"Hello, do you still need a teacher? I have experience in online teaching and hope to be of help!" Teacher Gao from the Tomorrow Education Group received a special phone call. The caller used to be a Xueersi teacher and, upon seeing the announcement from Tomorrow, took the initiative to call and "request to return."

In the face of the epidemic, ensuring the academic success of students across the country is on the minds of all education professionals.

On January 26, Tomorrow Education Group issued an announcement, announcing the establishment of a 100 million yuan special fund to fight the epidemic, with 20 million donated to the Wuhan Charity Federation and 80 million used for education, to help children across the country "continue learning despite school closures" to the maximum extent.

Uniting the whole industry in solidarity

The first to be impacted by the epidemic were national primary and secondary education and training institutions. As the epidemic developed, various regions successively issued notifications for the suspension of classes at educational and training institutions. Transitioning from offline to online was an inevitable solution for these institutions in response to the epidemic.

In response, Tomorrow Education's open platform urgently released the "Safe Harbor Plan," announcing that before the end of the epidemic, all educational and training institutions across the country could use the online teaching system of the live broadcast cloud for free. At the same time, the open platform's partners could also enjoy free support such as different types of course content and operational support.

The promise behind this is more dedication. The launch of the Safe Harbor Plan coincided with the Chinese New Year holiday, but many employees took the initiative to work during the holiday. They were essentially online all day, actively inquiring about the situation of cooperating organizations and communicating their needs.

For the open platform, its development so far has not been possible without the support of its industry partners. At this critical juncture, partners within the open platform have chosen to provide practical assistance to educational institutions and parents across the country, and have stood firmly together with the industry to overcome this difficult period.

Providing support for public schools

As the epidemic developed, the Ministry of Education issued a notice about the postponement of the start of the 2020 spring semester. The start date for the spring semester for local schools, primary and secondary schools, and kindergartens is to be determined by the local education administrative department in accordance with the unified deployment of the local party committee and government.

Postponing the start of school is a necessary measure to counter the spread of the epidemic. But how to ensure that students continue to learn at home without falling behind has become the most concerning issue for education authorities and schools in various regions. In response to this situation, Tomorrow Smart Education announced that it would provide a free live teaching system to all primary and secondary schools across the country.

Weixian County in Hebei Province is a designated poverty alleviation county by the Ministry of Education. The local education authority contacted Tomorrow Smart Education immediately after seeing the announcement. After coordinating the demand, Tomorrow Smart Education immediately took action and provided online training for 59 teachers in Weixian County on the afternoon of January 29. According to the plan, nearly 3000 students in Weixian County will start classes online on February 1.

For traditional public school teachers, using the live broadcasting system to teach online is something new. In order to ensure that teachers can quickly become familiar with the system, employees of Tomorrow Smart Education worked overnight to create a "quick-start" manual. On the optimized live broadcast system, teachers only need to download the corresponding software on their computers, and students can attend classes at home via computers, phones, or tablets. During the live teaching process, teachers can freely open courseware and engage in related board work. In order to assess student learning outcomes, teachers can use the answer tool at any time to understand the students' mastery of the material.

At 8:00 am on January 31, the senior high school third-grade students at Nanjing Liuhe Experimental High School officially began using the Tomorrow Live Cloud for online classes. 67 teaching teachers provided online classes for 571 students in 17 classes. As the teachers had received thorough training and preparation before class, all of the students and teachers had done a rehearsal the previous night and the official class was very successful. One teacher said in the teacher communication group, "I originally thought that because of the holiday and the online broadcast, the students would not be very engaged, but I did not expect them to be more active in answering questions than in the classroom!" On the same day, the First High School of Puyang City in Henan Province also started classes. 31 subject teachers taught nearly 600 students using the system for online classes.

As of January 30, Tomorrow had received demand from nearly two hundred schools from all over the country (including demand from district and county entities), covering over 200,000 students, across 26 provinces and autonomous regions, including Guangdong, Hubei, Ningxia, Beijing, Jiangsu, Xinjiang, Shandong, and others. A total of 66 schools have been opened for testing on the platform.

Free online classes for children nationwide

In order to help more students "continue learning despite school closures", Xueersi Online School under Tomorrow announced the provision of free live broadcast classes for users nationwide. Xueersi Online School will mobilize hundreds of its own teachers across the country to provide free live broadcast classes and self-study classes synchronized with the school schedule from Monday to Friday starting February 10. The courses cover all subjects from the first grade of primary school to the third grade of high school. Children can study systemically through the Xueersi Online School APP or the official website at any time and any place.

Starting from February 1 (the eighth day of the first month of the lunar calendar), Xueersi Online School began full-day trial classes. Elementary and middle school students with pre-class and review needs can begin trial lessons, and the free live broadcast classes will continue until the end of the epidemic.

Beginning from January 26, Youdao's Kmf.com provided free online courses and test preparation services to examinees in Hubei and nationwide. It offers online TOEFL, IELTS, GRE, and GMAT courses during the winter vacation so that candidates can study efficiently at home.

Aiqidao under Tomorrow launched an inclusive pricing go chess course, which is free for students from Hubei. After the registration deadline on February 1, 50% of the course fees will be donated to the epidemic-stricken areas.

Starting from today until February 17, Tomorrow's Panda Doctor will open 120 sessions of encyclopedic knowledge courses, originally priced at 388 yuan, for free to all children nationwide.

Tomorrow hopes to open all the video learning resources on its online platform for PC users until the end of the epidemic. The platform offers a variety of courses, including courses on humanity and literacy, diverse and colorful courses on early childhood education, and subject-based courses with technological support and interesting content.

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The epidemic is fierce, but all sectors of the country have fully mobilized. Education gives hope. All the educators at Tomorrow believe that no winter is insurmountable, and spring will surely come.