Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the education industry has been deeply affected. On February 14th, the Ministry of Education issued a notice, strictly prohibiting offline training activities in extracurricular training institutions, and the training institutions responded to the call and ceased offline teaching.

With the large-scale suspension of offline training activities by training institutions, online education has ushered in an opportunity for development. Under the epidemic, almost all employees of the education and training industry have shifted to online training. Against this backdrop, the K12 education open platform of New Oriental Education & Technology Group (New Oriental) launched the "Safe Harbor Plan" for education and training institutions across the country, opening up its live broadcast cloud system to help training institutions tide over the difficult times.

After the city of Wuhan was locked down, Sichuan immediately activated a Level Ⅰ response to a major public health emergency. Zhang, the principal of Youjia Education and Training School in Ya'an, Sichuan, which has more than 3,000 enrolled students and a team of 143 staff, keenly realized the severity of the situation. Should the institution transition to online teaching if more than 3,000 students are to stop attending classes after the holiday period? If it does transition online, how can it overcome the difficulty of lacking an online gene and technical products?

Similar concerns also plagued He'er Mo Education and Training School in Jiande, Zhejiang. Under the suspension of classes, ensuring that more than 500 students have access to education became an urgent matter, and live streaming became the school's optimal choice. However, due to concerns about parental acceptance, the impact of live streaming on teaching effectiveness, and the selection of various live streaming platforms, He'er Mo had been hesitating to launch its live streaming project.

To ensure that students continue their studies and to minimize losses, the transition to online teaching has become the most frequent topic of discussion for training institutions. However, many training institutions lack experience in online teaching. Questions such as how to choose a platform, how to ensure classroom effectiveness, and how to satisfy parents have become issues that training institutions must consider. As of the end of 2019, the partners of New Oriental's Open Platform for Education exceed 4,500. Faced with the outbreak of the epidemic, the first thought of New Oriental's education platform was to help its partner institutions smoothly transition to online teaching. On January 23rd, New Oriental's Open Platform for Education officially launched the "Safe Harbor Plan," providing free live streaming systems, course content, and operational support to partner institutions on the open platform. All partner institutions, including Magic School, LeWaiJiao, and Future Good Lessons, can use the live broadcast teaching system of the live streaming cloud for online teaching.

Youjia Education and He'er Mo are both partners of the education open platform. With the help of the live broadcast cloud system, they have smoothly transitioned their face-to-face teaching to online, and He'er Mo not only achieved zero student dropout from the first to the third period but also enrolled 220 new students for the third period.

In addition to the live broadcast teaching system, New Oriental's Open Platform for Education also offers free access to the live broadcast cloud system for offline training institutions nationwide, providing support for online live broadcast teaching solutions, and setting up a special team to continuously follow up on the opening and implementation of the live broadcast system, as well as ongoing operations, with 24/7 online problem-solving. As of now, New Oriental's live streaming cloud has supported tens of thousands of education and training institutions. The epidemic has driven the development of the education To B industry, and Alibaba, Tencent, and other leading internet companies are gradually joining in. On the one hand, this confirms the broad prospects of the To B industry, while on the other hand, it intensifies the competitive situation in the education and training industry.

In the short term, technology-related tools are also receiving more attention. For this reason, Alibaba's DingTalk and Tencent Classroom quickly entered the market. However, in the medium to long term, companies with deep involvement in the education industry may go further as online education is far more than simply moving offline teaching to an online live streaming platform.

As a pioneer in the education and training industry, New Oriental officially launched the New Oriental Education Open Platform in 2018. To date, New Oriental has delivered its 17 years of technological accumulation, over a billion test questions, and more than 5 million educational and research content items, as well as high-quality teaching staff, to 260 cities and regions across the country through products such as Future Magic School, LeWaiJiao, and live streaming cloud, facilitating a more equitable and high-quality education.

Companies with experience and technical reserves in both online and offline education are set to accelerate their development. This epidemic presents both a challenge and an opportunity for enterprises involved in online education, including New Oriental. The education vertical field is constantly undergoing fierce competition and change. New Oriental's Open Platform for Education, as a provider of solutions for the education industry, will continue to empower its partners' growth and drive industry development.