Online study rooms are set to become the rage of 2021. 2021 has started off with a bang, and the Epidemic is back with a vengeance, as if we were back at the beginning of last year. But there are always opportunities in a crisis, and many online industries are hot, especially online Education, and online study rooms are one of them.
Online study rooms, which sounded like a bit of a “chicken and egg”, have become more effective with the arrival of the epidemic. In today’s increasingly aware of the importance of learning, in addition to students and exams and public exams party, self-improvement, the pursuit of a better future has become the goal of more people. But the busy fast-paced Life makes many people can not take out a large block of Time to study systematically, and the “sense of atmosphere” and The “sense of atmosphere” and “sense of ritual” is something we can’t experience when we study alone.
These needs have led to online study rooms. In addition to office meeting software acting as an online study room, many professional platforms have also emerged. But perhaps because of the heat, online study rooms seem to have gone a bit “off the rails”: many tend to be social. Perhaps this is intentional on the part of the developers, or perhaps the online study rooms themselves have a “social” element to them. However, this undermines what users need most, so online study rooms should not be allowed to grow in this direction.
01 Online Study Rooms Solve Many Pain Points and Become a Windfall
Today’s online study rooms can be divided into two types: one is dominated by K12 education and training institutions, and the other is a platform for people to encourage each other to study for their exams. No matter which one it is, the basic function is similar, that is to be able to see what others are doing and how many people are studying with them, thus playing the role of mutual supervision. The difference lies in whether there is a fee, whether there is a limit to the number of people and whether there is a tutor.
So in the early days of this budding demand, some conference office software would also be used as online study rooms. But as the industry hit its stride, platforms developed specifically for this purpose have emerged, such as Timing, Co-Table, Costudy, and Tomato todo.
For example, the recently popular “Costudy” is an animated imitation of a real campus scene. Once you enter, you can choose which building to go to, and each building represents a group of people at different stages of study. After that, you can choose the floor according to your province, and then choose the classroom. You can see at a glance how many people are studying in each classroom and how many people are taking a break.
After entering the classroom, you can select your seat and choose your concentration level. After completing all the steps, the selected seat will have an animated character imitating the user’s study, while the blackboard will display the study goal, study time and other related information to serve as a reminder and supervision.
Other online study room products are much the same, and it sounds like it’s good to get into the game because the technical threshold for wanting to do an online study room isn’t high, and well-known companies like Byte Jump and Xuezhi.com have recently set their sights on this track, so it’s clear that online study rooms are really popular.
As for the reasons why online study rooms are hot, they are still quite diverse.
From the point of view of user demand, online study rooms can play a supervisory role.
It’s human nature to be weak-willed and unable to withstand temptation, especially when you’re alone, so it’s easier to relax your requirements. Therefore, “supervision from others” is a very effective force. But modern people are busy, so there is not much effective socialization, and entertainmentism is popular, so it is easy to find friends to have fun together, but hard to find friends to study together. Coupled with the epidemic, many people cannot even go to libraries and offline study rooms.
Online study rooms can meet these needs and serve as a substitute for offline study rooms to some extent. People have vanity and a desire to perform, especially since some online study rooms have cameras on, and it’s embarrassing to slack off in front of strangers. And online study rooms can provide a strong sense of ritual, which can easily create a positive atmosphere.
With the combined effect of vanity and ritual, you can’t even think about not studying properly. Whether one is studying seriously or performing diligently, one will always benefit over time because the odds are that one will really become that way after performing for a long time. So even if it is a long time in front of strangers to “perform learning”, in the end, more or less will have The “make-believe” element is also involved.
In addition, some online study rooms use a paid mechanism, which makes it easier for people to study properly. After all, it costs money, and it’s not easy to earn money, so even to afford the money you have to work hard. What’s more, if you can achieve your goals through learning, then the money spent will be worth it compared to the benefits gained.
From the perspective of the general environment, knowledge anxiety and employment difficulties have further fueled online self-study rooms.
With the development and progress of the times, more and more people realize the importance of knowledge, “class solidification” and Phenomena such as “in-volume” have stimulated people’s nerves and made them more prone to anxiety. In order to obtain better education and employment opportunities, and to alleviate such anxiety as much as possible, people need to constantly “recharge”, and online self-study rooms are an important part of ensuring the quality of learning. Online study rooms are an important part of quality learning.
Another type of K12 study room is also in high demand. Teenagers have less self-control than adults when it comes to learning. With such study rooms, teachers can better monitor students and reduce lazy behavior. In addition, these study rooms can reduce the pressure on Parents to tutor their children and solve the pain points of parents. In terms of business prospects, Chinese parents are very willing to spend money on education, which in a way guarantees the commercialization of online study rooms.
So it seems that online study rooms are the trend, but the current development direction of online study rooms seems to be a bit “off”.
02 Social attributes ferment and destroy the atmosphere, and the “off” direction needs to be corrected
In Costudy, there is a “Culture palace” with a poetry PK game, where users can PK poems with other users and play the list.
A similar puzzle game can be found in Timing. When you first log in to Timing, in addition to setting up your basic information, you have to record a small video of yourself introducing your learning experience and learning goals. Timing was launched earlier than Costudy, and the “video link” was the main attraction for its users. During the epidemic, Timing was downloaded 19.68 million times.
Similarly, “Table” also allows users to freely connect to each other, so they can find a room that is on mike and apply for it, and then wait for the host to click through.
The study rooms in Timing are divided into free and paid zones, with the free zone easily filling up and the paid zone costing 2 yuan an hour to see webmasters studying or working with their cameras on. In the “table”, there is a daily one-hour continuous mic time, but if you want to get more online continuous mic time, you need to recharge, and it also sells The “gas card”: for example, 25 yuan for 7 days of unlimited continuous wheat sprint card, or 6 yuan for 4 hours of continuous wheat card and so on.
As you can see, online study rooms are set up for a variety of purposes, with features that appear to be helpful for learning, but in fact are likely to affect learning efficiency.
As the netizens say: Costudy is like a game software, Timing is like a video software. It’s not hard to imagine that users enter the online study room in order to “concentrate”, only to find a game or a group of beautiful brothers and sisters in the video. On the other hand, it is easy to waste time on these things, and in the end forget what they came to the study room to do in the end.
The social element is what many Internet platforms are after, and more and more platforms are doing their best to move closer to social, which is obviously good for rapid user growth, as well as improving user activity and stickiness. However, for online study rooms, it is not wise to pursue social. Perhaps the platform can gain more benefits, but this is contrary to the study room users’ demand for quiet, serious and focused study, which is not much good for the long-term development of online study rooms.
In fact, some users have already had unpleasant experiences as a result. In some study rooms, if you’re interested in a classmate in your room, you can view that person’s personal information and study goals, and you can follow them to see how they’re doing.
Although online study rooms have stated that they reject vulgar topics and advertising and marketing, users on both Douban and Zhihu have complained that some online study rooms have people talking about vulgar topics and harassing other users, as well as posting loans and marketing ads on them. In fact, many platforms have added social elements, no matter what the original intention is, it is inevitable that they will develop in the direction of vulgarity, because these needs already exist in human nature, but under the cover of the Internet they are exposed more recklessly, leading to the development of the platform deviated from the right track.
From the perspective of privacy and security, online study rooms require users to give more authorization regarding privacy in order to achieve some functions, which is more likely to trigger users’ concerns about privacy data leakage.
Although online study rooms will be a new Internet trend, they should not be allowed to continue to expand their social attributes without limits, but should take timely measures to guide them properly. For example, they should add more sections that users need, raise the threshold for review, and use technology to filter out users who really want to learn.
Operators of online study rooms need to be clear that creating a focused and quiet learning environment for users is the top priority. So the most important thing to do is to block complex information flow and remove as many social attributes as possible that can easily distract users.
In short, online study room is a good direction, the future is unlimited, if the direction of the deviation and destroyed is really a pity, so take some measures is necessary. In fact, to attract users, it is not necessary to be social, for example, to ensure that the basic functions do not deviate, to ensure that the case of excessive entertainment and socialization, online study rooms can also be combined with advanced technologies such as AR in the future, so that the “learning atmosphere The “learning atmosphere” is more realistic.
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