The death of IT companies in education I

What kind of products does students truly need?

 

On the way back to home, this question kept echoing in my mind. It was the first time for me to participate in such a formal R&D(Research and Development) conference in an Internet enterprise. After much expectation, the remaining day was a bit depressing. This company only mimic the antipated teaching method and tried to make it cope with the prevalent online learning model. It reveals the most embrassing situration among companies who are aiming for the market of educational informationalisation: they master the technology but they do not understand education.

 

Due to my parents’ occupation, there were many oppotunities for me to approach those IT companies in education. It is actually fairly sad to say that many of them were either struggling or closed down, including thoes projects which had been supported by the local government. They were quite perplexed by the cold market reaction.

 

So what are the problems? Firstly, the wrong sales model is lethal. The worst example comes from Sanxueyuan in around 2005. At that moment of time, Sanxueyuan receieved over 400 million yuan of investment while its online learning product have been recommended by the NCET(National Center of Educational Technology). With the support of numerous teachers and professers, its product, or in other words, its platform, have gathered plenty of educational resources covering subjects from primary school to junior colledge. Both of teachers and students can easily buy and download these PowerPoints, videos and documents.

 

From the above statement, the future of Sanxueyuan seems to be splendid. A platform gathering all kinds of multimedia resources while avoiding wasteful duplication of work for teachers. Indeed, the market had this particular requirement while Sanxueyuan gained the insight and captured the chance for sure. Soon afterwards, cards for experience had been given out to a large number of teachers. Without doubt, the reaction was surprising. Teachers were eager to try it out. However, when they found that the account for expericece allowed them to view and store almost all of the resources in their teaching subjects, the problem came. They downloaded the resources needed which can be used offline and that is all. For teachers, they have obetained the maximun value from the website. As a result, after one-time viewing, few users would like to continue paying for the platform since the website can provide no more useful resources for them.

 

The ending seems to be ridiculous. However, it shows us how does a detail destroy the entire product. The common understanding of a company is that “Good products create value” but the final economic value of a product usually comes from the result of cooperation between both R&D and marketing.