By Zhang Yuejia

As the COVID-19 epidemic continues and the public remain largely confined to their homes, many courses have moved to online platforms, which has unexpectedly driven the development of online education. At present, many training institutions, including TAL and New Oriental, have shifted offline courses to online platforms. At the same time, almost all online education platforms have launched free courses. The number of online education users has suddenly exploded.

Online education today is similar to e-commerce during the SARS outbreak. The epidemic has forced many people to try online education, and they have seen its value. Based on feedback we have collected from VIPKid, for example, some teachers and parents have found that there is not much difference between online and offline classes, and that the outcomes of online courses are pretty good. For users who have not been exposed to online education before, there is no doubt that they will gain a more in-depth experience during the current epidemic.

Compared with offline education, the advantages of online education lie in convenience and digitalisation. First of all, parents no longer need to spend their time transporting their children. Secondly, with reference to students’ concentration in class and knowledge mastery, online education uses personalised data to teach students according to their ability.

But education itself is not only the learning of knowledge, but also the overall development of students’ morals and values. At present, online education can help children learn more efficiently, but it can’t be said that online education will replace offline education and the two can be complementary to each other.

Although the epidemic has accelerated the development of the online education industry, in the long run, education in general is slow to change. Whether it develops further depends on whether it can bring real improvements to students. It takes time to assess the effectiveness of education, which is different from e-commerce in this regard. Although students are filling online classrooms and online education’s popularity has also increased, the challenge of how to retain students and maintain service capacity remains.

Zhang Yuejia (CEIBS, EMBA2018) is the Co-founder and President of Beijing DaMi Future Technology (VIPKid).