Dragon Gate Education Huang Xiangwei: Offline Institutions Face Challenges, Online Education Products And Services To Be Verified

Since the spread of pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus infection, educational industry enterprises have invested in fighting against the epidemic and rush to the epidemic areas. With the Ministry of education notifying the spring study to postpone the opening of the school, how to truly suspend classes and not stop learning has become an important topic in the education industry.

"These days, we are working day and night, expanding network resources and optimizing systems. Until yesterday, they were all in a hurry. Until now, I finally feel a little bit sureness. " In February 4th, Huang Xiangwei, chairman and CEO of Dragon Gate education, said in an interview with the twenty-first Century business reporter.

Dragon Gate education is the operator of "four middle schools in Beijing". As early as the SARS epidemic in 2003, Beijing's fourth middle school had opened the learning platform free of charge, allowing students to study through the online classroom. During the influenza a H1N1 influenza epidemic in 2009, this institution was the only network learning platform designated by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission for H1N1 isolation.

Facing the new crown epidemic situation

Twenty-first Century: the business of dragon gate can be traced back to 2000, after the SARS epidemic.

Huang Xiangwei: SARS in 2003, influenza a H1N1 in 2009 and haze in 2015, we have supported the suspension of classes in Beijing many times. In many small and small suspension classes, we all do as much as possible through the free and open way. Especially during the period of H1N1, many students have to live in isolation. We have helped students keep up with the normal teaching progress of schools through synchronous teaching. In those days, they were also affirmed by the Xicheng District Education Commission of Beijing.

Twenty-first Century: what is more difficult in 10 days?

Huang Xiangwei: encountered many difficulties in this process. For example, our current teaching is not only to support students learning at home, but also to support the use of Internet technology and cloud platform teaching. Students learn through our courses, teachers conduct online guidance and answer questions, and schools can also use our live broadcast platform to teach.

We configure network resources through service schools and students. In the past, the degree of educational informationization in schools was different, and it was not used normalization. Now all the schools in the country have delayed the beginning of their studies. At the same time, a large number of schools and students have entered the platform. These two days have reached "supernormal", and the number of concurrency (reporter note: concurrent number, which means the number of connections to the server site at the same time) has increased rapidly. So far, it has exceeded 10 times that of last year.

During the Spring Festival, all units did not start work, coupled with the recent new crown outbreak, it is a great challenge to buy server hosting only to IDC room. Fortunately, we have been supported by many partners. For example, we have joined hands with Baidu to face junior high school and senior high school grades in some regional schools, providing free online smart live teaching platform "cloud classroom" service. Baidu will provide technical support and cloud computing resources for Beijing NO.4 middle school, guarantee the stability and fluency of audio and video, and make the "cloud classroom" teaching successfully completed.

Twenty-first Century: we are concerned that our free live broadcast platform is mainly for grade 3 and grade 3. Why do we make such a choice?

Huang Xiangwei: We used to be nearly 3 million students serving 3000 schools. The number of students serving today has surged to tens of millions. There is no real peak of study since many schools started school in February 10th, as I have a hall of 10 thousand people, and now suddenly pour into millions of viewers.

Lack of servers, we can look for it; bandwidth shortage, we can think of ways to expand; but our service staff, teachers, teaching and research staff is limited. So we decided to slow down the growth of the number of service schools, and focus on education support for students in grade 3 and grade 3. Now is an important moment in their lives.

Twenty-first Century: there are many teachers in offline training institutions. Can this resource be mobilized to supplement online education during the epidemic period?

Huang Xiangwei: the scene of online and offline teaching is completely different. Directly teaching offline teachers to online teaching is likely to be very bad. It is difficult for them to be familiar with online teaching tools in a short time, to adapt themselves to interact with students online, to mobilize their learning enthusiasm.

An examination of everyone's "epidemic"

Twenty-first Century: what impact will the new crown epidemic bring on the entire education industry?

Huang Xiangwei: it is a special test for all people, including educational practitioners, students and parents, teachers and principals, and leaders in charge of education. Everyone has rediscovered the value of online education.

We all do not want to have an epidemic, but its emergence has brought new opportunities for development of the entire online education industry, and even will create a new era.

Twenty-first Century: there is a view that offline training is forced to suspend at this stage, and has become the verifying moment of pure online education products and services.

Huang Xiangwei: I agree with you very much. In the past, the proportion of online education in the whole education industry was still very small. Now all the students are studying on the Internet in this special period. Whether the teaching product curriculum resources can keep up with, how to guarantee the teaching service and the learning effect is the test that all teaching institutions and educational practitioners need to face.

Twenty-first Century: persistent epidemics also highlight some problems.

Huang Xiangwei: after the arrival of the epidemic, many problems were exposed. For example, whether the educational enterprise has enough and complete teaching service system, including the curriculum resources, teaching platform, teacher training and so on to serve the scene of online teaching; the state has already invested a lot in educational informatization; when the epidemic comes, schools have also chosen to use the Internet to achieve "stop classes and stop learning". In this process, we have seen the shortage of teaching resources in some areas and the insufficiency of teachers' informationalized teaching ability.

We even see that some areas are still teaching through television. This way is not interactive, teaching effect can not be verified, students' learning effect will not be good, revealing that we still need to improve the design of emergency response mechanism.

Twenty-first Century: "cash flow" is an important topic at this time. Cash pressure on offline training institutions and online education start-ups?

Huang Xiangwei: it's good for us at this stage. I wrote an internal letter to my colleagues. "We will carry it together and spring will come."

Cash flow is very important to all enterprises, especially in startups. From the perspective of the whole education industry, everyone is fighting the epidemic together, and many enterprises have to face the problem of insufficient cash reserves.

Offline educational institutions are facing great challenges. After classes are closed, after-school tutoring classes are faced with the problem of refund. They can not recruit students, they can not attend classes and have to refund at the same time. The challenge is very severe. Online education is relatively good, service has not been terminated, and many new students have moved to online.

Twenty-first Century: from the perspective of internal organization and operation, what are the suggestions for colleagues?

Huang Xiangwei: safety and health is the first priority, which directly determines the safety of the organization. In addition, the most important thing is to calculate how long the cash in pocket can support, second is to ensure a strong sense of morale in a very special period, and the third is to enhance the ability of telecommuting.

Any difficulties are brewing new opportunities, the current environment has forced the internal organization of enterprises. Fortunately, we are used to working together, and there is no delay in what we should do.