Dedao COO: How to make an online learning app more than providing online experience only

My sharing is mainly coming from explorations of "Dedao" learning app in the past few years. 

Before today, I have learned a lot from my work and also being bombed by a key word “digitalization”, which is about how to integrate corporate training and talent development with new digital technologies, new concepts, and new systems.  

However, I want to share with you something different from "digitalization". What I want to tell you is how to pay attention to those "parts that cannot be digitized."

Part 1 Lifelong learning and community

Case of New Oriental Chef School

You may find my argument is strange, because "Dedao" is a digital Internet mobile app product, and after several years of development, the number of users and technology of "Dedao" has been developing quickly. 

So why should I pay attention to those parts which are neither online nor digital? Because we encountered many things and got some inspirations from them.

Last year, a friend of mine started his business for the second time. Everyone knows that Internet entrepreneurs always think that the Internet can destroy every business and change all traditional industries.

My friend went to take a look. He feels that the education and training industry is particularly good. This industry, like the medical industry, is relatively traditional and relatively backward in terms of digitalization. He said that he could use the spirit and technology of the Internet to transform the education and training industry, and he chose the field of "vocational training". 

So he needed to know more about users, and he was working very hard on it. He went to the back kitchens of many restaurants in Beijing and interviewed chefs who had just started the job of cooking. 

Then he found chef training is a big market, he hopes to know more about these young chefs. Because in the imagination and logic of an Internet person, children from rural areas will face the following two challenges by going to vocational training schools-

One is the high tuition, the second is low efficiency. He wants to know whether there is an opportunity for "standing high to beat competitors" in this field. 

He spent a month to do a lot of interviews, then he said to me in dissapointment: I have interviewed more than 500 chefs, but every chef told me that, for your own good, I as a chef advise you not to do online chef school. Actually I am very satisfied with our school, completely satisfied, 100% satisfied, and my brother is also a cook in our alma mater, the boys in our village are also learning cooking in my school, nobody is dissatisfied, and you do not have any chance. 

I'm very curious on what my friend is talking about and I am asking what school it is. He told me that it was the New Oriental Chef School. 

You may think that the New Oriental Chef School is pretty low-end, and there is not as "high-end" as Tencent University. 

But I am very curious, because I have never seen a school that will be 100% recognized by students, can satisfy all students, and bring the whole village to this school. 

Therefore, we spent a long time on researching on the New Oriental Chef School. Then, I was inspired by the most since I founded "Dedao". I simply say a few facts as follows: 

The first fact is that once a young man attends the New Oriental Chef School, he will be going back to home for holiday in spring festival. As long as he comes back after the first winter vacation, the young man will be followed by a bunch of youth from his village. 

The second fact is that the school system of the New Oriental Chef School is flexible. It is divided into one or two years. When you enroll, the teacher will ask: How many children are there in your family? What is the situation of your parents? Do you live in the town or the countryside? 

Why does the school ask those questions? This is called teaching students according to their aptitude. If one students has a very difficult economic situation, he can go to a one-year intensive training class, work harder, take 10 hours a day, get a job quickly, then solve the financial burden for parents; 

If the student's family financial conditions are acceptable, then he or she can be enrolled in two year program, they will practice the basic skills more solidly. 

If you are in Beijing campus, you can graduate in just half a year, because the cost of living in Beijing is too high, please hurry up and get a job; 

If you are in their old campus, the cost of living is much lower and cheaper, and the students can take one more year. The flexibility of the school system comes from family circumstances. 

The third fact is that regardless of one year or two years, they will be directly assigned to "enterprise classroom" during the final learning stage. 

For example, I have a friend who is the founder of Yunhaiyao restaurant, and this brand cooperates with New Oriental Chef School. The scene level of New Oriental Classroom can be seamlessly connected with Yunhai restaurant. Their back kitchen is exactly the same, whatever temperature or kitchen furnishings. So, these youth will go through the last semester of study and join the working position seamlessly without any adjustment period of time and efforts. 

Hearing this, I am ashamed as an online learning product professional and feel that they have done a great job. 

Then they also did two things later- 

The first thing is that, after graduating from the main campus in Hefei, many students went to work for Yunhaiyao and Haidilao in Beijing. They are actually entering into a large group, because New Oriental graduates are basically the main force for the Chinese catering industry today. 

The second thing is that New Oriental will send school counselors in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and other cities. For example, Beijing's Chaoyang District is an area with a dense catering industry, and Chaoyang District has a dedicated counselor. 

The counselor will visit all graduates’working companies to understand students' satisfaction: how is your company's welfare, does it owe you salary, does it treat you well, whether some of the conditions promised at the time have been resolved for you, and whether there is a need for the school to help you contact your employer? 

They are providing long-term service and follow-up to graduates. 

When a tutor comes to visit, if a graduate says: Teacher, I don’t want to work in Beijing, I am willing to go to Suzhou. 

The teacher said: Okay, don't worry. Tell me the date you want to leave. The teacher called the counselor in Suzhou. When the young chef got off the train in Suzhou, he had already been offered his first job by a senior chef, and he could be hired at any time, and a dormitory would wait for him. 

After working for two years, the young chef said: I want to go back to study. No problem, return to New Oriental to do training for grade examination, and you can also go to Le Cordon Bleu Chef School for chef training. 

After working for a few more years, when the young chef is more capable, and want to start a business and open a restaurant in his hometown. No problem. The president of the local culinary association must be the senior brother or sister of New Oriental. When he returns to hometown, the senior brother or sister will help him find hands and recruit staffs. When the new restaurant opens, all the leaders will give you flower baskets and "help" you open your business. 

After listening to the above story that day, I was shocked; I think it was a soul crit. 

I never thought that in the field of learning and training, the model of lifelong learning would be realized in a vocational school that trains chefs. They not only realized helping these rural youth grow up from ignorance and gradually become a good chef, but also formed a lifelong community. Once they become students of New Oriental, as long as you do not leave the restaurant industry, the school will be responsible for and always around in your life. 

I have learned two things from this case. First, the scene of lifelong learning is closely related to human development, not with content. "Dedao" is an online content product, but there is no doubt that this is a very limited understanding of learning. Lifelong learning must be closely tied to the lifelong development of people. 

Second, lifelong learning requires the construction of a community, because learning is anti-human and difficult. 

Community nurtures learning

So what can help a person pursuit high-quality continuous lifelong learning? 

The conclusion of my own research is that having a good community that will urge you and inspire you, and the strength of being together may exceed all the teacher courses themselves. 

This is the inspiration given to me by New Oriental Chef School. With this inspiration, I feel that “Dedao” app is not doing enough. 

Part 2 Education is not irrigating, but lightening

In addition to this inspiration, we have also made a lot of new efforts to "Dedao". Many people know that "Dedao" is an online course provider, especially for those liberal arts (general knowledge) courses, which can be divided into several categories. The total number of users is 40 million, and there are 220 courses, and the total amount of the courses is very small. 

Because for classmates and users, what they pay for“Dedao” is not only the tuition fee of 50 cents a day, but more importantly, the time they put in. We are responsible for that indicator, named “ National Time”. 

Everyone’s time is limited. When one person devotes 15 minutes to your product, he cannot devote 15 minutes to another one. Therefore, we must be responsible for this 15 minutes. 

Therefore, one thing that "Dedao" has always insisted on is the leading courses. All those courses must pass the quality control of "Dedao" before they go online. 

There is also the "Listen to Books Everyday" column. We help users quickly select high-quality books. 

The other is "Dedao Tips". This product is very simple. The slogan is "Don't panic, Dedao tips". There is only one purpose, we are going to solve real problems and real challenges. 

For example, it is the truth that people are alwarys saying that after learning so many principles, it is still difficult to live a better life. 

Because there is a gap between the challenges we face in practice and the academic knowledge. This gap needs someone to help you overcome it. 

And "Dedao Tips" is a question-and-answer product that bridges the "gap" with high quality and high reality. In addition, "Dedao" has a relatively large e-book library with 34,000 high-quality books. 

But this is not my today′s main point. Today I will introduce another set of numbers. The first thing is, we planned before the epidemic, and completed by working overtime during the epidemic. 

At present, we have built 10 offline campuses of "Dedao University" in 10 cities across China, such as North, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan and so on. Now we can only do one activity per week. Next year we are planning to have one offline event every day across the whole year. 

You may find it very surprising: the online efficiency of "Dedao" is very high, why are you do offline? 

Another thing is the space named "knowledge city state", which is a place where users share notes and learning experience. "Dedao" invites a large number of users to share their own learning feedback, and there is "dedao"′s search. We have accumulated a lot high-quality search data. 

Why do I want to focus on the offline campuses, "Knowledge City" and search for our product today? 

It is because of our hard work in the past few years that we feel that we have so many teachers and so many high-quality courses. It seems that the market recognizes that the quality of "Dedao" courses is high, but we know this is far from enough. 

Socrates said 2000 years ago, "education is not irrigating, education is ignition". I think it makes sense. 

This is a huge stimulus for us, especially for content creators. In the past, more content and better content, could be provided through more efficient methods and technologies. 

However, today we know that it is far from enough, because these tasks are only for irrigating, and we are constantly releasing water. 

But the essence of education is not to irrigate, but to ignite, so that every learner can be seen, so that they can be ignited by these educations in their upward journey. 

This matter has become more difficult. If it is only irrigating, it can rely on an efficient way to produce content like a factory to squeeze learners, but now, even this is not enough. What should we do? 

"Dedao" gradually formed its own cognition, and we divided the content into two major series: 

One content is cross-industry general knowledge. In fact, for modern general knowledge, apart from the need of understanding "philosophy and economics", at this moment, shouldn't we know a little bit of the latest developments in the frontier of chips? Shouldn't you know what changes will happen in the field of new materials in the next five years? 

In the past, teachers who developed chips were generally targeted at experts and students who studied chips, but in fact, this is the general knowledge that modern people need today. This is what "Dedao" has been doing for the past four years. 

The other content is new things, we call it "social competitiveness", how to truly improve a person's competitiveness. 

For example, a few days ago, we just launched a course and asked a junior high school graduate to do it. To be precise, he failed in graduating from a junior high school. 

He is a young man from the countryside. He went to learn how to cook, and then step by step to today, he founded a restaurant and got one Michelin star in less than two years. His name is Duan Yu. So, how did he complete self-cultivation and how to grow himself? Isn’t this process worth our “translation”? 

So we worked with him to "translate" his growth from a junior high school graduate to a top chef and share it with our users. 

We also have other courses, such as cooperation with Ping An Insurance, through tacit knowledge of ten top sales, through the means of knowledge research and development, it can be "translated", and the knowledge of the system can be taught to employees and improve everyone's competitiveness. 

There is a lecture in this batch of courses called "How to get your customers out". Isn't this the most important first skill for people who are doing sales? Let's take a look at how many methodologies are available to us from these top sales. 

We believe that these two things (system + practice) are equally important, because the two together can meet the needs of a person to "be born and grow continuously". 

The second piece is the combination of "online and offline". We have a sentence that is "let the online belong to online, and the offline belong to offline". 

Online is to improve efficiency and use human fragmented time to deliver a high-quality content, but this is irrigating. There is no teacher-student relationship, no classmate relationship, no community relationship, this does not mean that the education is completed. 

After we finish irrigating online, we will invite everyone to establish teacher-student relationship offline, build a community, and let them form a good education closed loop and delivery. This is what we do offline. 

Many students complete 48 lessons online, once every weekend meet offline, to light up each other and educate each other. 

We have a special course that everyone must become a teacher, everyone is like a competition, "translate" the best thing everyone has done into an 8-minute course, and share it with your classmates. Then you will find this is a process of lighting people up, and it is a very amazing process of completing highly efficient learning. 

For example, in the "Dedao University" event held in Shanghai a few days ago, a student of “Dedao" talked about one thing, which "stimulated" a lot of people. 

He was appointed to be the principal of the kindergarten which was in danger for a month, and he used a method to revitalize that kindergarten. 

This method is called "praise"——First, everyone must praise himself every day; Second, everyone must compliment one of his colleagues every day. 

Of course, there are also some other small tricks. After 30 days, this kindergarten is completely revitalized. 

His speech was only 8 minutes, and the audience was a sensation, but it was entirely from practice and from the sharing of a credible classmate. Everyone felt that this method could illuminate many people in an instance and could be shared in an instance. This is the value brought by the community.  

"Dedao" today not only serves individual learners, but everyone can freely select according to their own preferences. At the same time, we cooperate with many group learners. 

For example, I just talked about cooperation with Ping An. Ping An is not only our corporate cooperative user, but also a provider of high-quality socially competitive content for us. A model like this forms a very good interaction between teaching and learning.  

Before the epidemic, I received a very special guest. His name is Das. He is a very famous marketing expert. He is the associate dean of Harvard Business School. He is in charge of Harvard online education and some publishing affairs. He came to China last year. The reason for the visit he came to "Dedao" and brought the Harvard team to our company. 

He asked me a question. At first I thought I had heard it wrong, so I asked Shao Heng to check it again. Later, I found out that I heard it right. 

He asked the "question ": What if one day an online education product like "Dedao" defeats Harvard Business School? 

I was very happy to hear, but I was very humble. I said to him: This will definitely not happen, but I want to post your question on the wall of my office because I feel very honored. Of course, I also know why he asked me this question, because the rate of development of "Dedao" is amazing, and it is changing every day. 

But I know that there will never be a day to defeat Harvard Business School. The 400-year tradition of Harvard Business School may take me 400 years to form. 

It is not because it has better buildings and more senior professors in the past 400 years, but it has formed a community of trust. The community formed by generations of Harvard alumni is completely impossible for an Internet product to catch up in a short time. 

I also said to Das: This question is deeply inspiring to me. How do you succeed, we must also succeed. We should not only pay attention to the function of irrigation, but also the ability of this community. 

We have been talking about one thing repeatedly, that is, education should deliver content. 

If it is only to deliver a lesson, such as an economics class, whether it is Professor Mankiw at Harvard or Professor Xue Zhaofeng at "Dedao", the essence is the same. However, education is not only content, education needs to deliver content, but delivery content is not education itself. 

Our understanding of education today is two things- 

The first thing is to select people;

The second thing is to light up people. 

Why is learning motivation at K12 stage not a problem? It is because of the college entrance examination. 

Why is corporate training and lifelong education so difficult? Because motivation is a big problem, because there is no college entrance examination, the selection mechanism is missing. 

To use a less appropriate analogy, there was no public education system in ancient China, but there were still so many people going to study because of scientific examinations. 

We found that the starting point of education that can really motivate people is a good selection system. There is a good way to select people so that everyone has a consensus on this selection system. This may be the starting point of education. 

And what is its end? I think those words are "lighting up a person". They have been lighted up at a certain moment in their life. This is the function of education. For "Dedao", many users may come or leave. It doesn't matter. If a teacher has been lit by a teacher during the adult learning process, the function of "Dedao" has actually been realized. 

Part 3 The world is made of challenges

Speaking of community and illuminating people, let me share with you a slightly unexpected experience. 

At such an important moment as last year's "Friends of Time" New Year's Eve speech, we wanted to invite our users to interact with us. Let them not only consume, but also take some actions. At that time, we proposed eight Chinese characters, Luo Zhenyu specifically said, called "People of my generation, bow into the game." 

"People of my generation, bend themselves into the game" can become a responsible person, a real learner and also an educator. These are two of the many material in the speech at that time. 

However, I never thought that after the New Year's Eve speech, the word "my generation" suddenly became a hit. After that, people in many fields continued to quote this sentence, using "people of my generation" as a label for their sense of identity. 

Why? I was quite surprised. We prepared a lot for this level of content, but we didn't expect the word "my generation" to become popular. 

This is the same as the previously mentioned New Oriental. Every learner is lonely. We need to constantly explore to obtain a community. How to provide users with a community is an important mission. 

Everyone here may naturally have such a sense of mission, because we are people who enter a company and enter a group, but does the company agree that I am a member of the community? Maybe not necessarily, we still have to do a lot of work. 

And we did a lot of things, we rolled out to get credits. Just now a girl saw me and said: I am a user of ¨Dedao¨, I will show you the credits. We are like "underground meeting with each other". 

In fact, "Dedao credits" doesn′t have any use. Unlike Sesame Points, which can be used to pay utility bills, it is a community identity.

 Just now, the girl scored 762 points. You can "despise" a 700 point, and 700 points can "despise" a 300 point. 

There is also a "knowledge city" that allows learners to see each other, and the relationship between them is not as simple as the relationship between teachers and students. They not only have a teacher-student relationship, but they also have to find ways to design a relationship between classmates. The relationship of classmate are natural offline, and it takes a lot of effort to get closer online. 

The third is the offline "Dedao University" and establish a learning relationship within each city. 

In addition, after the epidemic, we launched a project called "Enlightenment Club". 

We have established a small transparent theater in Beijing ChinaCentral Place, where lectures are held every Wednesday night, limited to 100 people. Just like a club, you can drink something, listen to a talk show of knowledge, and open to other members of the community at other times. 

We welcome every teacher and every reporter to come and read their latest research report. Every ordinary student is also welcome to talk about the experience of teaching and learning. 

In addition, every year there is a "friend of time" New Year's Eve speech, which is like an annual big gala of "Dedao" users. 

All the "Dedao" users gather together to prove and confirm each other on this special time coordinate. These things are what we emphasize, which is the creation of a learning community. Also, the development of learning behavior, which I feel very gratified. In the past, we thought that learning is to provide the best content and the best teachers. Is this not enough? No, it is not. 

Because in a person's learning progresses, his behavior will definitely develop, and he will definitely change from a light learner to a heavy learner, a learner who helps others learn, and then a teacher. 

This does not happen naturally, but needs to be designed. How do ordinary ¨Dedao" users become alumni and accept one another? How does a “Dedao” alumni become a “Dedao” teacher? 

Because "Dedao" has only one hundred teachers for so many years. After opening up, it has become two hundred teachers. I can become a practitioner who teaches you "how to get customers out", and I can also become a teacher of others. 

This community is constantly developing. It can be seen that this is a gentle selection process. When this process exists, your learners have new motivation and the possibility of being illuminated. 

I want to share a very small story with you. One day last year, I saw a user's message in the background of "Dedao". He said: Hello teachers, I am a user of "Dedao". I come from Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia. I am an ordinary farmer. Our village is very close to the provincial highway. I see a lot of people coming and going by car. Growing a little vegetable in the field and selling it can increase income. However, I didn't expect it to sell well, but the cost has already been invested. I was particularly anxious. I would like to ask the teachers how to sell better. 

I think this question is very sad. I didn't expect such a user among the "Dedao" users. 

Secondly, I don't know which teacher can answer this question. I believe they can not answer the question of "how to sell vegetables on the roadside". 

However, we still let this issue go. After the question was released, the other user was a heavy user, because there was no "knowledge city" at that time, and there was no way to follow one and another. They had to "shout" in words. He said: I can answer you to how to sell sell vegetables. 

First, although there are cars coming and going in front of your house, the food is not sold well, which is normal, because it is a car, not a person, and the cars coming and going rarely stop; 

Second, you are in a small farmer economy. Don't take your vegetables to the vegetable market to sell. You can go to Taobao to buy the kind of woven vegetable basket, and then pack the vegetables in a variety of ways. This solves the problem of bargaining for you. , And the possible loss is greatly reduced, and the basket is also packaged and sold with the vegetables; 

Third, print a banner at a nearby printing agency. You need red banners and large white letters in Song typeface. The bigger the word, the better, and then type in a sentence, "Go to the city to visit your relatives, please bring green farm vegetables." If the sun is too shinning, you need a shed. Please note that your banner is red, and the shed should be built with plastic PVC material, and the yellow roof should be built, because the contrast between red and yellow is the strongest. 

Finally, don't forget to print a QR code of WeChat Pay and Alipay, and put this dish on the side of the road. Everyone can buy your food without getting out of the car; also, you disrupt the pricing system, because you are selling gifts to relatives, so the price can be much higher. If you scan the code, you can buy things of more than one basket, you can buy two baskets of things. This way, you can sell your vegetables much better than before. 

I have done "Dedao" for so many years, and that was my most exciting day. I really see what a learning community is like, and I must find that person who answers the question—— 

First, we see the overflowing enthusiasm of a heavy learner; 

Second, he is very competent. The answer includes know hows which many business school teachers does not know at all. They include knowledge of behavioral design, marketing and pricing psychology. 

Later, we found this person and found that he was not only a heavy user of our app, but also signed up to join our university. This is our alumni and his name is Huang Biyun. 

He is an ordinary person who specializes in tutoring small retail stores. We asked Huang Biyun to teach a course called "How to open a good store?" Because 99% of entrepreneurs in China are owners of small stores, a retail store, a small supermarket, an electric bicycle shop. 

Therefore, we let him teach such a course during the epidemic, and this course is for the development of learners. If we can build such a development path for learners, learners will have amazing learning results to contribute to the community, and they can develop further. 

I especially want to share a sentence that the Finnish Ministry of Education wrote in Finland's strategy report, "This world is not made up of fields, but made up of challenges." 

What is composed of domains? That is, we want to go to business school, marketing, finance, accounting, etc. What is a challenge? What to do if you can’t sell vegetables. There are many design studies and marketing studies, but these are not important, we just want to solve the current problems. 

It is almost the same when we do corporate training, because every learner we serve is not a college student or middle school student, but a corporate staff. 

You train him so that he can better deal with challenges after he returns to his post. Our goal is this, but is our method like this? 

Finally, I will share another story. 

One school is in the outskirts of Beijing (Jiudu River in Huairou). There is a long mountain road and there are mudslides. The local administrative leaders hope to introduce a famous school and open a school in Huairou. 

The principal of this school said: Beijing (urban area) does not lack a formal, spacious and bright school. Huairou needs it most, and the poorest place in Huairou is the Jiudu River. I don't want anything. I want to run a mountain elementary school. 

This leader is very welcomed by local people , but also very distressed: How can I recruit teachers for such a remote school? 

The principal said: Don’t worry. I have many teachers and courses. Bu after the principal came to Jiudu Rivver, he hadn't changed anything. Because Jiudu River is located in the middle of four villages, children in these four villages have to go to school. 

He posted hundreds of notices in these four villages and recruited teachers for Jiudu River Primary School. There was only one requirement: as long as you are the community of this village, you live here, and you have a craft, whether it is planting grass, planting flowers or raising Rabbit, cooking or grinding tofu, you can sign up as a teacher. 

More than 80 teachers were recruited within two weeks, but many of them were senior citizens, and they started a "challenge-centric" learning. They opened a course called "Grinding Tofu", and the children who took this course had to learn to make tofu. At the same time, they associate with the city's "sister" schools and sell "tofu" to the children in the city. In order to grind tofu, these children have to take science classes and must know the principle of "grinding tofu"; You also have to take math classes and set a price on the tofu you grind; They also have to take Chinese classes and write a slogan for their tofu. Once each child starts to compete, he hopes that the tofu he sells will be more expensive than the one next to him. They have to learn a little nutrition and add some other advantages. For example, mine is ground from "five kinds of beans", and I am "mountain spring water." 

Who said "grinding tofu" is not a class？"Grinding tofu" is also a class. A third-grade child can write very fluent articles, and they are also related to marketing. They also know psychology, the pricing, and they know how to grind their tofu better without adding equipment. You know that these kids may not win the college entrance examination, but they also may not lose because he has been modeled by the "Grinding Tofu" class. 

And this principal is called Li Xigui. I think he is one of the greatest contemporary educators in China, and many of his attempts are suitable for us to study. 

As an Internet company, we are also learning from Beijing Eleventh School. We hope to transform our learning system into a "challenge-centric" system.