In the first semester, Douyin held 8 live open classes to attract tens of millions of "cloud students" and
professors to become the protagonist of the short video platform.
□ Chief Correspondent Zhang Weina, Changjiang Daily
On the evening of September 7, 78-year-old Liu Guanzhong appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room. He is the "father of Chinese industrial design" and a senior professor of liberal arts at Tsinghua University.
Liu Guanzhong interpreted the design he understood for netizens across the country through the screen of his mobile phone, and the two-hour live broadcast was watched by 158,000 people.
This year the national colleges and universities start season, Douyin held 8 live open classes, inviting Hong Zicheng, Dai Jinhua and other 8 experts from Tsinghua University, Peking University, Wuhan University, Chinese Academy of Sciences to pass on literature, film history, physics, biology, etc. The live broadcast shared general knowledge and attracted millions of "cloud students" to watch.
This is not the first time Douyin has invited a professor to conduct live lectures.
Behind the "Professor Snatch" of short video platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Station B, there is a competition to chase the flow of knowledge.
■ What does the professor talk about live
Be professional and consider the preferences of netizens
In July of this year, Douyin began to plan a live broadcast of the "Open Class" event, and planned to invite professors to broadcast live on the whole network for the opening season in September.
Douyin explained that this live broadcast aims to bring more people and knowledge closer together with well-known experts from universities.
A relevant person in charge of Douyin revealed that "Which professors are invited to participate in the live broadcast" is the most discussed issue at the beginning.
"It is necessary to consider not only the professionalism of the teacher, but also the knowledge content preferred by netizens and the direction of current hot topics."
The direction of the invitation was determined. In early August, they began to send out live invitations to universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Wuhan University and the professors themselves.
In the past two years, Douyin has cooperated with universities many times, and it is not difficult to invite professors to participate in the live broadcast. When they invited professors, almost no one declined.
When Li Jianzhong, a 66-year-old professor of the Faculty of Arts of Wuhan University, received the invitation, there was no Tik Tok on his phone. He asked students to download it for him and teach him how to use it. “In my impression, Tik Tok is a popular entertainment platform.”
The students told him, "Thousands of people will listen to your live Douyin class."
What's the live broadcast?
Li Jianzhong discussed many times with the school and Douyin, and the staff of Douyin gave him a suggestion: "It's the beginning of the school season, you can talk about'what is a university'", which coincides with the general education course he is in charge of at Wuhan University. It was consistent, and Li Jianzhong readily agreed.
Along with Li Jianzhong, Professor Chen Yu of the School of Life Sciences of Wuhan University was invited.
As the research team leader of the State Key Laboratory of Virology, during the anti-epidemic last year, Chen Yu and his laboratory colleagues went to the frontline of the hospital's intensive care unit to collect aerosol samples and proposed that the virus aerosol "deposition (clothing/ground)-personnel carried-in the air The communication model of “raising”.
The staff of Douyin suggested that Chen Yu could popularize the "game between humans and viruses" to netizens.
Chen Yu, born in 1980, is not familiar with Douyin either.
In his view, virus prevention and control are closely related to the public, and more people are needed to participate, so he decided to enter the live broadcast room.
■ A professor who devotes himself to flow
Make esoteric knowledge interesting
Unlike Li Jianzhong and Chen Yu, Gou Lijun, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who participated in this live broadcast, is a TikTok science pundit.
As a senior black hole researcher, Gou Lijun wrote a script and worked with a professional team to produce a 5-minute "Black Hole" short film.
In April 2019, after the black hole photo was released, Gou Lijun split the short film into 5 short videos and posted them on the official Douyin account of the National Astronomical Observatory, which received tens of millions of views.
Gou Lijun said that from last year to the present, a series of achievements in my country's aerospace field have further aroused public interest in astronomy, and new media methods have also expanded the scope of dissemination of niche topics, making the originally profound knowledge of astronomy interesting.
Dai Jinhua from Peking University is also an Internet celebrity professor.
Has 330,000 fans on station B.
Dai Jinhua said frankly that he is still not used to monologues facing screens and cameras.
"For me, it is not a difficult thing to share in the face of flesh-and-blood people, but facing the screen, I feel a little strenuous."
Although not used to it, Dai Jinhua is still willing to get out of the classroom and into the Internet.
"My mother is a primary school Chinese teacher, and my father is a literature lover, which has a great influence on me. Frankly speaking, the four years of Peking University have laid the foundation for my entire life. At that time, many respected teachers were teaching in the front line. For example, Mr. Lin Geng taught us "The Songs of the Chu"-that is my favorite class. In his class, he often takes notes and keeps finger cramps." Dai Jinhua's growth has benefited from education, and he understands the importance of education. Now as a teacher, she hopes that more students will benefit from cloud classrooms and gain more knowledge and ideas.
■ Force knowledge flow
Short video platform holding hands with professors and academicians
In early July, Douyin launched the "Sailing Plan" and invited Tsinghua University professor Han Xiuyun and other college scholars and more than 1,000 cultural figures such as Yang Lan and Yu Minhong to share culture, art, reading, history, foreign languages, education, etc. through the platform within a week. Knowledge in nine professional fields including philosophy, geography, and economics.
Earlier in April, Douyin launched the "Enriching Knowledge Program" to help knowledge content creators gain greater market and opportunities; during the anti-epidemic period last year, Douyin teamed up with Peking University, Tsinghua University and other universities to conduct irregular live broadcast classes.
As time goes by, Douyin will launch the "DOU Knowing Project" in 2019 to support the development of knowledge popular science accounts.
Douyin is not the first short video platform to "sniff" the knowledge flow.
According to the official data released by station B, from April 2018 to April 2019, more than 18 million people studied at station B in one year, which is equivalent to twice the number of college entrance examinations in 2018.
There are also media statistics. In 2019, public classes are the most popular learning videos for young people on Station B.
After the wave of "learning" started at Station B, the major short video platforms moved in response to the wind and began to exert their knowledge flow.
According to statistics from iResearch, starting from 2019, short video platforms such as Station B, Douyin, and Kuaishou have deployed knowledge education through various measures such as traffic tilt, policy support, and holding of events.
For the professors, it is also a bold attempt to enter the world of traffic; for the platform, it is even more a competition to chase "knowledge traffic".
■ "Knowledge Zone" is becoming
The "traffic upstart" of the short video platform
"There are universities on short video platforms, and there are professors in live broadcast rooms," said a netizen. The land where crops are not planted is most prone to weeds.
Today, Douyin has invited more than a hundred university professors to teach live, and a group of professors such as Wang Liqun have settled in Douyin.
Kuaishou invited Academician Ouyang Ziyuan, the "Father of Chang'e", and Professor Xing Lida, the discoverer of the world's first amber dinosaur, to settle in; Station B has a group of "Kaozhi" matrices from academicians to professors, from Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Wang Pinxian. Professor Luo Xiang of China University of Political Science and Law, Professor Nie Huihua of the School of Economics of Renmin University of China, Associate Professor Shen Yiwen of the Department of Sociology of Fudan University...Today, at least 12 university professors have settled in Station B.
A set of data shows that in the past year and a half, college teacher creators on several major online platforms have increased by more than 5 times year-on-year.
Professors who have studied advanced knowledge walked into the grassroots short video platform to excite the netizens who benefited, and everyone often regarded themselves as "cloud students".
Tsinghua University currently has a total of 23,000 public classrooms, and Liu Guanzhong’s live broadcast of Douyin is equivalent to "cloud students" filling up 7 public classrooms at Tsinghua University.
For netizens, the Internet has broken the walls of universities and passed knowledge more equally to those in need.
For the "Tik Tok", the "Knowledge Zone" is becoming the "traffic upstart" of the short video platform, and the knowledge content war of "competing for professors" has not yet ended.