The winter vacation itself is a battleground for online education. The sudden "COVID-19" epidemic delayed the opening of schools around the country. Under the requirement of "no suspension of classes", education departments and schools have opened "air classes". On the other battlefield behind this, technical service manufacturers are also holding their ground. Netease Yunxin, a communication and video cloud technology brand owned by Netease, quickly deployed its online education solutions to ensure the normal learning of thousands of students in special periods.
"Cloud class" encounters technical difficulties, and the online class is not simple
With the help of Internet technology, "Cloud Classroom" has been rapidly promoted throughout the country. The Wanxin Mobile Campus APP in Anhui Province provides free air classroom services for schools in the province to help them carry out distance teaching. Online courses of out of school educational institutions are also popular. New Oriental, TAL and other well-known platforms have taken quick action and opened massive course resources for free during the epidemic.
However, in the early days of the widespread use of "cloud classroom", all parties encountered many problems. Teachers were forced to be anchors, online classes collapsed, and 60 second voice screen brushing classes. Many people teased the current situation of online classes: teachers were tired, students were bored, parents were suffering, and the learning effect was difficult to achieve the expectations.
It can be seen that it is difficult to meet the special requirements of online teaching scenes by directly using the live broadcast platform or conventional communication software. In fact, the online education platform is a complex software system, which needs to solve many technical difficulties, including platform building, operation and maintenance, and customized development.
First, it is difficult to quickly build the platform. Educational institutions need to invest a lot of time costs, human costs, and money costs to build online teaching platforms on their own. The feasibility of building online teaching platforms quickly after the onset of the epidemic is relatively low. In addition, the audio and video technology used for online teaching scenes belongs to the field of high difficulty and rapid development in the entire technical field, and there are certain technical barriers for the research and development specialized in online education systems.
The second is the difficulty of operation and maintenance. The access of a large number of users in a short period of time will cause high concurrency problems, leading to delays, stuttering and other phenomena, affecting the teaching rhythm of teachers and the learning effect of students. Excessive influx of users will even lead to system collapse, affecting the stability and security of the platform. In addition, students' learning terminals are diverse, and parents' mobile phones, tablets, and computers will be requisitioned for children's online classes. Therefore, online education platforms need to solve the problem of cross terminal access through technology adaptation. The diversity of user terminals also increases the difficulty of platform development and maintenance.
More importantly, the online classroom is not a direct copy of the offline classroom scene. It needs to develop special functional modules according to the online environment. For example, for different scenarios such as one-on-one, small class teaching and large-scale live teaching, technical optimization of connection methods and network links is required. To meet the requirements of online real-time interaction, audio and video connection, blackboard writing demonstration, document sharing and other functions are needed. In addition to live teaching, the teaching method also has the demand of video on demand, which needs corresponding functions to achieve.
Netease Yunxin has multiple technical support, and online teaching has strong guarantee
Netease Yunxin has provided online education solutions based on the characteristics of this air class, which have been applied to multiple platforms including Wanxin Mobile Campus APP. This scheme focuses on the technical ability of audio and video, supplemented by the expansion ability of IM, interactive whiteboard, live on-demand function, etc., and implements stronger technical support for the network and terminals, thus solving the worries of online classes.
Figure: Online education solutions provided by Netease Yunxin
Efficient distribution of global nodes and omni channel coverage of terminal adaptation
At the network level, Yunxin's billion level architecture can effectively cope with high concurrency, maintain the stability and high availability of the platform, and easily cope with the traffic of ten thousand people in live broadcast classes. Massive node resources deployed globally make teachers and students in any region accessible.
For the problem of multi terminal access, NetEase Yunxin has formed an omni channel coverage across mobile terminals such as APP, applet or H5, PC browser and smart large screen with adaptation technology, clearing the access barriers between terminal devices. No matter what kind of equipment students use to access, they can achieve one touch and one touch.
Figure: Schematic diagram of technical architecture of Netease Yunxin online education solution
Based on audio and video technology, technology optimization ensures high-quality communication
According to the characteristics and requirements of the teaching scene, Netease Yunxin supports point-to-point call and multi-party call modes, and supports video, audio, whiteboard text and other communication methods.
Figure: Wanxin Mobile Campus APP Online Classroom Interface
On the campus APP application of Wanxin Mobile, teachers can organize online classes for 40-50 people in the whole class. Yunxin provides audio, video and voice connection methods to enable teachers to communicate with students in real time while giving video lectures, so that students can feel like a real classroom scene. The self owned live broadcast service has the recording function, so students can review the video and review the classroom content at any time.
At the same time, for the technical difficulties of audio and video call quality, Yunxin has taken a number of technical optimization measures. For example, in order to solve the possible problems of delay and jam, the segmented QoS technology, bandwidth detection and congestion control technology are used to improve the network smoothness. Take video repair methods for packet loss, delay, network jitter and other problems. Netease Yunxin can control the actual delay of customers within 200ms, and the weak network optimization technology can still keep the call smooth even if the packet loss rate is 70%. After testing, Yunxin's audio effect is better in the same environment.
Rich auxiliary functions to meet the needs of online learning
In addition to audio and video functions, Netease Yunxin provides interactive whiteboard, chat room management, intelligent expansion and other auxiliary functions for the special needs of online classes.
Figure: Customized teaching whiteboard function
In the air class of Wanxin Mobile campus APP, teachers can share screens or documents while giving online lessons, and cast blackboard books and handouts to students. Customized teaching whiteboard can simulate handwriting operation, and the teacher's demonstration can be carried out online, just like the PPT or blackboard demonstration in offline classroom, so that the remote teaching students can be dynamic and intuitive.
In order to improve the user experience, Yunxin has also launched intelligent expansion functions, providing convenient functions such as voice conversion, face recognition, beauty and virtual background, and intelligent monitoring.
At present, Wanxin Mobile Campus APP has served primary and middle school students and teachers in Hefei, Wuhu, Ma'anshan and other places in Anhui Province through the online education solution of NetEase Yunxin, and has achieved good results. It can be said that the strong combination of education and technology has played an irreplaceable role in winning the fight against COVID-19.
Netease Yunxin also said that giving play to the heart of technology not only serves such a special period, but also accumulates experience for the long-term development of Internet+education, and accumulates energy for technological innovation through continuous practical polishing.
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NetEaseYunXin is a PaaS service product integrating NetEase's 20 years of IM and audio and video technology. The communication and video cloud services from NetEase's core technology architecture are stable, easy to use, and have comprehensive functions. It is committed to providing the world's leading technical capabilities and scenario based solutions. Developers can quickly realize functions including IM, audio and video call, live broadcast, on-demand, interactive whiteboard, SMS, etc. by integrating the client SDK and the cloud OPEN API.
