TikTok shifts to “micro-learning”

TikTok, the most popular social media platform in the world has planned to work in the online education market on the lines of “micro learning”. The company has decided this after a significant spike in its social media usage among students who are staying home due to lockdown.

According to the local reports, Chinese video-sharing app has become one of the most popular video-sharing apps in the world during pandemic. A company owned by Chinese multinational internet giant ByteDance recently announced that it has taken a significant shift into the online education market and is in a process of commissioning hundreds of experts and institutions to create online education content for its #LearnOnTikTok platform.

TikTok plans a huge investment of US$14.6 million into the project and believes that the initiative will turn out to be groundbreaking in the online education market and will serve as an alternative means and channel for education. as schools and universities around the world look to be some of the last organizations to reopen.

“Now we want to build on this strong foundation, bringing together entertainment and learning, offering our community a truly rich and diverse ecosystem of content”, said Rich Waterworth, Tiktok’s EU general manager while talking to local media outlet.

Organizations – including universities and charities – as well as a handful of celebrities, will be among those paid to produce educational content for the platform, in what could spur a trend towards ‘micro-learning’, or small units of learning found online.

Pumping US$14.6 million into the project, the announcement indicates TikTok thinks it can break ground in the online education market, which offers alternative means and channels for education as schools and universities around the world look to be some of the last organizations to reopen.

“Tiktok has quickly become a place people turn to when they want snack-sized entertainment,” said Rich Waterworth, Tiktok’s EU general manager. “Now we want to build on this strong foundation, bringing together entertainment and learning, offering our community a truly rich and diverse ecosystem of content.”

Social media usage has spiked during the pandemic, and apps are now increasingly used as news sources. According to the 2020 Reuters Digital News Report released this week found that 43% of 16-24 year olds accessed social media as a source of COVID-19 related information in the past few months – 6% turned to TikTok specifically.

Waterworth said the platform had identified a growing interest in educational videos, with more than 7 billion views of the hashtag #LearnOnTikTok; “We’re using this investment to seed the educational category broadly,” he said.