline stores, and online shopping has become the norm for most young people. Even without a catalyst like SARS, online shopping would have become widely popular along with human development, squeezing most offline stores out of the market. The live streaming platform classin was developed by leveraging its technological accumulation during the epidemic in early 2020. It rose overnight, just like Taobao and JD.com back then.

Operation is a common shortcoming of offline institutions. Online education is the trend of the future. Educational institutions pay attention to opportunities and challenges during the epidemic and complete the transformation. After the epidemic is over, online education can also serve as an independent or auxiliary offline service chain, providing students with diverse choices and providing more possibilities for institutions to obtain courses and make profits.

Author:Wonder

Source: Wonder