Big Data, AI & the future of online teachers: Key takeaways from the GET China conference
Before I get into the nitty-gritty, for those that don’t know — GET China is a world-leading EdTech event and it took place in China last week. I’m always pumped to spend some time in China, but I was even more so when I walked through the doors…. Why? Well, check out the picture below — shout out to the GET China team for pulling together this awesome booth 😍.
(Sorry. But, I mean — it’s pretty dope, right?)
There’s nothing more inspiring than being at a conference full of people who believe in the power of education. Everyone wanted to know: how can we use tech to make our schools better? How do we use tech to further help our students learn?
We were pretty slammed at the booth, but I managed to sneak away for a few talks on Day 1.
(Side note: GET China translated all their presentations and so I used an earpiece to listen, this was an awesome thing to have set up! And made the event all the more accessible.)
The first was by Dr. Eric Yang, CEO of iTutorGroup.
And what a presentation it was! He spoke about some of the issues the online teaching platforms face and how those platforms might evolve over time.
An important piece of the talk focused on why the 1:1 tutoring model isn’t necessarily the best option for students or even the best way to get the most out of a student. Obviously, it’s not ideal to put a teacher in front of 30 students (the technology isn’t right for that, yet!)
But he predicted that with the current crazy competition and demand for teachers (particularly North Americans) that the 1:1 model won’t be sustainable for much longer. Pricing models will have to push 1:1 sessions to premium top of the market students. Based on Teach Away research, the average pay is $16–23 per hour for a North American ESL tutor, with some teachers making as much as $35.
For online platforms to be able to teach adequately, they are are going to need to shift the balance and introduce more 1:3 and 1:5 classes. iTutor has found this online classroom size to be manageable, with teachers still able to personalize it for the students.
One interesting note from Dr. Yang was that research from iTutor Group shows that 1:5 or even 1:15 showed better student outcomes than 1:1 due to competition created in a multi-student session.
This got me thinking on whether the level of customization in current 1:1 models are as personalized as they need to be to affect student outcomes — or could 1:3 or 1:5 provide the same level of personalization, but with better outcomes driven by student competition? Of course with big data and advancements in AI, I’m sure real personalization isn’t far off.
One insight that really stuck with me was that they’re planning to integrate AI in the future. They see this as a way to increase the number of teachers — as the tutors won’t have to be subject matter experts. Instead, they can focus more on using humor and offering a supportive element to the students.
Another talk that blew me away was by TAL CEO Zhang Bangxin.
TAL has been innovating in the EdTech space from day one. Their mission is to enable education with technology and one of the ideas that stuck out to me was this: Passion, energy, and care are more important in tech than big data. The emphasis needs to be on empathy when we’re designing new teaching models and looking to bring tech further into the classroom 🤩.
He also spoke about how tech can help improve education in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as well as rural areas that have a harder time attracting teachers to this location. We see this at Teach Away all the time and think that both tech and removing friction from the recruitment process can help even the teacher quality gap between smaller areas and big cities.
I also gave a talk ahead of the launch of our second annual International Education Recruitment Report.
I’m not going to go on about my own speech 😳, but I do want to bring up some of the points I touched on.
The IERR is a massive research report that we do every year, diving into our network and collecting the responses of 19,072 teaching candidates and 107 international schools. We compile the data so we can share insights that will help schools improve their teacher recruitment strategies. It’s pretty exhaustive and it’s the sort of research all schools need to tap into.
Here are a couple of slides to give you a taster!
If you’re curious and want to find out more, you can download a copy of my GET China slide deck here.
Sign up for a copy of the full report once it’s launched.
Finally, before I go, no conference talk is complete without the obligatory crowd selfie!
