Like tentacles, the real-time Internet extends through the sharing of scenes, linking our offline and online lives to form an inseparable network. As social live streaming, online education and video conferencing have become an indispensable part of people’s lives, smart watches, smart work lights, dual recording of videos, video verification, remote consultation and other new scenarios are also emerging.

In our view, exploring the future of the real-time Internet is a process of “glimmer of insight.” Therefore, Sonnet launched a series of plans to capture “light” tour, hoping to share new scenes of real-time interaction from the perspective of the combination of scene, business and technology, and see how they “insight” and “grasp” the future light of the real-time Internet.

Like tentacles, the real-time Internet extends through the sharing of scenes, linking our offline and online lives to form an inseparable network. As social live streaming, online education and video conferencing have become an indispensable part of people’s lives, smart watches, smart work lights, dual recording of videos, video verification, remote consultation and other new scenarios are also emerging.

In our view, exploring the future of the real-time Internet is a process of “glimmer of insight.” Therefore, Sonnet launched a series of plans to capture “light” tour, hoping to share new scenes of real-time interaction from the perspective of the combination of scene, business and technology, and see how they “insight” and “grasp” the future light of the real-time Internet.

In the fifth installment, we will talk about the hot scene of “online self-study room” in the field of online education.

Postgraduate entrance examination, civil servant examination, final examination…… Where is the best place to study? In the past, we would choose the library, study room, but now you can through the “online study room”, without going out, open the camera, together with cloud deskmates online self-study, mutual supervision.

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Recently, “online self-study room” has become a new scene aimed at online education industry, online education giants have entered the game. For example, in the new product “online self-study room” of Xueersi Online school, teachers and students can conduct self-study in the form of “1 versus N” video and live mic. Qingbei Online School, the K12 online class brand of Great Education under Bytedance, has also incubated an online self-study room project. A few years ago, self-study apps with the main functions of timing, group learning and meeting like-minded learning partners have already accumulated certain popularity among students. Now, the entry of online education platforms has stimulated more imagination in the scene of “online self-study room”.

Let’s start by reviewing the timeline of the “online study room” scenario:

Through the development timeline of online study room, we find that the current online study room scene is mainly divided into two product models:

1. Self-study live + social scene:

Tongzhuo, Timing and other apps are the main ones, which basically do not involve question banks, problem solving, teaching materials, training and other services or cash channels directly related to education. All the design and operation focus on “how to keep users learning”.

Take “Tongzhuo APP” for example. In 2019, Sonnet took the lead in providing real-time audio and video technology for “Tongzhuo”, supporting the launch of innovative scenes in online study rooms. “Deskmate” online, on the basis of the study area to join some social elements, here you can call on your friends to join common room to live to study, and with the help of a video even wheat functions such as supervision, encourage each other together, just like you can also find many also in one’s deceased father grind, toefl or take an examination of civil servants like-minded people learn together, You can also join study groups to discuss academic issues.

“Neighbor” App

The arrival of the epidemic in 2020 promoted the outbreak of online education, and many students were forced to transfer from offline self-study rooms to online. Meanwhile, students who were separated from the school environment gradually realized the importance of learning environment, and many students began to study in online self-study rooms. On the one hand, a good study environment makes you more engaged and engaged, and on the other hand, you are more motivated by the presence of serious students around you.

Data from Tongdesk.com shows that in the second half of 2020, the average time spent in online self-study rooms increased by 15% month-on-month on average, and in November 2020, the average time spent in online self-study rooms peaked at 1,700 minutes, equivalent to one hour per person studying on the platform every day. Through these data can reflect, not even wheat learning has become a kind of new learning habits, promoted some outbreaks users will self-study shifted from offline to online, but at the end of the outbreak period, using online self-study user is not dropped, instead of keeping the growth, through habits, online self-study has become a part of the user the important link in the process of learning.

Self-study apps featuring live self-study and social scenes have solved users’ needs for online group self-study with friends, mutual supervision and encouragement, and also provided social needs for some users to find like-minded students. For platforms and manufacturers, the business models of self-study apps can be summarized as follows:

  • For example, self-study live broadcast lianmai of “Deskmate” and “Timing” needs to be paid. Users can purchase monthly, quarterly and annual cards of Lianmai as well as fuel cards by hour.
  • The platform can build the user flow pool through online self-study first, and then add social and other games later, which can effectively reduce the cost of acquiring customers.

2. Scenario of online self-study class for online supervised learning by teachers:

We are mainly engaged in xueersi online school, Chalk Education, Qingbei online school, etc. We provide extra-curricular value-added services for the existing paying students. Learning and thought, for example, online school online study area by “1 to N” in the form of video even Michael live, connecting students and teachers, students and students, remote build mutual learning atmosphere, students can do homework together in the teacher started the study lounges, self-study can ask questions in the process, the teacher online FAQ, finish the homework of the show in front of the camera can withdraw from the rest.

The teacher’s link in the online self-study room of the education platform can play three main roles:

Real-time supervision: compared with mutual supervision between students, the supervised learning mode of teacher and camera is more binding and improves the efficiency of self-study/homework. Through teachers’ q&A, summary and encouragement, they can help and supplement the paid courses such as large classes and fine classes on the education platform. For example, the dual-teacher live large class mode is one of the mainstream teaching modes in the online education industry. The main teacher is responsible for teaching, and the homeroom teacher (i.e., the tutor) is responsible for the tutoring before and after class. The emergence of the tutor makes up for the lack of interaction in the large class, and also provides the tutoring service before and after class. The emergence of online self-study rooms will further contract the study and practice scenes outside the classroom, so as to cover users’ study life in a more all-round way, and establish a sense of intimacy. It solves the pain points of parents’ tutoring, helps parents solve the problem of having no time to tutor and not being able to tutor their children, and also reduces the parent-child conflicts brought by tutoring homework and eases family relations.

On the whole, the first self-study APP represented by “Tongzhuo” mainly focuses on allowing users to spontaneously study in groups, supervise and encourage each other with friends or like-minded students, and make the learning atmosphere more relaxed by adding social elements. The second kind of educational APP has a certain self-study management system and guidance teaching purpose. The effect of supervised learning is more obvious. Teachers’ q&A and guidance can also help students grow up. At present, Sonnet has provided two solutions of self-study live scene + self-study class scene for many mainstream self-study apps and online education platforms in China:

  • Solutions for self-study live broadcast scenarios: see the following figure

The technical characteristics of this scene are mainly divided into three aspects: 1. The number of channels is not limited; 2. Currently, the number of students in the mainstream self-study live broadcast scenario is 4-9, while sds.com’s solution can support up to 32 people with unlimited audience. 3. The audience side has two technical solutions: speed live broadcast and bypass push stream.

  • Self-study scenario solution: see the figure below

The technical characteristics of this scene are mainly divided into four aspects: 1. The number of channel members is about 100; 2. In the general scenario of self-study class, there are 10 users connected to the mic, including 9 students and 1 teacher, while sonnet’s solution can support up to 32 users connected to the MIC; 3. Students turn on the camera by default and do not punch the microphone; 4. Teachers patrol other students’ screens and monitor the status of students’ self-study.

The technical director of Tongdesk.com said that sonnet provides a simple full terminal coverage API, allowing developers to create a variety of audio and video interactive scenes to meet the needs of all kinds of live streaming. At the beginning of the first edition, my deskmate chose soundnet for the audio and video module of the self-study room. With its low delay, high stability and mature and leading technical architecture, my deskmate users can feel face-to-face and positive learning atmosphere online. The technical support team connects smoothly, finds and solves problems in a timely and efficient manner, grows each other, and realizes the normal and orderly update and iteration of versions.

Qiu Yuanyuan, head of the education industry product at Agora, said that from 1-to-1 online tutoring to dual-teacher classes, from intelligent work lights to online self-study rooms, we can see that education platforms, especially giants, have been exploring new scenes and new boundaries of online education. A new scene may only take 1-2 months to explode. As a leading real-time audio and video technology service provider in the industry, sonnet, on the one hand, through continuous improvement of technology, provides developers and customers with more market development, more stable, higher quality real-time interactive solutions. On the other hand, Sonnet is also willing to work with customers to explore innovative education scenes, such as super small class, AI interactive class, music teaching, gamification teaching and other scenes launched by Sonnet, and create more value for the online education industry through continuous innovation of technology and education scenes.