Digitalization is changing business form in a digital reality based on data. The first of all it means new business processes, organizational structures, regulations, a new responsibility for data, new role models. This article represents research results on e-learning development trends as the Russian Federation economy digitalization direction. It is given educational startups market analysis and its features. With startups help one can develop motivational systems that have large opportunities within material presentation framework and interaction with students. Statistical data on distance learning development in the Russian Federation is described. Due to the large distances between educational centers in the Russian Federation online distance learning is becoming increasingly popular. The growth of broadband Internet access penetration here also is a positive factor for digital education development. Education as part of the economy must be not only a kind of investment to future generations' knowledge but also a profitable area. Higher education institutions must be economically successful for its sustainable functioning and it must receive profit from its activities. Also e-education economic aspects mathematical model is suggested.
Nowadays the economy is characterized by digital transformation that is changing business form in a digital reality based on data. The first of all it means new business processes, organizational structures, regulations, a new responsibility for data, new role models. Education as part of the economic structure is also involved in this process. Digital transformation is not limited to the use of technologies such as Big Data, the Internet of things, augmented reality, blockchain and so on. In relation to digital transformation, all companies can be divided into two sectors: the virtual sector and real companies’ one. Digital transformation will have its own characteristics for each of the sectors. *
Education as part of the economy must be not only a kind of investment to future generations’ knowledge but also a profitable area.
The article's aim is to make research on e-learning development trends as the Russian Federation economy digitalization direction. It can be subdivided into tasks: 1) to describe digitalization tendencies in modern educational processes; 2) to analyze statistical data on the e-learning development in the Russian Federation:
3) to suggest e-education economic aspects, mathematical model. 2
Materials and Methods In the article, there were used general scientific and special research methods to solve the mentioned aim. There are economic modeling, graphical analysis, statistic, technoeconomic, system and structural analyses, expert estimation method. It was studied theoretical and applied papers on the research topic [1-15], also official statistics data. 3 3.1
Main content. E-learning development trends as the Russian Federation economy digitalization direction
Digitalization tendencies description in modern educational processes During the research, it was analyzed different digital transformation tendencies in modern educational processes. The most illustrative from them are different educational startups that can be represented in different models:
There are a few business models for educational startups: 1. “Free course – paid certificate” business model. The sale of a paid certificate that confirming the course passing is the most popular model primarily due to Coursera (the project attracted 146,1 million dollars in 6 rounds from 12 investors, including the World Bank and Yuri Milner who is the former Chairman Mail.ru Group Directors Board).
2. “Paid course” business model. On the EdX platform “Professional Education” section courses are paid. The EDX is registered as a non-profit organization and working on open-source software raised 30 million dollars from Harvard and MIT. They are aimed at participants’ highly specialized skills development. Udemy paid courses beyond 500 Startups on Seed and Series A stages raised 113 million dollars in 5 rounds from 16 investors, and also Insight Venture Partners. The Geekmath application authored by Moscow State University associate professor offers courses in higher mathematics, statistics, linear algebra, econometrics, etc. The educational process is the course studying by reading an interactive textbook that is written for the humanities and includes problem solutions and a large number of comments. The course on econometrics consists of 10 topics that are divided into 32 lessons, and now it costs 119 rubles and is intended for the general public.
3. “Selling a program that is formed from a set of courses” business model. This model is used by Coursera that offers several courses that are formed into one vocation. The same model is also used by edX that calls it the “Series of Courses”. For some projects, it is cheaper to buy a package than paying for parts separately.
4. “Selling video” business model. The Russian Be smart project attracted 4 million dollars from the Education Matrix in December 2013. It is a trading platform that provides free opportunity to place one’s own educational texts, graphics, audio and video files, then to set a price and receive payments after viewing the mentioned materials. The difference from YouTube channels is that on Besmart the videos are intended for a not wide audience, so they will not be able to be achieved by a large number of course visitors.
5. “Certain period subscription sale” business model. There are two types of subscriptions:
A. Buying access to content. The most famous project in Russia in this area is Neurology. It raised 2,7 million dollars in 2 rounds from Inventure Partners and Buran Venture Capital). The project team believes that when students pay for a period, they behave better and learn on average two courses per month. In the world project, Lynda.com has raised 289 million dollars in 2 rounds from 4 investors. The project specializes in computer programs use courses including graphic editors, and it is very profitable.
B. Educational resources additional opportunities use. This model is called Freemium. The LinguaLeo project raised 3 million dollars in 3 rounds from 3 investors. The project of the Free Innovation Research Institute Easy Ten is available with subscription (on February 2018 annual subscription costs 699 rubles in the AppStore). Autorenewable subscription costs 2,99 dollars per month.
6. “Advertising” business model. This is a classic business model for online projects and mobile application earnings.
7. “Programs with webinars” business model. Programs with webinars launched by mentioned above Netology that specializes in online professions. A large number of projects operate in this segment, and the most often such programs are difficult to fit into the startup concept but they are educational business good examples. In this case, the risk of large number programs is a need to recruit participants for each educational flow.
8. “Programs with personal studies” business model. An excellent example of such a business model is Skyeng (the project received a grant of 13 thousand dollars in 2012, also Alexander Laryanovsky who is the former international development director at Yandex was among investors). Unlike other educational projects Skyeng aims to study only English with different levels and tasks.
9. “Educational environment additional and exclusive services providing” business model. This one is the platform for educational and scientific Internet conferences with a large number of participants for universities, and also a discussion platform. In the Mendeley project, one can create databases for storage that are used in social networks for scientists. The platform attracted 2 million dollars from 4 investors. Academia.edu project raised 17,8 million dollars in 4 rounds from 8 investors. The project suggests analyzing the content uploaded by the user and find similar research topics.
The list is not exhaustive but these business models can certainly be called the most indicative in the market.
Also, there is a need to describe educational startups features:
A. The educational startup is a project developed by teachers together with programmers.
B. It is a product that allows children and adults to learn with the help of modern technology.
C. If one speaks about the major educational startups they are always commercial projects aimed to make a profit.
There is an illustration of an average bill for e-education on mentioned models (fig. 1)
250 250 200 150 100 50 0
100 10 25 80 200
Statistical data analysis on the e-learning development in the Russian Federation: Worldwide educational projects total investment amounted to 7,5 billion dollars in 2017-2018. 50% of the entire online education market belongs to the United States.
However, the growth of Asian one is evaluated in hundreds of percent.
The most popular is foreign language online learning including direct communication with native speakers. Online tutors, offline test preparation and corporate training are also very popular. In the corporate training segment lifelong learning is gaining popularity. That is the continuous process of personnel training in accordance with the external environment changing, new tasks, etc. During research it was disclosed that abroad remote technologies are used by many educational institutions: ─ Open University (UK); ─ National University of Technology (USA); ─ University of Pennsylvania (USA); ─ University of Western Governors (USA); ─ Canadian Open University; ─ University of South Africa; ─ National University of Distance Education (Spain); ─ The Open University of Israel; ─ Open University of the Netherlands; ─ Dutch Open University; ─ French National Center for Distance Education, etc
Due to the large distances between educational centers in the Russian Federation online distance learning is becoming increasingly popular. The courses share is given in fig. 2.
9,00% 27,00% 12,00% 14,00%
38,00%
The growth of broadband Internet access penetration here also is a positive factor for digital education development. Nowadays the Internet is applied by 73,41 % of the total population. These factors influenced a number of Russian universities (Moscow State University, Saint-Petersburg State University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and others) which united created an electronic online learning platform “Open Education” that was supposed to compete with large international projects.
About 100 universities implement distance learning. Some have from 20 to 100 or even more branches. There is a network of correspondence schools, remote training courses for students, the portal “Open Education”. Distance learning is used at all levels of the educational system and in corporate training. In post-Soviet Russia Uralsib, VimpelCom, Ministry of Railway Transport (since 2003), Sibneft, Severstal, Norilsk Nickel, Sberbank, AvtoVAZ (since 2005) have become the pioneers of distance learning.
The target audience of distance learning programs is considered to be people aged 30 years and older, as well as people belonging to certain social groups – applicants, disabled people, young mothers, military personnel, and also ones who are living in remote areas. Distance vocational training is used to train lawyers, railway workers, clergymen, and many other professions.
Secondary school e-learning is received by disabled children, villagers, children of Russian compatriots from the CIS and Baltic countries. When companies use distance learning they receive direct economic benefits that are reducing the travel and accommodation cost, almost not distracting employees from work processes. According to SloanConsortium the most often distance learning was used by commercial educational and training companies, financial organizations, IT companies.
The object of the study also highlighted two main segments in e-education:
According to the expert's opinion, the most perspective is a hybrid model that includes online and offline education tools. B2C segment includes: limited number of students; ─ the MOOC courses segment, open online participatory courses designed for an un─ videos, including YouTube, social networks, etc.; ─ skype training; ─ mobile applications. ─ B2B segment includes: ─ corporate MOOC courses that are designed for employees training or development; ─ individual education solutions.
The research shows that more than the third of online education costs fell on business courses in 2018. Also, it was analyzed data on more than 427 thousand bills worth over 1,4 billion rubles generated by Russian online training platforms with using the ATOL Online ticketing service. By author's own estimation it is more than 70 % of the ecommerce market (it was taken into account the purchases made in Russian online stores and paid by electronic payments).
The total volume of the online education market taking into account independent market participants is 21 billion rubles. These data reflect 31 online schools in Russia. Four of them are on online platforms of the largest Russian universities and 27 are independent educational online platforms. 1389127733 rubles is the total cost of online courses paid by Russians on the Internet in 2018. 3.3
E-education economic aspects mathematical model
E-education must be economically successful for its sustainable functioning and it must
receive profit from its activities. As the mathematical model of such activity the authors
take equations:
{
The upper equation of the system (
Z(t) ∫Z(o) x2−(U−γa)x
dx
= −at= ∫
Z(t) 1 1 Z(o) dxU1−γa [x−(U−γa) − x] =
U1−γa ln
z(o)[z(t)−(U−γa)]
z(t)[z(o)−(U−γa)]
z(o)[z(t)−(U−γa)]
z(t)[z(o)−(U−γa)]
= e−a(U−γa)t
(
z(o)(U−γa) z(o)(1−e−a(U−γa)t)+(U−γa)e−a(U−γa)t If U > , that lim ( ) = ( − )
(
The lower equation of the system (
P(t) = √ + ( 2( )− ) −2
→∞
lim ( ) = √
The middle equation of the system (
is the intensity of advertising at the given e-education structure, NO is the maximum number of students who have the opportunity to study at the given university, B is the probability of student deduction and leaving from the e-learning.
( ) = + + ( ( )− + ) exp{− ( + ) }
lim ( ) = + →∞ .
(