Before the spread of CORONAvirus and the closure of educational institutions and other living facilities, there was a growth in the adoption of distance education by an estimated $18 billion in global investment, and global investment in e-learning was expected to reach US$350 billion by 2025.
Currently, we have more than 1.2 billion children in 186 countries affected by school closures, resulting in a significant increase in the use of educational programs such as language learning apps, video conferencing apps, and other educational applications and sites, even in developing countries where teaching has been almost entirely electronically adopted, for example, The Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad has relied entirely on Google services such as Google Meet and Google Classroom.
Tik Tok invests in e-learning
Tik Tok has an estimated 1 billion monthly active users, a program popular among teenagers and children, with short fun videos of no more than 60 seconds. Educational content was very highly accepted on the platform, with videos with the hashtag #LearnOnTikTok receiving more than 77.2 billion views.
A Reuter's statistic showed that 43% of social media users aged 16-24 consider these sites to be reliable sources on important topics such as THE CORONA virus, making the spread of misinformation dangerous to society.
That's why Tik Tok has invested $14.6 million in educational content in Europe and $50 million in the United States, which will be distributed to TV presenter Rachel Riley and actor Sean Sagar, as well as universities such as Cambridge University, historic sites in Britain and many teachers and non-profit organizations.
Why invest TicTalk in e-learning?
The app has an unenviable reputation, with the majority believing it to be a teen app with trivial and useless content, and the company intends to change this view of the app through useful educational content such as handicraft videos, languages, history, cooking, and tips on different areas of life through short, fast and light videos on the recipient.
Diversity of content can also attract a lot of companies to advertise on the platform, with Rich Waterworth, general manager of the company in Europe and Britain, saying: "We hope this move makes us more attractive to advertisers." Non-profit organizations can also create educational content on the platform to be closer to their audience as well as good marketing The model is advantageous for all stakeholders since it is a technique for their services.
Why would this generation prefer education through platforms like Tek Tok?
There's a term called Attention Span, which is how much time you can focus before it's dispersed, and the new generation has far less attention than other generations because of speed-based technology, and the new generation prefers short and fast content to long, boring content.
A teacher who was trying to upgrade her students' writing has tried to create videos on YouTube but has not received any views, and some of her students have suggested that she upload her videos on Tik Tok instead of YouTube, in less than a week she has 10,000 followers and now has more than 900,000 followers.
A primary school teacher tried a more effective way of developing sports issues, with the question "Someone wanted to make a 60-second video on a 60-second tic of five equal-length clips, how long was each clip?" All her students solved the issue correctly and one student said it was easier because it was about something we love.
The Arab world's educational content sector
There are a lot of creators who have provided fun educational content on Tik Tok in Arabic. One of them, Ahmed Abu Zeid, has more than 48,000 followers and offers diverse educational content to university and high school students in particular. In cooking, Chef Shaheen, who offers various tips and recipes, has achieved remarkable success with over 1.8 million followers and tens of millions of views.
Osama is a language teacher who has posted nearly 500 English videos and has received more than 60,000 followers and a quarter of a million likes. Many others have succeeded in providing educational content in a fun and seamless way.
In the end, the Tik Tok campaign will be very effective in disseminating correct scientific information useful to the user in a fun and easy way, and from reliable sources, this reduces the spread of misinformation on the platform.
