Homework answers / question archive / “Ace Tab”, The Solution of Digital Era under Double Reduction Policy   Background The problem our team is solving is based on the situation of the Double Reduction Policy being announced, the problem of more and more students having been distracted by those electronic devices and also the situation of most children losing their way of interest

“Ace Tab”, The Solution of Digital Era under Double Reduction Policy   Background The problem our team is solving is based on the situation of the Double Reduction Policy being announced, the problem of more and more students having been distracted by those electronic devices and also the situation of most children losing their way of interest

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“Ace Tab”, The Solution of Digital Era under Double Reduction Policy

 

Background

The problem our team is solving is based on the situation of the Double Reduction Policy being announced, the problem of more and more students having been distracted by those electronic devices and also the situation of most children losing their way of interest.

First, the original intention of the Double Reduction Policy is to reduce the burden of China’s students by decreasing any kind of cram school after regular school time(Fan & Su, 2021). However, the reason why China’s children need to have such a high-pressure education style is because of their uneven distribution of resources (Niu, 2021) . Universities or high schools with better resources only exist in cities with a better economic environment, such as Beijing, Shanghai, etc. Some families in second or even third-tier cities believe that a better education background will help them to get a better future. Therefore, most of the parents will count their remaining years on their children. That’s why the education environment in China or most Eastern countries is so cutthroat. The target of the policy of double reduction is meant to reduce both students’ stress of study and parents’ stress of finance, but this policy cannot really apply to China’s situation. This kind of environment is a vicious cycle; the number of students recruited will always have a limit, but children who take this opportunity as their chance to go from rags to riches will try as hard as they possibly can. This forms an involution social structure; even though the policy had been announced, rich families will still have their way to get their kids into a good school, but kids from middle-class families will likely lose most of their opportunity to get into a better education environment (Zhang & Chen, 2021) . Therefore, our main purpose in making this product(“Ace Tab”) is to help those kids from the middle or lower class to have more opportunities to learn in order to reach their goals.

Second, as is shown in Chart 1(Wang , 2021) , China’s online education technology market continued to expand over the past 6 years, and the trend became even more unstoppable due to the pandemic situation in recent years.

 

Chart 1 China’s Online Education Technology Market From 2014 to 2020

But technology’s influence on children cannot be underestimated. There’s a paper that even stated that just the existence of technology would impact the concentration of students in class (Glass & Kang, 2018). Therefore, our team’s product will not permit approaches to browsers or app stores in order to reduce the possibility of students getting distracted by social media or online games. Also, this can solve another problem at the same time: not every family can afford this kind of high cost. So far the main products of learning tablets we can see is the iPad from Apple. The cheapest option we have now on the market starts from 329 dollars, which is a rather large expense for middle-class families. Therefore, another target of our product is to become a cheaper learning product in order to reduce parents’ financial stress.

Last but not least, most students have difficulty knowing what their interests are. There are a tremendous amount of kids having difficulty deciding their major in their first year of college; our product will contain all subjects students can learn from school and also subjects related to some common college majors. By using our product, our team hopes that this can help children to better understand their interests and passions, so that they don’t waste their time in areas that aren’t suitable for them.

“Ace Tab” is qualified to solve those problems listed above. We are confident about this due to the diverse education backgrounds of our team members, including but not limited to high schools and universities from Chinese Mainland, Taiwan and the United States.We are familiar with the weaknesses and strengths of each kind of education system,which helps us to design the best product to make up for shortcomings and give play to its advantage of each education system. Also, our team members had different areas of expertise, such as Business, French, Nursing, Statistics, Art History, Veterinary, Japanese, Music and rich work experience. Thus, we believe that those experiences can help children who have difficulty deciding their interests to find their area of passion.

Product description

Our team plans to make a tablet(“Ace Tab”) containing supplementary teaching materials of all subjects in class (e-textbooks, reference books, extended materials, exercises after class, simulation papers, etc.) and introductory courses of major subjects in universities. The target customers are Chinese students in grades 1-12 (5-19 years old). Because of the Double Reduction Policy mentioned previously, many after-school tutoring agencies experienced a huge impact. But this is an opportunity for us. Without access to remedial classes, students will need to consolidate classroom knowledge by other means. Paper-based supplementary materials in the market vary greatly in quality and are not convenient to carry. Our tablet is a good solution to these problems.

Based on 2020 most popular tutoring machines in China (Li, 2020), we conducted an analysis of the top (Bubugao), eighth (Newsmy), and fifteenth (Huawei) machines in the market(see table 1) and determined our price range (¥2000-¥3000) and product features.

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1 Product and Marketing Research of similar products

 

Nowadays, many students are not clear about their interests and strengths. Some remain confused when choosing majors in universities and end up realizing they are not fit for the major when they have already made the decision. So another highlight of “Ace Tab” is the basic courses from university. Students can watch recorded videos of classes given by university faculty. In addition to preparing students for choosing a major at university, our tablet can also help them develop interests and find the direction of future careers.

There are a variety of educational electronic products on the market today, but there exist some drawbacks, like some products contain games, or students may search for malicious information or download games through the product’s browser, making parents worry about these distractions. On the other hand, these functions can be fully realized through mobile phones. So they are not practical for families who do not need to restrain their children’s online activities. For “Ace Tab”, Parents can supervise their children’s use of the tablet through an app on the phone and shut down the functions of certain apps on the tablet. We will update our database, maintain and upgrade the system regularly. There are also teaching-related Games, in which students can take multiple-choice tests and repeat after they finish listening to the recordings.

“Ace Tab” can also be used by teachers in classrooms as a tool. There are electronic textbooks in the database. Teachers can upload materials such as texts, videos, slides and audios to their accounts through our website. Students can search for the teacher’s “Classroom” in the APP and download these materials. They can also submit their assignments via an APP on the device, and teachers may grade them online, eliminating the need for paperwork.

Financial viability

We need to invest in the first year in software and courseware production, technical maintenance, teacher hiring, publicity, royalties, product production and so on. And 400-500 free trial products (recycled after half a year) will be given to 10 local private and public school pilot classes to expand publicity.

Early potential investors include education entrepreneurs and electronics manufacturers, while later projects will also work with the government, education authorities and private schools. The parents who buy the tablets can also invest in our products and act as agents.

According to the Pricing Model of Yang and Pan (2019), we estimate that the profit of salary is ¥127,600/year/person in a company of 50 employees. Online courses, which normally earn ¥10,640,000/year, are estimated to earn 80% in the first year due to a lack of students. The company’s projected annual revenue, expenses, and profit/loss for the next three years are shown in tables 2, 3 and 4.

 

Table 2 Annual Revenue

Year	2022	2023	2024
Number of tablets	5,000	8,000	12,000
Income from tablets(¥)	7,500,000	12,000,000	18,000,000
Income from online courses (¥)	8,510,000	10,640,000	10,640,000
Revenue(¥)	16,010,000	22,640,000	28,640,000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3 Annual Expenses

Year	2022	2023	2024
Student recruitment(¥)	3,200,000	3,400,000	3,600,000
Employee Remuneration(¥)	6,400,000	6,600,000	6,800,000
Venue (¥)	6,400,000	6,400,000	6,400,000
Others(¥)	3,200,000	3,200,000	3,200,000
Expenses(¥)	19,200,000	19,600,000	20,000,000

 

Table 4 Annual Profit/Loss

Year	2022	2023	2024
Revenue(¥)	16,010,000	22,640,000	28,640,000
Expenses(¥)	19,200,000	19,600,000	20,000,000
Annual Profit/Loss(¥)	-3,190,000	3,040,000	8,640,000

 

Market

There is a large market for our product globally, where the product is mostly sold to all kinds of schools and students. In fact, our target customers have a wide area of people, ranging from teachers, students, or parents to the education bureau, public schools, private schools, libraries, and other various classrooms. Our team might extend the product to elders, vocational schools, and other various jobs in the future. But, for now, the market is big enough with grade 1-12 related students, families, teachers, and schools, especially during this current moment.

In China, under the Double Reduction policy, the amount of homework and the frequency of examinations are all decreased. Tutoring classes and institutions outside of school have many restrictions. Once our product steps in at this point, we could have the opportunities to succeed. Since most content of our product is not related to in-class materials and students will have fun while learning new knowledge and extending it to the extra-curricular subject, it could survive under the Double Reduction policy.

Moreover, “Ace Tab” can deal with the policy of limiting the online and video game time of students. With our product, the students can use it as a learning machine to record notes, review learning materials and use all the academic tools to help them learn, so it is not a tablet for game or entertainment purposes. This design could be favorable among teachers and parents as they would not worry about the students off tasking at both home and school. Thus, the market of our product is widely open to society, especially for the grade 1-12 students and their families and teachers.

Communication with the market

There are multiple ways for our team to communicate effectively with our targeted market. First of all, our team needs to do market research with the survey to see what people are interested in on the class materials, functions of the tablet, or basically on the product itself. There will be a lottery for discounts on our product for online surveys and a small prize or reward with the offline surveys to encourage people to take the time to finish our surveys.

Secondly, we will lend free trial products to a few schools for half a year to promote our products. This action will allow the students to test themselves out and give feedback. Then, our team will be able to know how students feel about the product and solve any problems with the tablet. If possible, our team will invite teachers from the education system to write the lesson plans and course contents or even cooperate with learning support material publisher companies and get the copyright for their learning materials in order to use in our product. The content will include a variety of references for each subject. At the same time, we will shoot advertisements at those schools for later use to promote the tablet. Also, free public classes and free nationwide lectures on academic and extra-curricular classes could help to propagandize and sell our product.

Moreover, our team will make posters and distribute them in the library, public transportation, at the mall or simply on the street. We would post advertisements on newspapers, and other social media, such as TV commercials or variety shows, Bilibili, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, or any other social applications, or even in e-commerce, for more people to see our product. When people see more of our products, they will be interested in them and willing to buy the tablet.

Before we start to sell our tablet officially, we will establish our own website and set up various social media accounts of our team and our product in order to catch more customers' attention. Other than introducing our product and our team on our own website, the teachers, students, and parents can sign up on our website as well, so they can upgrade or buy more classes. Afterward, we will sell the tablet to individuals like students, parents and teachers. On the same hand, our team can also collaborate with schools to sell at a cheaper price with more amounts, first to private schools, then expand to public schools. It could be great to get support from governments and the education bureau so that parents and teachers could put more trust in our team and our product.

Furthermore, we will sell the tablet to the community in a school district, such as when someone buys a house or apartment, they can purchase the tablet with a discount. There will be more flyers around in the school district, and there could also be discounts when the customers are shopping in a grocery store or other kinds of stores. Hence, the customers in that area are more likely to purchase the products, and they can be more motivated to buy the product as we give out more flyers and discounts. In sum, there are plenty of ways for our team to communicate effectively with the market to better sell our product.

Feasibility of Solution

First of all, our product emerges as an intelligent auxiliary tool that is determined to promote education in the context of the dramatic changes in the national education policy. More precisely, our team, keenly aware of changes, creates new opportunities by coming up with the tablet. Because the education system has ushered in tremendous changes and trends led by the Double Reduction Policy, we regard the changes brought about by these trends as an opportunity and will provide a solution to the current situation by identifying the needs of the newly changed educational environment (Brown & Cornwall, 2001).

Under the Double Reduction Policy, many post-school institutions are not allowed to operate. Students' homework and exams need to be reduced due to the requirement to diminish students' studying pressure and family's expenses on extra lessons after school. As a result, many fixed and fresh education needs cannot be met, such as consolidating academic knowledge efficiently and comfortably, the desire of students for extracurricular learning, and diversifying courses within policy restrictions.

Thus, our products, as a brilliant educational tool to promote learning, will meet these needs and can function effectively under the newly changed policies to have the opportunity to thrive. The ability to quickly recognize changes and seize opportunities in education environmental upheaval will make our team sustained and successful development by improving and upgrading our products to satisfy the constant and changing educational market needs. In addition, even if the double reduction policy might be recalled in the future, our advance will still not change; after the pandemic, people realize that this will become the tendency of the education field; also our product positioning and first intention is to create a product which can help students to learn more in a cheaper and more convenient way and figure out where their interest is; therefore, we will never lose our advantage in the market. Hence, by being an intelligent tool for advancing and facilitating studies without violation of policy, our products have the ability to grow and consolidate users to obtain great benefits under the environment of double reduction policy.

In addition, our business will actively be seeking partnerships to achieve sustained development. Partnerships can increase the opportunities to get expertise and resources to help our business produce a better product and attract a larger audience and allow our company to block competitors and increase customer loyalty through exclusive resources and contracts (Brown & Cornwall, 2001).

To start, our firm will enthusiastically seek partnerships with schools to promote the use of tables by teachers and students. To actively encourage the use of products by teachers, such as producing their exclusive textbook knowledge games, uploading video recordings of lessons they require students to watch, assigning homework, etc., in the tablet to help teachers teach. As their teachers provide advanced and unique resources to add variety to and enrich our products (Brown & Cornwall, 2001), students can efficiently and entertainingly improve their academic performance and the learning of extracurricular knowledge by using our product.

Moreover, we will seek the cooperation of local governments and local community groups, such as libraries and bookstores, to promote learning. In this case, our products will attract more people to become users. Also, customers will be more loyal because of the support from the government, libraries, and bookstores, and the exclusive resources obtained through an agreement with schools.

Also, we may cooperate with technology companies to serve our tablet system, determined to create the most convenient and comfortable tablet for users to utilize. Since our team will continue to maintain and upgrade the tablet system, the stability and durability of our products can make customers more consistent and loyal. In this way, our products can not only attract a wide range of customers but also make customers succumb to unique resources provided by tablets and the comfortable and long-lasting characteristics of the tablet.

As previously mentioned, the core problem being addressed is increasing the popularity and investment opportunities of the pad developed for promoting language and subject development among k1-12 students. The pad exploits technology to aid users among other subjects and languages. Exploiting the vast number of resources available on an online database would allow users to effectively learn, appreciating education as a tool in the current economy. By developing interest and demand for the product, the intention is to develop marketing strategies that allow the public to exploit the educational tool. The approach considers intrapreneurial attributes, whereby the existing environment is evaluated, assessing the material and human resource availability and other constraints.

The notion is demonstrated by the detailed evaluation of the efficacy of the pad in aiding users better learn English. According to scientific data, it was proven that college students learn at an average pace what they are taught through listening, whereas when allowed to read or watch, the results are bolstered (Kewalramani et al., 2020). The data demonstrates the tool would be effective in aiding college students to learn. Additionally, it is essential to consider the value of learning new skills and the essence of rapid edification in the current economy (Kewalramani et al., 2020). With globalization being a growing trend, it is essential to adapt to cultural shifts such as the rise in the value of education in promoting innovation. Additionally, by exploiting the current rise in popularity of online schooling, it can offer parents and guardians the opportunity to participate in the learning process.

It is also critical to note that the chosen problem is an intrapreneurial opportunity for the solution to help the company gain capital investment to expand its preset objective (Brown & Cornwall, 2001). The notion is demonstrated by the action of developing economic strategies for the product. It entails seeking investors to aid the product gain popularity. As stated, it would offer the needed opportunities for the product to be appreciated by potential investors. The demonstrated aspect illustrates the exploitation of the opportunity to attain capital investment. Furthermore, it would contribute to the marketing prospects of the product.

Lastly, the selected problem is limited to the market’s scope to radically change; in other words, the developed solution for the problem considers both short- and long-term interests (Brown & Cornwall, 2001). Therefore, other than increasing its market attractiveness and investment portfolio, the solution also considers the prospects of the pad being integrated as a learning tool for college students. The notion is demonstrated by the intended creation of value for the resource. Creating parental interest targets a specific market that is consistently growing; The result would be a significant rise in revenue, which would allow for various activities such as marketing, device improvement, database augmentation, and market expansion.

Overall, the strategy exploits the presented opportunities from a social, economic, and cultural perspective. In other words, it exploits the rise of the internet era where learning institutions are exploiting online learning as an essential tool. Additionally, it allows educators to employ the tool in enforcing the trendy video teaching approach. Lastly, the information-based curriculum has significant market demand. Thus, investing in digital learning is the intended goal of the solution. The approach to the objective demonstrates the exploitation of intrapreneurial facets.