How Online Education Giant Hujiang Connects Teachers From the Globe to Millions of Chinese E-learners

SHANGHAI, July 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Last month, Yue Yingchun from China's EdTech unicorn, Hujiang, was interviewed by EL gazette on how an e-learning philosophy is connecting teachers around the world to millions of Chinese students.

Hujiang is an online education company with more than 110 million users, over 20,000 courses and in cooperation with over 500 schools and organizations. It has evolved into a leading professional e-learning platform in China.

From the interview, Hujiang was compared to Chinese giants like Alibaba and Weibo -- which are huge in their home market.

When speaking of this interesting phenomenon, Yue explained that given China's population and growing need for online commercial services, the volume of business has an obvious advantage of becoming a giant if the products and services are of excellent quality and reasonably priced.

Hujiang was not born to become a business. It was born to accomplish a mission: to make education easier, fairer and more enjoyable through the Internet.

Before joining Hujiang, Yue was an ELT professional and she has never thought about working for an online company until she noticed Hujiang.

"The reason I joined Hujiang has a lot to do with my background, my original dream and Hujiang's mission. I am from the countryside and experienced its limitations and lack of educational resources. I selected English as my major. Luckily for me, English is like a magical key, opening a door to an amazing world," Yue said.

Just like all the college students who embrace the dream, Yue opened her own English training school before graduating from university and ran it for over a year in the hope that she could influence more people and open doors for them too.

Unfortunately, she encountered loads of challenges in acquiring excellent teachers and educational resources at the time. Then she had the blessing to work for the world's largest English education company for over six years as a national manager in teacher recruitment and development.

However, Yue still saw limitations in making good education convenient and affordable to the masses who need it and have the potential to better themselves. In terms of this, online education truly breaks the barriers of geography, time, languages, resources and so on.

"It seems like the ultimate solution to make it easier and, Hujiang is helping me to realizing my dream and that of many others," Yue said.

Although there are many advantages of teaching English online, there are challenges for teachers too -- including technology management, Internet stability and classroom management.

When mentioning the main challenges of teaching English online, as a director of Global Teaching Centers in Hujiang, Yue has her own observation.

"My mission is to bring the world's top learning resources onto Hujiang's platform and to introduce teachers with different languages, cultures, education and experience to China's e-learners," Yue explained.

Hujiang has courses in eleven languages including English, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, German, Korean, French and Thai, with English being the most popular.

Yue said that company welcomes independent teachers, public school teachers and teacher agencies to teach for their users -- or with Hujiang by providing their own courses.

Hujiang is recruiting more online teachers world wide. Many teachers have been burned teaching online, expected to be online eight hours a day, seven days a week, twelve months a year, or very low pay.

Why should teachers trust Hujiang and what opportunities does Hujiang offer teachers that other online providers do not?

Yue emphasized that at the very least, Hujiang would never want their teachers to get burned. Flexibility, freedom and convenience are the features of Hujiang's online teaching. Teachers can open their schedule or time slots to their own preference.

"Furthermore, what makes Hujiang stand out is the variety -- Hujiang has over 110 million users, including 89 million mobile subscribers with all kinds of learning needs, which is rarely shouldered by any educational company; the technology -- our constantly upgrading teaching tool CC Talk supports one-to-one highly interactive classes as well as lectures that can accommodate over 20,000 students in the same classroom; and the ecosystem -- Hujiang does not walk alone. It builds a strong ecosystem of online-to-offline education. We are partners with the world's top educational organizations such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, McGraw-Hill, Coursera and so on. Our Hujia Project has connected to more than 500 public schools for free courses," Yue said.

Given the variety of learning needs of users, Hujiang is open to all types of teachers. Native speakers are highly welcomed but non-native teachers with the same level of language proficiency, teaching experience or certificates such as Delta, Celta, Tesol, Tefl or TKT are also highly appreciated. Teachers are enabled to teach one to one, one to many or one to massive live classes for different language courses, from K12 to university students and adults.

Yue said that her vision for Hujiang global teaching centers in five years' time would be an eco-educational global society online and offline. All levels of educational professionals can offer their expertise that will be equally valued by net learners and customers.

SOURCE Hujiang