With the pioneering trend of the curriculum reform of Peking University Affiliated Middle School, the former host of the "Big Windmill" column will make one
"A campus system that can really be used"
Mustard Heap Ning Ning reported on July 10
According to the previous estimate of the education informatization market, this is a market of nearly 300 billion yuan. The players who entered the market included listed companies All Access Education, iFLYTEK, Lischen and Tuowei Information, and in 2016, the average revenue of the four companies in education informatization exceeded 900 million. From the perspective of individual companies, this data is quite impressive. But compared with the market size of 300 billion, it is too insignificant.
How many large and small companies are cutting into the education information market? Probably no one can say for sure. According to the "2015 National Education Development Statistical Communiqué" released by the Ministry of Education, there are more than 260,000 primary and secondary schools in the country. In 2016, iFLYTEK, which has a revenue of more than 1 billion yuan in education informatization, has only entered more than 10,000 schools.
The difference and diversity of school needs also determines the dispersed nature of schools to a certain extent. At the same time, it is a market that is heavily influenced by education policies and reforms. The direction of policy tilt often means fiscal direction, and the action of education reform has spawned new demand points.
A single point of entry may be a good idea. The new gaokao reform, which began in 2014, has brought a series of changes to the basic education sector and also brought opportunities for startups.
In 2013, Xi Yue, who lived in Peking University Affiliated High School, sensed this change early and entered the information market with course selection as the starting point. Peking University Affiliated High School, which has greatly reformed and promoted the personalized development of students, determines Xiyue's genes to a certain extent. Founder Liu Cihang said that Xiyue was not born to do one thing to choose classes, but to solve the problem of the management of the entire school after the shift system. His positioning for Xiyue is to serve the personalized learning of students.
<h1>The failure of tradition opens up new opportunities</h1>
In 2014, the "Implementation Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Examination and Enrollment System" determined the reform direction of the new college entrance examination, regardless of arts and sciences, and the total scores of candidates were composed of the three subjects of language, mathematics and foreign subjects of the unified college entrance examination and the three subject scores of the high school academic level examination, that is, the "3+3" model.
The "6 choose 3" or "7 choose 3" selection mode breaks the previous high school liberal arts and science classes, and the combination of subjects under the premise of students' free choice is as many as 20 or 30, which brings about large-scale course selection in high schools. School resources will gradually shift from being allocated on a class-by-class basis to being distributed on a student-by-student basis.
Liu Cihang believes that the school's traditional selection and scheduling system will be ineffective. This is the first problem that comes to light. With this, a series of management failures, previously fixed classes, are now mobile classes, how to grasp the learning dynamics of students and understand the learning situation. The most important thing is that the design of the new college entrance examination is to allow students to obtain personalized growth and development, how does the school make students different from others, and how to do the three-year evaluation of students?
In the pilot areas of the reform, these problems have also been more or less noticed by schools. Previously, Wasabi Heap had heard vice principal Yang Fan talk about the concerns of Hangzhou No. 2 Middle School, and after the students left the class, the biggest challenge to the school's teaching management was the analysis of the students' academic situation.
"So when I first started, I didn't just look at the selection of classes, but also at the trend of the whole education reform, and in the long run, what the school needed." Liu Cihang said that the selection of courses and shifts is only a point, the previous digital campus is to make a face, Xiyue to do a line, do several of them.
Finding the right link becomes critical. Personalization has been a feature of digital campus products that has been frequently mentioned, but in Liu Cihang's view, the real need for personalization is not so heavy. He feels that the need to find commonalities can be standardized.
<h1>Curriculum? Generated by algorithms</h1>
The direction of the new college entrance examination is to give students more choices, and Liu Cihang understands that the information tools provided for this wave of education reform should also give the mechanism of choice. It is not from the perspective of informatization to arrange the system, but to do it with the purpose of school reform.
As much as possible, assist the school to provide personalized learning for students, and help the school design the mechanism of choice is the common need that Xiyue found. After serving the reform of Peking University Affiliated Middle School, Eleventh School, Beijing No. 4 Middle School, Bayi School and other reform schools, Liu Cihang increasingly felt that the needs of good schools were very consistent.
Ma Jun, head of Xiyue's customer success team, introduced that under the concept of course selection and class, there are several future development directions, one is the six choices for the college entrance examination, and the five choices for the middle school entrance examination. The second is the stratification of main subjects, mainly English, mathematics, physics and chemistry, and stratified teaching is another form of shifting. The third is the shifting of elective courses, especially the beauty of the body.
According to his own understanding, Xiyue's optional course product designed the logic of the central page. "The design concept of a lot of products is that I do a long process first, what to do in the first step, and what to do in the second step." But he found that this process does not guide teachers well to schedule classes. The process is too long, and it is difficult for teachers to go from the first step to the last step. Xiyue's selection course product interface is first of all the entire class schedule, and the course slot is designed. The system will first calculate the administrative class and teaching class course data according to the student's willingness to choose courses and the school's resources through the algorithm, and then import the class schedule in the selection and scheduling system to finally generate the class schedule required by the school. There are no process requirements for the whole process.
The system of selecting and scheduling courses should also be able to flexibly support the needs of school transfers. This may seem like a small demand, but it is a frequent occurrence in daily teaching in schools. In Ma Jun's view, the higher the efficiency of the system, the more it can verify whether the teacher's needs can be met.
In the long-term communication with the school, Ma Jun found that the previous school's fear of not having enough resources to support the selection of courses and classes was actually only due to the fear of reform and change. Resource-rich schools have resourceful ways to play, but if they don't seem so well-resourced, they can still walk. The teachers who can support before the class will not have a large-scale shortage of teachers after the class.
For the package system of the curriculum combination set by some schools, Ma Jun believes that this actually violates the original direction of the new college entrance examination. When the curriculum combination suddenly becomes complicated, the school will unconsciously classify the classes with traditional thinking, and eventually provide only a few types of options. But the algorithm will not, the algorithm will do an infinite number of calculations for each student's choice, and finally find the optimal solution.
Unleash each student's personality, this is the ideal scenario. The selection of classes is just a tool for implementation, "I give you all the tools, how to combine and stitch, and the schedule is the choice of the school." Ma Jun said that at the beginning of product development, it was hoped to be open, and the school could design it according to its own needs.
<h1>Liu Cihang: Accompany the school to step on the pit</h1>
For schools, every reform is an unknown exploration. The unknown brought about by the new college entrance examination is particularly serious, from the initial fear of the confusion brought about by the selection of courses and classes, to the dazed evaluation of the comprehensive quality of students. During this period, what kind of information product support the school needs, what is the trap that seems to have a demand but does not actually exist, only after trying to know. For companies that provide such services, it is also an unknown exploration process.
"Now we can have a little bit of a small achievement, that is, we accompany various schools to step on the pit, we have all suffered, and we know what to do about it." Liu Cihang said that with the initial product into the school, step by step after the use, the school's demand continues to emerge. After the selection and scheduling of the products is done, the school asks, what to do with attendance, how to record points, how to use the system for moral education to evaluate, and how to send student files to parents?
When seven or eight schools come up with a common need, the product will notice that it may be a common need. All this is based on the fact that the products that have been used in the school are used. Liu Cihang is more happy to see this model, rather than the previous digital campus project system, first of all, a large number of system products, after approval, they will be installed, but it is not so important whether it is really needed by teachers and schools.
Grade feedback, evaluation, grading, attendance, student leave, school calendar, tutor management, daily notification, etc. are all management modules for the shift system in Xiyue's system.
Process evaluation is a common need in every school with a more aggressive reform. In Xiyue's system, a teacher's interface can clearly see the each evaluation it sets, each test, and the student's score is not only displayed at a certain time, but the cumulative results of the entire school section and presented in the form of a chart. Every teacher involved can evaluate the student's grades on it.
Liu Cihang said that the current student evaluation is not perfect enough, the future will do some sub-text evaluation, attendance scores, classroom performance and daily behavior norms, through the system to calculate the corresponding credits, into the overall evaluation process of students.
Just like the original Xiyue positioned itself as a service personalized learning, when choosing which needs to do and what not to do, Liu Cihang said, the standard of judgment also lies in this. Once someone in the team suggested that the product list of the selection course be taken out and sold, so that it would be faster to enter the school, but Liu Cihang refused. In his view, the selection of classes is the initial entry point, and then it is complementary with other modules to solve the entire management problem under the school shift system, which is its value. Single-break-out selling deviates from this original intention.
<h1>Looking for reform schools</h1>
Xiyue has now entered sixteen or seventeen schools, of which private schools account for one-third. Some schools come to select classes, some come for evaluation, and more are with questions, "ask what you should do", "what other schools do". In terms of the speed of entering the school, Liu Cihang did not seem to be in a hurry, he knew that he could not advance in a hurry, and he was even vigilant against the way of forced advancement from top to bottom. Once a product is not used, it can mean the complete loss of a school.
For the types of schools served, Xiyue has its own selection criteria, one is the public reform school, the nine-year system, the "3 + 1" training model, has promoted the reform of the new college entrance examination, "there are new things to do, there are good mechanisms, good ideas." "The second type is private schools, which spend their own money, do things realistically, and can spend results." The third category is international schools, with advanced concepts.
Xiyue was the first to serve Peking University High School, and its mature product design also has the mark of the curriculum reform of Peking University Affiliated Middle School. The reason for choosing the above three types of schools is related to Liu Cihang's understanding of school education informatization, and the experience of being the assistant to the principal of Peking University High School made him feel that if the school's informatization products were to be used, they must be reformed. The reform has produced new teaching scenarios and management scenarios, and schools and teachers have practical pain points and needs, and need good products to provide support.
However, from a national perspective, of the more than 20,000 high schools, only a few are still at the forefront of curriculum reform. In this regard, Liu Cihang said that he would not worry that the market was too small, and no one could completely divide the market. But he also very rationally saw that even if the new college entrance examination began to be gradually promoted across the country, he did not think that there would be explosive growth in the selection of courses and related needs brought about by the selection of classes. As many schools as there are to start reform in this way, we will push forward as many as we can and serve the schools that are truly reformed well, Liu Cihang said is Xiyue's goal.
In a private education group in Weifang, where Xiyue serves, Liu Cihang is excited by the "271" concept proposed by the school, 20% of the time to attend classes, 70% of the time students to learn by themselves. He believes that there will be more and more schools with such courage to reform, and his market space will become larger and larger.
On June 27, the Shijiazhuang Education Bureau announced that when enrolling in the fall of this year, it will select 12 pilot schools in the city to carry out the class selection system. The new college entrance examination has been gradually implemented from the pilot areas, and schools around the world have also begun to take action. Xiyue plans to enter the number of schools at the end of the year to thirty, from the product point of view, Liu Cihang only gave himself 70 points, "do not blame this industry chaos, it is really difficult to do." "For startups, the boat is easy to turn around, but it is easy to get lost, until a certain number is achieved, "I feel that I have almost found some way." ”
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