Coursera 如何破解中国市场的谜题
编者按: 达瓦尔·沙阿(Dhawal Shah )是 Class Central的创始人兼首席执行官。
今年 7 月,Coursera 宣布 自己在中国的注册用户人数超过了 100 万,而中国也超越印度成为其第二大市场。在打入中国市场方面,大部分美国消费互联网公司都遭遇了困难。
文化差异和互联网防火墙是巨大的进入壁垒。甚至连谷歌、Facebook 和 Twitter 那样的科技巨头,他们要么退出了中国市场,要么被隔绝在中国互联网防火墙之外。所以,作为一家相对年轻的公司,Coursera 是如何取得这一重大里程碑的呢?
合作伙伴,合作伙伴,合作伙伴
“合作伙伴在中国的重要程度超过了世界其他任何地方。”——Flipboard 首席技术官埃里克·冯(Eric Feng)在 KPCB CEO Workshop 大会上的发言。
为了扩大在中国的影响,Coursera 跟多家本地公司和大学机构进行了合作。这些本地合作关系通常牵涉两件事情:翻译和分发内容。
为了对网站进行本地化和翻译内容,Coursera 跟中国社交网站果壳网和翻译社区译言网进行了合作。
为了分发内容,Coursera 跟 网易公开课 合作 创建了 Coursera 社区 ,这是由网易托管的Coursera.org 汉语门户。为了提升中国用户的使用体验,Coursera 还在网易的服务器上存储了自家视频的本地副本。
今年早些时候,Coursera 宣布 跟中国最大的互联网学习平台沪江网达成合作。Coursera 计划在沪江网平台内部创建自己的网络 ID 和社区系统,以此打通跟后者 8,000 万活跃用户的连接。
Coursera 在中国跟 5 所大学进行了合作,分别是:复旦大学、上海交通大学,北京大学,西安交通大学,以及南京大学。这些大学加在一起提供了 50 多门课程,其中大多数是汉语内容。综合起来,Coursera 平台在中国提供了 125 门课程,其中既有原生汉语内容,也有翻译内容。
可靠的人脉网络
在成为 Coursera 的首席执行官之前,里克·莱文(Rick Levin)是耶鲁大学校史上任期最长的校长。他任内的重要成就之一就是在全球范围内建立合作关系,并尤其侧重于亚洲和中国。
在他担任校长期间,耶鲁大学跟中国大学开展了多项联合行动,其中包括在北京建立国际性的工作/学习计划,以及举办由中国 14 所顶尖大学参加的领导力培训项目。
莱文曾会见中国两任国家主席(江泽民和胡锦涛),被复旦大学授予荣誉职称,还被选入了美中关系全国委员会(National Committee on United States-China Relations)。
因此,在 Coursera 的中国战略方面,里克·莱文带来了人脉和威信。莱文要跟中国名牌大学开展高级别的对话可能本就不是什么难事,但更重要的是,他拥有在重大议题上跟大学和政府领导人进行合作的经验。
忧虑
当 Coursera 跟网易的合作关系被公布后,Coursera 的少数大学合作伙伴选择了退出,持有 Coursera 股份的宾夕法尼亚大学就是其中之一。
宾大担心那项合作会对政治和学术自由产生影响,因此希望谨慎行事。情况看起来是,宾大的担忧已经得到缓解,该大学的课程现在已经登陆了网易公开课。事实上,沃顿商学院刚刚上线了中文版本的 《商务基础》课程 。
中国的一些大学领导人 担心 ,“外来思想”会通过 MOOCs(大规模在线开放课程)进入中国。还有人担心,成本低廉的 MOOCs 会造成实体大学的崩塌。
中国教育部正在推进 MOOCs 的发展,并 鼓励 中国高等教育机构创建更多的在线课程。教育部还计划“建立一套检验机制,以监督平台的教学过程和运营,防止有害信息传播”。
查理·钟(Charlie Chung)对本文亦有贡献。
How Coursera Cracked The Chinese Market
Dhawal ShahCrunch Network Contributor
Dhawal Shah is founder and CEO of Class Central.
Coursera announced in July that they crossed 1 million registrations as China became their second largest market, overtaking India. Most U.S. consumer Internet companies have a hard time breaking into China.
Cultural differences and the Internet firewall are a huge barrier to entry. Even tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter have pulled out or found themselves on the wrong side of the Chinese firewall. So how did Coursera, a relatively young company, achieve this significant milestone?
Partnerships, Partnerships, Partnerships
“Partnerships are more critical in China than anywhere else in the world” — Eric Feng, CTO Flipboard @ KPCB CEO Workshop
To increase their China footprint, Coursera has partnered with a number of local companies and universities. The local partnerships usually revolve around two things: translations and distribution.
To localize the website and translate its content, Coursera partnered with Guokr, a Chinese social networking site, and Yeeyan, a translation community.
For distribution, Coursera partnered with NetEase to create a Coursera Zone on 163.com, a NetEase-hosted, Chinese-language portal to Coursera.org. To improve performance for its Chinese users,Coursera also stores local copies of its videos on NetEase servers.
Earlier this year, Coursera announced a partnership with Hujiang, China’s largest Internet learning platform. Coursera plans to build its own online identity and community within the Hujiang platform in order to access its 80 million active users.
Coursera has five partner universities in China: Fudan, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Peking, Xi’an Jiaotong and Nanjing. Combined, these universities offer more than 50 courses, most of them in Chinese. In all, Coursera has more than 125 courses in Chinese (native + translations) on its platform.
A Credible Connection
Before becoming the CEO of Coursera, Rick Levin was the President of Yale University, serving the longest tenure in the school’s history. One of the hallmarks of his tenure was cultivating relationships internationally, especially in Asia, and particularly with China.
Under his presidency, Yale conducted a number of joint initiatives with and for Chinese universities, including helping establish international work/study programs in Beijing, and hosting a university leadership program for leaders from 14 of China’s top universities.
Levin met two Chinese presidents (Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao), has an honorary appointment at Fudan University and was elected to the board of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
Thus, Rick Levin brought connections and credibility to his role at Coursera with respect to its China strategy. It would probably not have been difficult for him to initiate conversations at the very highest levels at prestigious universities, but more important is his experience in working with university and government leaders on issues that were important to them.
Concerns
When the NetEase partnership was announced, a small number of Coursera’s partner institutions opted out of the arrangement. Penn, which owns an equity stake in Coursera was one of those universities.
Penn was concerned about political and academic freedom and wanted to proceed cautiously. It seems that Penn’s concerns were addressed and now their courses are available on NetEase. In fact, Wharton just launched their Business Foundations specialization in the Chinese language.
A few university leaders in China were concerned about “foreign ideas” being imported via MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses). There were also concerns of MOOCs, by virtue of being cheaper, might cause the collapse of physical universities.
The Ministry of Education is moving forward with MOOCs, and is encouraging higher-education institutes in China to create more of them. The ministry also plans to “set up an inspection system to supervise the teaching process and operation of the platforms, preventing harmful information from being disseminated.”
Thanks to Charlie Chung for contributing to this story.
来源:techcrunch.com