On December 30, at the “get2021 Education Technology Conference”, Jin Lei, senior vice president and President of Youdao wisdom education of Netease, delivered a wonderful speech with the theme of “Ai pilot, the way of smart education construction of science and technology enterprises”. Jin Lei fully shared Youdao’s Thoughts on doing smart education business from three aspects: policy guidance, market environment and Youdao gene.
Jin Lei said that with the strong promotion of a series of national policies, the process of educational informatization will continue to accelerate. However, for more than 20 years of information construction, although the school is constantly pursuing information, networking, digitization and intelligence, the voice of teachers complaining that the products are not easy to use, do not want to use and can not be used still exists. The essential reason is that many education information providers do not go deep into the core of the education scene.
Jin Lei stressed that there are many practices of educational informatization, and the methods of selling relationships and parameters are not the right way. As an Internet technology enterprise, we should give full play to our product technology capabilities, focus on front-line users and tap the needs of the scene, rather than “decision makers”.
Under the background of “double subtraction” greatly reducing the examination frequency, Youdao’s product intelligent learning terminal for end B pays close attention to the process data; Timely feedback students’ weak points; Without changing the writing habits of paper and pen, it can help teachers and students improve the efficiency of teaching and learning. By deeply exploring these three opportunities, the product has established its own differentiation advantages, and has entered more than 300 schools.
Jin Lei said: “good educational information products should not only help teachers and students reduce their burden and increase efficiency, but also help students cultivate lifelong learning habits.”
the following is Jin Lei’s speech (sorted):
Hello, I’m Youdao Jin Lei of Netease.
Thanks for the mustard pile’s invitation. In a twinkling of an eye, the get conference has been held for the seventh time in a row. In the past seven years, the industry has undergone earth shaking changes. I have the impression that Youdao will not be absent every year. However, with the development of Youdao’s business, we have different people and different topics every year.
I was responsible for the smart education business in Youdao. Before, we were relatively low-key. The whole team went deep into the school to understand the needs and polish the products. Therefore, the smart education business has been precipitated in Youdao for about two years. With the implementation of double reduction, Youdao also takes the four business segments (intelligent learning hardware, quality, adult and educational informatization) as the next four directions. Today, let me share some thoughts and practices of xiayoudao in wisdom education as an intelligent learning company.
why should Youdao do wisdom education? No more than three. Policy guidance, market opportunities and Youdao’s own DNA.
At the policy level, we can see that since 2018, China has issued a series of policies around education informatization, which has attracted the attention of all sectors of society. Although the “double reduction” has had a great impact on K12 training, the state’s efforts to promote the digital transformation of various industries and educational informatization have not changed, or even greater. Two days before the introduction of the double reduction, the six ministries and commissions jointly issued guidance on promoting the new infrastructure of education. On December 27, the National Informatization Plan for the 14th five year plan issued by the central network security and Informatization Commission, especially emphasizes the need to carry out lifelong digital education, improve the construction level of education informatization infrastructure and build a high-quality education support system.
The fundamental reason behind this is that digitization is one of the most effective means to improve production efficiency and promote the further development of various industries. The essence of educational informatization is to improve the educational level and efficiency of schools through technical means and high-quality services, and reduce the burden for teachers, students and parents, which is consistent with the goal of the “double reduction” policy.
With the encouragement of policies and the release of school demand, the market will become larger and larger. According to Huatai Securities Co.Ltd(601688) , the scale of education informatization market will exceed 650 billion in 2023.
However, we found that information construction has been more than 20 years. Although the school is constantly pursuing information, networking, digitization and intelligence, teachers have never stopped complaining that the products are not easy to use, do not want to use and can not be used. so at this time, we feel that technology enterprises with internet thinking should enter the market.
Again, many educational informatization products in the market do not go deep into the core of education, but mainly do some auxiliary work. such as class scheduling, electronic class cards, security monitoring, home school communication, library management, administrative management and other related systems have nothing to do with teaching. There are also some low-level access, such as providing direct recording and broadcasting system, which has nothing to do with the teaching content.
We can see that electronic whiteboard and marking machine are products that go deep into the teaching scene, but there are also obvious problems. The weakness of electronic whiteboard is that it does not change the single transmission teaching method. In practical application, many teachers only change the blackboard writing into PPT and demonstrate with electronic whiteboard. The main problem of the marking machine is that there is only limited test data such as mid-term and end of term, but no process data sorting.
Focus on Youdao itself. As an Internet product company, we are good at making products. For example, we can accurately grasp the needs of users, and then maximize the needs of users with the help of our product technology advantages. At the same time, Youdao has been in the education industry for many years and has a deep understanding of the education scene. Then, we think it is equally applicable to put these abilities and advantages on the track of educational informatization. it can be said that Youdao naturally stands at the origin of educational informatization.
In the context of double reduction, the development of education is facing some new opportunities, such as using emerging technologies to promote educational equity, all-round development of quality, highlighting education-oriented, developing education with regional characteristics and so on. So what exactly do we do?
educational informatization is very complicated and there are many ways. We know that selling relationship is not our advantage and selling parameters is not our direction. As an Internet technology enterprise, we are very clear that we should focus on front-line users (teachers and students) and tap the needs of the scene, rather than “decision makers”.
Based on this goal, the long-term vision of Youdao wisdom education is to “achieve educators and learners with scientific and technological innovation”. Among them, there are two grippers, which we call “Ai bottoming, data is beam” .
As we all know, it is not easy for AI technology to be actually implemented in the education scene. The most important thing is that it can improve learning efficiency by an order of magnitude in the scene, and greatly reduce the operation cost.
Here I take two products that Youdao has made in the past that are highly recognized by users as examples:
Youdao dictionary is the earliest educational product of Youdao, with hundreds of millions of monthly users. Now we see that Youdao dictionary has a variety of rich functions, such as neural network translation of multiple languages, picture and voice translation and so on. However, when the dictionary was first launched in 2008, there were two basic functions that users liked most. One is the network interpretation, the other is the example sentence.
It takes 3-5 years for traditional dictionaries to be compiled and published. When they are in the hands of users, the entries and definitions may have been ten years ago, which can not catch up with the users’ learning needs for new knowledge. For high-level learners and language users, the trouble is that they can’t find remote professional terms, especially new words, and don’t know how to use new words.
Through natural language processing technology and the mining and cleaning of Internet parallel corpus, Youdao dictionary has increased the number of high-quality entries to 60 million and the number of high-quality example sentences to 20 million, and updated synchronously with the Internet content in real time. In this way, if users want to check any new words, they can immediately query them and find the corresponding usage in rich example sentences. In this process, we can see that AI technology has played a great role here, which has improved the learners’ experience and effectiveness of word search by an order of magnitude. It is deeply loved by users and created a miracle of learning products with a total of 900 million users.
Another example is Youdao dictionary pen. We integrate the image and character recognition based on deep learning and neural network translation technology into a small chip, which has very low power consumption and very fast speed, and can do millisecond super fast search. This is much faster and more convenient than the traditional paper dictionary and even the mobile phone. It can be seen from the statistical data that Youdao dictionary pen has 15 times higher efficiency than the traditional dictionary, and 5 times higher than the continuous word search of mobile dictionary. This artificial intelligence technology has created an order of magnitude improvement in students’ learning efficiency.
In the intelligent education section of Youdao, we also have a product of AI in-depth application – Youdao intelligent learning terminal, also known as all-in-one machine. Many people may not be familiar with this product. It is an independent hardware product placed in the school. It can scan and collect students’ daily homework exercise books.
Of course, only technical ability is not enough. Educational informatization is certainly not just a competition of technology. How can we make technology return to education itself? Is to respect the teaching scene.
What is respect scene? I went to the front-line research last week. What impressed me was a math teacher who said, “I found that the electronic blackboard hanging in our classroom can draw circles automatically a few days ago. I asked curiously,” how long have you used this electronic blackboard? “The teacher said,” it was installed at the beginning of this year. “I said,” it’s almost a year. Haven’t you studied the function of this blackboard? “The teacher said,” most teachers use it as a PPT. As for what functions it has, no one tells us, and we don’t have time to study. I’m more used to the traditional teaching method.
I asked again, “now I know that the blackboard can draw circles automatically. Will you use this function?” The teacher thought for a moment and said, “young children need to pay special attention to cultivating their learning habits. If I don’t use a compass to demonstrate to them on the blackboard, some children will draw casually during homework and exams.”
What does this example illustrate?
First, why can’t teachers make the best use of an electronic whiteboard after it has been installed for a year. There is a problem of separation between decision makers and users. After winning the bid, many traditional information providers just provide products, and the later delivery is the cost for them. Anyway, if I don’t provide services, my products can be sold. Naturally, I don’t have strong motivation to serve in school. What is the result? As we all know, the product can’t make the best use of everything. It’s “eating ash” in the classroom.
In order to make full use of our product functions in the teaching environment, we must first let users know what functions it has and what problems it can solve. In other words, in the information ecology, we should make it clear that the objects we serve should focus on the teachers and students who really use our products from beginning to end. This is the benefit of Internet thinking. Everything is user-centered. In the early stage, after your products enter the school, there must be corresponding delivery personnel to do a good job of service. Of course, our ultimate ideal is to use good products to kill all service links.
Second, educational technology should return to the essential appeal of the school scene. Some people’s work cannot be forcibly replaced by automated technology. such as drawing a circle mentioned earlier. “A circle is a closed curve formed by rotating a moving point in a plane with a certain point as the center and a certain length as the distance.” How to make students understand this abstract concept? Teachers need to use compasses to operate and demonstrate to students, so that students can understand the formation principle and characteristics of circles. If you use an electronic whiteboard, this demonstration will not work.
In addition, good educational information products should not only help teachers and students reduce their burden and increase efficiency, but also help students cultivate lifelong learning habits. why are tools such as taking photos and searching questions prohibited, because it is not conducive to the formation of students’ learning habits. This requires us to respect education and be in awe.
The operation scenario is a cut selected by our product. Youdao intelligent learning terminal will not change students’ paper writing habits, but also cultivate their learning consciousness and develop the learning habit of timely error correction through sorting out daily wrong questions, so as to improve learning efficiency.
The pain point of this product is that we found that in the past, most school students repeatedly failed to brush questions. If teachers want to understand students’ learning situation, they need to regularly organize evaluation and even examinations. Such frequent operation is good from the point of view of purpose, but it will inevitably reduce students’ learning motivation, which is contrary to double reduction.
At the same time, under the background of double subtraction, test frequency is greatly compressed, and the opportunity for teachers to obtain students’ learning data through the test is also greatly compressed. This means that the process data of learning is likely to become a vacuum in the teaching scene.
So we are thinking, how can we realize the accurate quantitative grasp of students’ learning state under the condition of reducing examinations? How can teachers find the weak points of each child’s learning in time and effectively through technical means to help teachers achieve layered and accurate teaching?
For the same question, each student makes mistakes for different reasons. For example, the mixed operation of one four is wrong. Some students are because of multiplication, some students are because of division, and some students don’t understand the calculation order and can’t generalize.
Then, after students scan their homework through Youdao intelligent learning terminal, they can immediately get the sorted wrong question set and print it into their own paper wrong question book. The academic big data platform behind Youdao intelligent learning terminal can analyze the weaknesses behind each student’s knowledge through detailed attribution classification and provide personalized learning suggestions.
Considering the actual teaching scene in the school, our product will also provide class dimension learning suggestions. Teachers can get the practice and test of students in the whole class, so as to make targeted guidance and improvement.
Among the five management items of the Ministry of education, there are “five questions” in operation management. Generally speaking, operation is a technical activity, and the operation management needs to collect data to take charge of the overall situation. If schools, classes and regions want to reduce their homework burden, they should use data to show how the homework burden is reduced and how the effect is.
The appeal of school and regional education decision-makers is to be responsible for the teaching quality of schools and regions, and to evaluate teachers with objective and quantitative data.
Then our big data platform can dynamically grasp the learning process of each school, so as to help decision makers quantitatively formulate teaching policies and improve regional learning effects.
as you can see, we actually seize the three opportunities in the teaching process and establish our own advantages, which are differentiated:
First of all, we know that the process data collection cost of students is very high. Youdao intelligent learning terminal uses daily learning feedback such as “homework” as the starting point, which can effectively grasp the process data of students’ learning and accurately understand the weak points of each child’s knowledge;
Secondly, compared with the traditional marking machine, which can only collect periodic learning data, our product feedback speed is faster;
Finally, it is also very important that our products respect the learning scene in the school more than electronic products such as iPad. The paper wrong question set will neither change students’ writing habits, nor cause parents’ concerns about affecting children’s vision and interfering with children’s learning attention.
in the digital environment, data is undoubtedly a key force to move the whole educational ecology forward, and even educational reform. Then, with the expansion of the amount of data, our problem pushing and analysis will become more and more accurate. In this way, the ecology of teaching will gradually move from low level to high level.
Because our products effectively solve the learning needs of users, make students’ learning more efficient and teachers’ teaching more accurate, teachers and students also love to use our products more and more.
We can see the actual effect of use. Through the comparison of use in the last two semesters in 9 junior middle schools in Binjiang District, Zhejiang Province, we can see that not only the amount of use has increased significantly, but also the number of students.
Let’s look at the pilot effect of our products in Yulin, Shaanxi. At present, we have been applied in 7 schools, including Yulin No. 1 middle school and Yulin No. 4 middle school, covering 21 teaching classes and 1106 students. After our statistics and questionnaire return visit, at present, in some school classes using Youdao intelligent learning terminal, the overall amount of students’ homework is reduced by about 30%, the length of homework is reduced by about 21%, the redo error rate of students at a certain knowledge point is reduced from 42% to 26%, and the amount of practice at each knowledge point is reduced from 4 questions to 2.8 questions, a decrease of 30%. At the same time, we also learned that teachers’ lesson preparation time was reduced by 25%, but the pertinence of comments was improved by 20%.
From the perspective of practical application, the application effect of Youdao intelligent learning terminal has indeed been verified on a large scale, which has really helped teachers and students reduce burden and increase efficiency, which also gives us more motivation to further improve our products.
Youdao has always hoped to reduce the teaching and learning burden of students and teachers through scientific and technological means, but it does not reduce the quality of teaching. For this purpose, we have also launched the second generation of products on the basis of the first generation of “Youdao intelligent learning terminal”. Now more than 300 schools in China are using our intelligent learning terminals. At the same time, we have also started the joint construction of teaching and research with regions to provide more accurate academic situation analysis and teaching and research content for different regions, including Hefei, Jiangsu, Xiamen and so on.
We firmly believe in the power of science and technology, and believe that the teaching tools and methods of artificial intelligence can play a great role in the future, improve teaching efficiency by the order of magnitude, and benefit more teachers and students.
Finally, we are savages from Internet Co. We are awe of education. We are very happy to communicate with colleagues from the front line. Welcome principals and teachers who want to know more about our products, and pay attention to the wisdom of public education official account, welcome you to communicate with us.
Thank you!
(blue whale Finance)
