As a popular track in the elderly industry, elderly education has been a hot spot in the entire market in recent years.
K12 education has been rectified and supervised, which has injected a strong needle into the development of education for the elderly. We are pleased to find that since last year, a number of large educational institutions have laid out the elderly education sector, and several domestic elderly education platforms have obtained financing.
There is also a lot of good news released at the national level.
At the end of last year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Work on Aging in the New Era, which incorporated education for the elderly into the lifelong education system. It is mentioned that it is necessary to expand the supply of educational resources for the elderly, support social forces to hold universities for the elderly, and promote the opening of universities for the elderly held by departments, industry enterprises, and colleges and universities to run schools for the society.
Recently, when the Ministry of Education announced the key points of work in 2022, it was once again clear that it would accelerate the preparation of the national university for the elderly.
This means that domestic elderly education will next move to the fast lane of development, and in the next two or three years, there will be more capital and giants entering to promote the accelerated upgrading of the elderly education industry.
When the development of the domestic elderly education industry is in full swing, there have also been many innovative cases abroad.
Recently, we have noticed that GetSetUp, an online geriatric education platform in the United States that focuses on peer teaching, has developed rapidly, and in just two years since its establishment, it has more than 4 million members in more than 160 countries around the world, and has also received multiple rounds of financing, with a total amount of more than 20 million US dollars.
We believe that although different countries have different national conditions, there are still many places to learn from each other at the business level. In China, elderly education is about to usher in a node of rapid development, and we hope to provide some new ideas for domestic elderly education practitioners by dismantling this overseas case.
01
Financing twice in two years
An online education platform that focuses on people over the age of 55
"GetSetUp's mission is to help people over the age of 55 learn new skills, connect with others, and unlock new life experiences." On the getSetUp official website, there is such a sentence.
Founded in August 2019 in San Francisco, GetSetUp is a community platform dedicated to providing real-time interactive courses and exchanges for the elderly. Judging from the information on the official website, the content provided by GetSetUp mainly includes three aspects: live courses taught by experts in various fields, communities or groups spontaneously organized by community members, and expert speech activities held for areas of interest for the elderly.
GetSetUp's courses are mainly live classes, and the teachers are basically retired experts from various fields over the age of 50, many of whom have master's degrees in various disciplines such as business, music, and science.
The platform courses cover a variety of topics such as health care, technology, art, finance and economics, with more than 500 live real-time interactive courses every week, and the languages of instruction include English, Spanish, Hindi and Mandarin.
Since its inception in 2019, GetSetUp has grown rapidly, gaining more than 4 million users in more than 160 countries in more than two years and more than 40 million hours of total learning time.
Therefore, GetSetUp is optimistic about capital. According to public information, GetSetUp has received three rounds of financing since its inception, with two $10 million financing in October 2020 and November 2021.
The creation of GetSetUp stemmed from an event experience by founder and CEO Neil DSouza. He attended an event with a friend who had retired but didn't know what to do next, on how to live a quality of life after age 50, which made him realize that older people are neglected, untapped assets that they can also make a lot of contributions.
02
Focuses on peer teaching
Diversified curriculum and business models
Combing through the secrets of GetSetUp's rapid growth, we found that there is a catalytic role of the epidemic, as an online education platform, GetSetUp helps many elderly people who cannot go out during the epidemic to learn digital skills and enrich their lives online.
But the main reason lies in the unique advantages of the platform itself.
Enter the getSetUp official website, which for the silver-haired crowd in the operation, interface design, course mode and other dimensions of the aging design:
Pictured: GetSetUp's homepage
1. Quick class entrance: The home page of the official website shows the course being broadcast live, and one click to enter the class;
2. The subject categories are simple: the classification is listed, and the one-week course schedule is intuitive and clear;
3. Online live courses: real-time interaction and feedback;
4. Unlimited replay: Provide recording and playback of live lessons for the elderly to watch and repeat learning;
5. Flexible time: all-weather course coverage, shorter class hours to adapt to the energy of the elderly;
6. Technical care: enhanced audio and subtitles, remote control help and other technical support.
Commenting on the investment, some investors said: "The media and tech community has largely ignored the elderly. GetSetUp has created a community that actively engages its members, building their confidence through technology and opening up countless new opportunities. ”
In addition to the various ageing-appropriate designs that can be seen at a glance, after in-depth study of GetSetUp, we believe that the experience that can be learned from China is mainly reflected in three aspects:
1. Peer teaching mode with social networking as the carrier and education as the core
Professional peer faculty and guided teaching are a core highlight of GetSetUp.
As early as October 2020, the site has launched more than 6,000 live courses, of which more than 3,200 are taught by the elderly, many of whom have been professional teachers, according to public reports.
In addition to teaching knowledge in the classroom, they also play a "learning guide" role, encouraging participants to share their insights and knowledge in the course.
The greatest significance of peer teaching is to fully explore the rich mine of the elderly, and adopt the way the elderly teach the elderly, which not only provides a platform for the elderly to re-employment, so that they can create social value and economic value, but also more effectively use the empathy between peers to ensure the learning status and learning results.
(1) Provide a platform for reemployment for the elderly and stimulate the vitality of "silver-haired labor"
Lawrence Kosick, co-founder of GetSetUp, said: "In the current COVID-19 environment, the possibility of the elderly being isolated from society is increasing, and learning on the GetSetUp platform not only helps the elderly reduce loneliness and prevent social disengagement, but also provides a way for the elderly to get financially paid." ”
During the quarantine period, GetSetUp invited retired teachers and expert professors from various states in the United States to launch online courses on the platform, introducing how to effectively use smartphones, Windows systems, Google (GoogleSuite), LinkedIn (LinkedIn) and other technologies.
This approach not only provides a re-employment platform for the elderly, stimulates their vitality, but also broadens their sources of income.
Many elderly people are mostly in a confused state after retirement, unable to adapt to the arrival of a new stage of life, and a lot of free time after retirement often makes them feel empty and powerless.
However, from the perspective of physical and psychological state, many elderly people still have the energy and willingness to create personal and social value after retirement, and their knowledge and experience reserves are no less than those of young people.
It is worth mentioning that this way of hiring the elderly as teachers can also provide ideas for solving the shortage of teachers in domestic education for the elderly.
(2) Give play to the role of "peer role models" and achieve spiritual guidance
At GetSetUp, many learners say that teachers on the platform who are about their age and have similar experiences are better able to inspire and motivate themselves in their learning, and seeing these "peer role models" be able to operate skillfully and teach professional skills has largely helped them build confidence in overcoming obstacles.
Figure: Some user reviews on the GetSetUp website
As one of the investors, Aileen Lee, founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, tested the platform with an 80-year-old mother experience before investing.
"After just one day, my mother was hooked on exercising, speaking Mandarin and making Indian food," she says. She made friends here, from a cooking teacher who lives in India to a classmate who took classes in a hospital bed, which my mom called "GSU" University. We hope to see this excellent platform for the elderly, inclusive and open, and develop healthily in a good market environment. ”
The core of education is not only the transmission of knowledge and skills, but more importantly, the exchange and interaction of spirit, and education for the elderly is no exception.
Therefore, in the process of education, the role of the teacher is particularly important, a teacher with a distinct personality and sufficient professionalism can become the best spiritual guide for students.
From this point of view, peers can obviously play a better role in spiritual leadership, for the silver-haired population per capita age of 55+, it is difficult to find the shadow of the model figure they want to become from young people, they must hope to become better people in retirement, have a better state of life, rather than fantasizing about being younger again.
In fact, the fact that there is a better spiritual guidance and driving role among the elderly of the same age has been partially verified in China.
The well-known silver-haired KOL Fashion Grandma Group has won the love of many middle-aged and elderly people by passing on the positive outlook on life and values of grandmothers. These middle-aged and elderly fans are keen to pursue the "fashion grandma group with the same style", and it is they who regard the fashion grandma group as the embodiment of spiritual and life leadership.
We have noticed that this peer-age teaching model has also been concerned by some entrepreneurs in the field of domestic elderly education, and has carried out relevant exploration and practice, some entrepreneurs try to invite some elderly experts or opinion leaders in various fields to create courses to convey the concept of active life to elderly users.
2. The combination of public welfare and profitability, and the payment model is diversified
In terms of paid models, GetSetUp has pioneered multiple models: To G, To B, and To C.
According to getSetUp's official website, its current G-end and B-end partners include health care enterprises, health systems, governments, non-profit organizations and community organizations.
On the G-side, the services include:
- Partnering with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (WSDSHS) and the New York State Office on Aging (NYSOFA) to open free interest courses to the elderly in the state;
- Partnering with the New York State Department of Veterans Services to offer a range of benefits courses for veterans in the state;
- Partnering with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and the Department of Aging and Adult Services, we offer a series of courses to help seniors find local health departments, book vaccines online, and more.
This is not only conducive to expanding the user scale of the platform, but also strengthens the endorsement of the platform through cooperation with the government and other departments.
On the B side, GetSetUp's cooperation model is also extremely flexible, not only with healthcare companies Such as Unity Health, Uber and other types of enterprises, but also to develop a variety of ways of cooperation.
In partnership with healthcare company Titanic Health, the company has been granted the exclusive right to offer GetSetUp to the Medicare Advantage program and its members, and participating SilverSneakers members have unlimited access to the platform at no additional cost. Through the program, 18 million eligible Americans will receive GetSetUp for free.
In partnership with Uber, GetSetUp launched instructional courses on using Uber apps, enabling older adults interested in Uber to learn more about Uber's products and features and teach them how to navigate Uber apps.
"We are excited to partner with GetSetUp to expand access to our platform." Niraj Patel, director of Uber's cycling operations, said. "Through these courses, we hope that new customers will learn more about our products."
Cooperation with B-end enterprises can, on the one hand, facilitate the lives of the elderly and enhance their trust and dependence on the platform; on the other hand, it can also help enterprises do market education and rapidly expand social influence.
It is worth mentioning that because many families in the United States are also facing huge care pressure, GetSetUp has also developed a new cooperation model with some enterprises - that is, in the form of employee benefits to give to employees, to reduce the pressure of employee care, thereby helping enterprises better attract and retain talents.
"Get Set Up was a great platform for my parents. During the pandemic, I couldn't visit my parents, and I was reassured that they were attracted to Get Set Up, which allowed them to have something to do. I hope more employers will offer Get Set Up as an employee benefit. Because my parents loved the laughter-filled classes, cooking classes, and yoga classes, get Set Up also freed me from a lot of stress and allowed me to focus on other things better. ”
Zainab Ghadiyali, a former head of product and technology at Facebook and Airbnb, has said so.
On the C side, GetSetUp offers four paid plans:
- Some public welfare courses and benefits are free and open to registered users;
- The Advanced Plan is a monthly payment of $19.99 per month, with all course resources and benefits, no secondary fees;
- Partner Program: Free to users who meet the conditions (government or enterprise partnership program);
- Live one-to-one lessons: Range from $60 to $150 per course.
Figure: GetSetUp paid plan
By GetSetUp's paid service system and cooperation development path, it is not difficult to see that its profit model is diversified and flexible, and the open idea is worth learning from domestic enterprises.
3. It is not only an educational platform, but also the best entrance to connect the elderly and society
"Education itself is a way of life, and education cannot exist for a long time without the value of life." Bai Fan, co-founder of Sing Bar and president of Peanut Classroom, once said in his speech.
From the practice of GetSetUp, it is really done to do this, so that the platform is not only limited to the education platform, but also the best entrance to connect the elderly and society.
At the curriculum level, unlike most of the domestic universities for the elderly focus on interest and art education, GetSetUp's courses cover various fields such as fitness, science and technology, finance and even medical treatment, and almost run through all aspects of the lives of middle-aged and elderly people.
In addition, GetSetUp not only provides courses, but also creates a platform for users to interact and communicate, so that the platform becomes a community-like existence.
Externally, GetSetUp has opened up all aspects of the government, enterprises, etc., helping the elderly to solve their living difficulties and improve their self-care ability, while also helping the government and enterprises to accelerate the social education and market education of the elderly, and strengthening the connection between the government, enterprises and other organizations and the elderly.
From this point of view, GetSetUp is the entrance that truly connects silver-haired people with society, and through GetSetUp, middle-aged and elderly people can better adapt to society while creating value.
In fact, judging from Japan's experience in elderly education and domestic data, many silver-haired people do not only want to learn art courses related to their interests, they also have needs for career advancement, re-employment or academic upgrading.
The person in charge of Gaotu College in the adult business sector of Gaotu College has also publicly revealed that more than 25% of the paid users of Gaotu College are people over 50 years old.
On various social platforms, there are also many young users who feedback that their parents learn English, finance and other knowledge after retirement.
Although from the perspective of the overall needs of domestic middle-aged and elderly users, interest-related art education is the most demanded sector, from the perspective of society and enterprises, it should not only start from the business perspective, only focus on the business with the greatest demand, but also open the vision and pattern, and truly open the curriculum and design business models from the perspective of helping the elderly connect with society, so that the value of elderly education can be brought into full play to the greatest extent.
epilogue
Lifelong learning is essential for human health and well-being.
Silver-haired groups have long been easily overlooked by technology and learning opportunities, and education is an effective way to promote the continuous participation of the elderly in society and give back to society.
It is believed that as the elderly education market ushers in more entrants in the future, more innovative products and services will appear, driving the market to accelerate its upgrading, and ultimately helping the silver-haired people to realize the unity of self-worth and social value.
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