VIPKID and TESOL announce deepening of strategic cooperation and exploring foreign professional training with the use of big data.
Recently TESOL, International authoritative academic institution, which stands for “teaching English to speakers of other languages”, and Chinas online education unicorn, VIPKID jointly announced to take the cooperation to a higher level. Both companies will deepen and expand the scope of their partnership. Will further provide targeted professional training for foreign teachers on the VIPKID platform.
It is reported that with the deepening of the cooperation the two parties will also explore the use of big data in the field. It will help increase teaching effectiveness, help teacher with a career plan, curriculum content development etc.
TESOL, founded in 1996 is a global English teachers association that provides English language services to non-native English learners. It is committed to improving the level of English teaching across the world. TESOL related certificates are regarded as proof of worlds authoritative English teaching professional qualification.
In 2016 VIPKID and TESOL established a strategic partnership, and the two sides jointly developed more than 250 hours of professional teacher training content for online English teaching. This Data shows that more than 30,000 teachers have completed the training through the VIPKID platform. This further deepening cooperation will promote more VIPKID foreign teachers to receive targeted online English teaching professional training.
“Encouraging teachers to benefit children”, Founder of VIPKID CINDY Mi said, “The cooperation between VIPKID and TESOL has been very successful. More and more teachers are improving their English teaching skills through training. Online education has opened up careers for many teachers and the deepened cooperation will empower even more teachers to choose the path of online teaching, so that the children around the world can receive high-quality education”
At an interview with CNBC CINDY Mi said, when asked about if VIPKID was more than just an education company, that “VIPKid connects 4 to 15-year-old Chinese students, who want to learn English, after school, at the comfort of their homes, to teachers in North America, in the United States and Canada, so that teachers can teach the students, live, live streaming, real-time, one-on-one, in the comfort of their own home, as well, but they will then learn together, through this iPad, or this computer, so this is a connection between students and teachers that’s never happened before in human history, but is creating such a great learning efficacy for our students, because they’re so engaged with their big friends, and they’re looking forward to having the classes every day. So, we were founded in 2013, and by now, we have half a million students, and over 60,000 teachers, that work with us on a weekly basis”.
When asked about whether she sees VIPKid becoming a model for schooling, in decades ahead, she replied: “we have such huge, tremendous respect for all educators, online and offline, trying to make it work better. Right? So, our thesis is, everything would be blended, or partially online, because it just helps with the data, it helps with efficiency, efficacy, everything can be so much more engaging and enriched, but I think the direction, generally, we would believe in, is one, it’s going to be more personalized, because of the technology connection, teacher/student interaction, content, designed in a knowledge graph way, where we can personalize experience, and secondly, I think it’s going to be more global. No student would only learn from the teachers in the country only, but, you know, summer camp is a good example, where American students will go to Europe, so a more global learning community would be there. And then, lastly, I think, more access to education, affordable education, where technology really helps lower down the cost, bridging better, connecting better, being efficient, teachers get paid more, students pay less, so we can then help-, there are still a billion people out there where they only have 3 US dollar a day as a living expense, so education is a luxury. So when we can then implement all these great technologies, like, learning, for all these students, so learning is never a luxury, and then we can really build a personalized, affordable, and global online learning platform, for all the children. So, we want to start-, one sentence-, we want to start with afterschool tutoring, figure out how students can learn English better, and then apply this, and help more rural schools, and then gradually, you know, what we can do for the learning community and education field, to make learning better and more efficient for the students. That’s our goal”.
With already high tensions between the US and China regarding the cybersecurity concerns, TESOL might be forced to take a step back from this cooperation. The news of cybersecurity has been a hot topic in both China and the US since last month.