Watching a video of TED talk or an open class on the Internet, or registering for an online course to learn a new language or hobby, are trending. You'll be seen as behind the times if your experience of the above is zero.
Online education is growing. More than 1,000 online education start-ups have been established since 2014 in China,according to news.pedaily.cn.
It is one of the most popular fields where entrepreneurs and venture capitalists flock together on account of the absence of geographic restrictions, a high degree of standardization, and economies of scale from reuse of content.
MOOC, or Massive Online Open Courses, is one of the platforms where people can register for free and have access to all online courses provided by universities worldwide.
According to its official website, MOOC courses have assessment and examination just like a regular offline courses do. People signing up can participate in video illustration, discussion, submitting assignments, asking questions and a final exam.
Once a course completed, users can receive an electronic certificate or pay for a paper copy, which are now acknowledged by many employers.
The Ministry of Education said MOOC "has enlarged the time and space of teaching, fired learners' interest, helped more people benefit from high-quality educational resources and accelerated reform in many aspects of teaching".
MOOC has gained popularity in China since 2013 and some universities, including Tsinghua University and Peking University have established their own MOOC platforms.
In April last year, the Ministry of Education released guidelines to encourage higher education institutes, especially those with strengths in specific majors and information technology, to establish MOOCs that focus on liberal education, public courses and the core curricula of some majors.
The ministry will select from current MOOC platforms and encourage them to share data and teaching resources as a way of creating an online teaching and learning space which benefits life-long learners.
MOOC, originating in the United States, has become popular around the world with 2012 being referred to as "the first year of the MOOC era".
The estimated market size of global online education in 2015 has reached about $47.9 billion and will be increased by $2.5 billion until the year 2020, according to a report released by research firm Ambient Insight.
MOOC is not the only online education model favored by learners.
Genshuixue.com, an O2O platform that connects students with the right tutor through the Internet, received their A round investment of $50 million last March.
On the platform, all registered teachers with their bios, pictures, videos and students' comments can be searched by people seeking the teachers and courses they need, from language lessons, skateboarding, to magic classes and chess.
Users can buy certain teacher's courses as many as they want and have the courses online or offline.
The platform goes further with service for people to have personalized learning. Chen Xiangdong, CEO of genshuixue.com defines the platform "where anyone with talent and knowledge can be teachers and anyone who wants to learn can find a model. Anyone with any requests for learning can find the optimized personalized solution."
The online education market in China has been a hit since 2013 where more than $2 billion has been invested according to online media outlet tmtpost.com.
Among all kinds of online education, K-12 education (from kindergarten to grade 12) has already been a hotspot for sustainable business model favored by venture capitalists.
Last year, Yitiku won millions of dollars in the A round of financing from China's Internet giant Tencent in January. Yuantiku, an online smart exam database, landed its $60 million funding for D round in April; 17zuoye.com, an online study platform targeted at Chinese K-12 space, announced their $100 million financing for D round in February.
More types of online education have emerged and develop quickly to feed different needs of people.
goukr.com, an online community filled with diverse interest and curiosity for science, offers stories for all laymen about science and technology by using understandable but professional wording in a light tone.
zhihu.com is an online community where people pose their questions and other users with related knowledge give answers. The community has won millions of fans for its comprehensive questions and answers.
Up to December last year, online education users had reached 110 million in China, making up 16 percent of total internet users, according to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). About 53 million people study their online course by using their mobile phones, 8.6 percent of the total cellphone users in China.
According to CNNIC, online education in China is still at the early stage, requiring a long time for further development.
Online education already shows its potential to help people have multiple ways of learning for life and the trend is going to expand with the help of the development of technology.
Ding Lei, CEO of news portal NetEase Inc, which owns open course videos on MOOC, said: "We didn't do it for money. As the education resources are not equal around the world, like in east and west, cities and rural areas, we wish the Internet could break down the barriers and everyone can receive education equally".
