Pan-knowledge short videos are becoming more and more popular, how this "knowledge feast" is really nutritious
Song Hao (first from right), an associate professor at the School of Mathematics and Quantitative Economics at Shandong University of Finance and Economics, is giving a lecture to students, and he has 2.46 million fans at Station B. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
Station B, known as the "learning website", has nearly a thousand teachers "up master" settled, including nearly 300 university teachers, experts and scholars, and the proportion of pan-knowledge video playback has reached 45%.
Similarly, on the Douyin platform, pan-knowledge content playback increased by 74% year-on-year in the past year, with 1.36 million comments saying that they "learned"...
Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter found that during the epidemic last year, a large number of college teachers "touched the net" and built a teaching "classroom in the cloud" for a time. As life and learning return to normal, netizens' demand for knowledge to break through barriers and step out of the ivory tower has not dropped but risen.
In this once "lonely track", why did it attract large platforms to play a game, what was the original intention of teachers to become "up masters", and how did this "knowledge feast" become more and more nutritious? The reporter investigated.
The "new identity" of teachers
"A standard science student, but likes humanistic thinking and prefers to envision life under new technologies in the future." This is the "personality signature" of Zhao Bin, a professor at the School of Life Sciences of Fudan University, who is station B. As a "Zhou Gengup Master", Zhao Bin shared and taught a profound topic in a short video - how to do research?
Zhao Bin's computer technology is very good, and he can skillfully operate the editing software. He has made his own videos on the "MOOC" platform, and he is no stranger to open course teaching. During the epidemic last year, college students learned at home through online classes, but some online course platforms could not afford too much traffic, after repeated research, Zhao Bin found that the openness and compatibility of B station was strong, so he uploaded the video produced to B station.
"For graduate students, they may prefer to acquire a skill of writing SCI papers quickly, but I think it's more important to tell them how to understand science, how to understand scientific research, and how to make scientific research a part of their lives." Zhao Bin said that when many "hardcore fans" seize the "sofa" or "urge change", they will feel that their hard work has not been in vain.
"Many of the students who come to Station B are spontaneously learning out of interest, and the efficiency and effect will be much better." Zhao Bin said.
Song Hao, associate professor of the School of Mathematics and Quantitative Economics of Shandong University of Finance and Economics, "testing the waters" video course earlier. "8 years ago, I was teaching my first students, and when the course progressed to linear algebra, the teaching task was suspended due to other arrangements." Song Hao said that he usually lectures on complex mathematical concepts in a simple and clear way, so after changing teachers, many students reported that the more traditional teaching methods were difficult to understand.
"With more and more students responding, I decided to record the course as an audio for students to download, but I didn't expect that the number of downloads in a week would exceed 1,000." Song Hao said that he simply bought a second-hand DV machine and recorded videos for the whole school to use.
Today, Song Hao has 2.46 million fans on The B station. As the needs of fans became more and more complex, Song Hao began to offer different kinds of courses, and the videos covered the subjects that needed to be studied in the first and second years of college. "I want to be China's 'Khan Academy' and strive to make every Chinese student, whether primary or university, learn math in a video." Song Hao said.
Yang Ning is a young lecturer at the School of Culture and Communication of the China Institute of Labor Relations, and is known as "the light of the Chinese Department Teacher" and "treasure teacher" on the B station. He often inserts various examples familiar to students in his theory classes, and the current popular cultural phenomena can be easily grasped. Among them, the "Literary Theory" series of videos has reached 2.45 million views. "This shows that everyone has the need to learn theory and is eager to systematize their own understanding of art and aesthetics." Yang Ning said that through the opening of short video courses, he deeply realized the value of the subjects he taught.
The reporter noted that since the epidemic, the rational value of short video platform content has accelerated its return. According to the "2020 China Mobile Internet Content Ecology Insight Report", users' demand for content from popular science documentary knowledge has increased, and the demand for knowledge-oriented and practical pan-knowledge content has increased by 21% and 16.7% respectively, and the demand for entertainment has declined slightly.
The "Lonely Track" is getting more and more lively
According to the relevant report released by Douyin on October 13, the platform currently covers 1259 universities, of which Tsinghua University, Peking University, and National University of Defense Technology have the highest account fans; On the B station, the total number of fans of the famous teacher and scholar group exceeds 55 million, nearly 70 of the more than 100,000 fans, and the number of fans of Luo Xiang, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice of China University of Political Science and Law, has exceeded 18.78 million, which is the fastest fan growth rate of the B station and the highest number of fans in the whole station.
The reporter noted that as the content of the pan-knowledge field becomes more and more popular, more and more scholars and academicians have begun to try to popularize knowledge on the short video platform, and some have also normalized the integration of knowledge content and live broadcasting. An industry insider admitted that people are eager to stand on the shoulders of giants to gain knowledge, and capital is digging into traffic entrances with great enthusiasm.
So, what is the nutritional value of this "feast of knowledge"?
The reporter found that the high enthusiasm of the students is largely the biggest reason why the "up master" teachers can persist. Song Hao, who has been using classroom recordings, has to record 4-5 times each video that can be transmitted to the platform.
"We must show the process of 'board book', which is determined by the characteristics of mathematics as a discipline, and it is also the 'core magic weapon' of my teaching." Song Hao said that every time he goes to class, he has to carry a camera, tripod and microphone, and when recording, there are frequent problems, sometimes students encounter tripods, microphone problems, etc. will lead to the "scrapping" of materials.
But the positive feedback from the students gave Song Hao a great sense of gain. He told reporters about the most impressive private letter on the station: a male student did not pass the math class exam for 4 years in college, retaken several times, but after seeing Song Hao's video in his senior year, he spent more than half a year learning all of Song Hao's videos, passed the exam half a year after graduation, got a degree certificate, and successfully found a job.
In addition, some niche subject knowledge has entered the public vision and gained more attention and love. Zhao Bin told reporters that the main reason for the previous upload of videos in the "MOOC" is that the number of students recruited by his major every year is small, only a few people, or more than a dozen people, he feels that it takes so much effort to prepare the class, the result is only heard by few people, there is some waste.
As a result, Zhao Bin came up with the idea of making videos for more people to see. On the B station, after uploading his own courses such as "Landscape Ecology", he received a "reminder" from fans. "Teaching in the new media era should be a new way of learning, giving full play to the characteristics of edutainment and teaching, so that students can actively participate in the learning process." Zhao Bin said.
More platform users believe that the combination of short videos and knowledge has benefited the knowledge itself, the knowledge disseminator and the recipient. "Although I can't pass the Fudan exam, I don't delay my students who are Fudan teachers." Similar comments often appear on Station B; On the Douyin platform, more and more people have gained new knowledge and increased their insights. Statistics show that in the past year's Douyin video reviews, although 1.11 million comments asked "how to do", there were also 1.36 million comments that said "learned"; There were 860,000 comments mentioning "I don't understand" and 2.54 million comments saying "I understand".
Finally, platform teaching provides teachers with a new model of teacher-student communication, and the unique atmosphere of the network makes learning more active. The reporter saw on the B station that every time he opened a learning video, he would see the beginning and end of the screen full of "teacher good" and "thank you teacher" and other bullet screens, which has become the basic etiquette of the B station user "cloud class", and after "each lesson", there are always users who consciously become "class representatives", in the comment area to summarize the main points of the content or share and expand related knowledge, teachers also often appear in the comment area, praise "class representatives" by name, and discuss different views.
Cai Danjun, an associate professor at the Faculty of Letters at Chinese Min University, said that after updating each video, she would patiently read all the comments and bullet screens, and reply to private messages with serious questions one by one. "The interaction with the 'cloud student' is mainly about 'dispelling confusion'." Cai Danjun said, "Everyone on the Internet has different identities, and it may be more necessary for educators to be 'teaching without class' than any kind of classroom." ”
Pan-knowledge of how the "cake" is getting bigger and bigger
Industry insiders believe that after the entertainment content "hegemonic screen" video platform in previous years, the key period for pan-knowledge video to lead the development of the platform has arrived, and refined content is the key to the development of short videos in the field of pan-knowledge in the future. The public's demand for the hardcore, pure and dry goods of pan-knowledge video content will also become higher and higher.
From excessive entertainment to serious knowledge dissemination, the content transformation of short video platforms cannot be achieved overnight. According to a recent survey of 2015 respondents by relevant institutions, 63.9% of the respondents believe that the biggest problem with pan-knowledge short videos is the serious homogenization of content, 50.3% of people believe that pan-knowledge videos have the phenomenon of spreading pseudoscience, and 43.6% of respondents point out that there are many infringement problems of pan-knowledge short videos.
The reporter also found that in some popular science videos, it seems that the short video bloggers are doing science popularization, but looking at the same topic, they found that many bloggers are actually just "porters" and have similar views. According to the "2020 China Online Short Video Copyright Monitoring Report" released by the 12426 Copyright Monitoring Center, from January 2019 to October 2020, a total of 30.0952 million infringing short videos were monitored, and the infringement rate of exclusive original authors was as high as 92.9%.
In addition, many young netizens interviewed believe that the proliferation of pseudoscience has also become a major problem for knowledge short videos. For example, some bloggers speak very irresponsibly, the content seems to be quite logical, making people feel very credible, but if you think about it, they have not understood the event itself, just because they have watched some video comments, they feel that they know this matter very well, in fact, they are just insisting on other people's views.
Zhang Yi, CEO of Ai Media Consulting, analyzed that the key to the competition of pan-knowledge short videos is content quality. "Shoddy, follow-the-trend, and lack of scientific basis are very common, which is a big gap with the user's expectations, which in turn creates a trust risk." Products that lack trust, whether they use membership models, advertising models or other value-added models, are difficult to achieve a virtuous circle. ”
In this regard, industry insiders pointed out that the platform should continue to improve the algorithm mechanism, present high-quality content to users, and provide more display opportunities for excellent creators. Including improving the account authentication mechanism, establishing a blacklist system, and prohibiting unqualified creators from publishing professional knowledge content without authorization; Increase the intensity of review, consciously filter "pseudoscience" content, clearly mark controversial information, remind users to make prudent judgments, and prevent the spread of bad information.
In addition, content creators should be encouraged to deeply integrate with universities, scientific research institutes, well-known enterprises and other institutions, explore potential professionals, and create a high-quality content creation echelon. Only when more professional forces join can we promote the improvement of the level of content creation in the whole industry and help high-quality content lead the correct value orientation. (Lu Chang, a reporter of this newspaper, participated in the writing: Qiu Zhaoxiang)
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