Putting themselves through school－virtual learning

Stella Fang, 25, may be cooped up at home like many other Hong Kong residents, with the city still in the grip of the novel coronavirus pandemic. But, she's snowed under, keeping herself posted with anything that could help her build her future career and deal with the challenges in an unsettled and competitive world.

In the morning, she does her regular stint as a marketing specialist. After that, she takes lessons sponsored by her company on a virtual learning platform. When she's off the clock, she switches to Photoshop and Premiere following online videos after paying a subscription fee of 88 yuan ($13) to a learning platform.

Sometimes, Fang also needs to prepare content for her online sharing dog behavior training program as she's a member of a dog training center and gets paid for that as a part-time work.

She finds it fulfilling when she's busy taking and giving virtual lessons. "All these things make me less anxious, given the external environment is quite disturbing," she said.

The novel coronavirus outbreak has come as a big boost for virtual learning providers, just like many other online businesses, with people confined to their homes by social-distancing rules more keen to spend money buying knowledge.

Online paid knowledge is a concept covering courses, lectures, information sharing, and question-and-answer sessions using audio, video, texts and graphics. Platforms package these contents as a digital product and monetize it via subscription fees or a one-off payment.

The products these platforms offer can be generally divided into two main categories－practical skills such as programing language and product operation, and broader historical or cultural knowledge.

The former caters to the growing demand from people who are eager to learn and obtain information, as the economic fallout from the pandemic has piled pressure on the job market, while the latter is to satisfy people's curiosity and help enrich their spiritual life amid the public-health crisis.

According to a report by data provider iiMedia Research published in February this year, about 63.1 percent of 1,750 people surveyed have purchased online personal development products during the pandemic. Most of them set their sights on career development and professional training.

"People are thinking and planning more for the future in the current uncertain climate. They would like to improve their competitiveness by learning more to avoid lagging behind their peers and to prepare for potential opportunities in future," said Zhang Yi, chief executive and chief analyst of iiMedia Research.

It also proves that people need online paid knowledge products not only as a learning tool, but also as a pool for mental support.

Besides ordinary content, major domestic podcast service providers have generated coronavirus-related content since the global health crisis erupted, including prevention tips and mental-health issues, with intense public focus on how to prevent and control a pandemic.

The integrated content and more time at home have led to effective outcomes as platforms have recruited thousands of new users. Podcasting platform Qingting FM said the number of new users, using time and clicks, saw a huge increase during the period. Xiaoetong, a Shenzhen-based technology service provider focusing on paid content, said registration has gone up multiple-fold since the Lunar New Year.

Zhang believes once new users have started with online paid knowledge, the chances of them continuing to use it are very high. Although the number of users is likely to slack slightly after the pandemic eases, the pullback is limited, he said.

Huge market

China's online paid knowledge market has been developing for the past nine years. Spurred by people's greater purchasing power and internet's rapid development, the sector has seen rapid growth since 2016 with all kinds of players entering the market. Some big names like Ximalaya FM and iGet had then started tapping into the paid knowledge business.

iiMedia's report showed the market hit 27.8 billion yuan last year, and is expected to reach 39.2 billion yuan this year. The number of users last year surged to 360 million, mostly born after the 1980s and 1990s and living in first-and second-tier cities on the Chinese mainland.

Although more people are signing up, they do not bother to complete classes. Data from DT Caijing showed that 32 percent of the users could finish all the courses on career development－the highest among all the categories. The completion rates of courses in law, technology, art and natural science are only about 10 percent.

"It's high enough if an online paid knowledge product's completion rate can reach 40 percent," said Zhang. "The main reason users can't continue with the courses is the quality of the contents."

He said setting up a paid knowledge platform is like running a school and only those with a high-quality faculty can stand out from the crowd.

The quality of the content on China's learning platforms is relatively superficial and patchy compared with some mature ones in the United States and Europe, said Zhang.

Many large platforms make use of the reputation of some cultural figures and key opinion leaders to attract subscribers, but their content is not deep enough. Meanwhile, iiMedia's report found that users are paying more attention to professionalism in the content, rather than the notability of the content providers.

Fang's company, an independent distributor in Hong Kong, has chosen Coursera－a California-based online learning platform that offers classes taught by instructors at top universities like Stanford and Johns Hopkins－for its teams' advanced studies.

Each team member is required to pass at least one course per quarter. They can choose whatever course that they think inspires them. The whole team will sit down and share some takeaways from enrolled courses at the end of every quarter.

Coursera now offers 4,500 courses with 160 university partners and 40 companies, including Google and IBM. Similar to those of China, the most popular courses on Coursera include Python programming language classes and a class called Write Professional Emails in English.

Considering the growing demand for knowledge following rapid economic development, Zhang believes there's still plenty of room for the sector to grow in China.

In future, the number of new large comprehensive paid knowledge players will decrease, while "small but unique" vertical paid knowledge platforms targeting certain specific areas, scenarios and user groups can still have plenty of room for development.