Education group invests $15m in Guokr

TAL Education Group, a K-12 after-school tutoring service provider in China, announced on Monday that it had invested approximately $15 million in Guokr, Inc, a popular mobile and web-based community for science and technology education in China.

Liu Yachao, co-founder and general manager of the investment unit of TAL, said the move is a solid step for TAL toward becoming a leading technology-driven education services provider in China.

"Guokr and its Massive Online Open Course content will be an important addition to our blended learning approach across multimedia platforms, especially Internet and mobile Internet.

"We believe Guokr and TAL have great synergies, which will further strengthen as a rapidly increasing number of our students discover they can 'play-and-learn' on their mobile devices outside the traditional classroom setting," Liu said.

Founded in 2010, Guokr is a popular science social networking service provider that fosters a community for people to learn and share scientific knowledge of human life, with a majority of users being high school and college students and young graduates.

Topics on Guokr range across various fields, including biology, psychology, sociology, physics, astronomy, and can be accessed through its website and mobile applications.

Guokr also cooperates with various open education initiatives including Coursera, an international education platform which offers MOOC content in partnership with top universities and organizations worldwide.

Guokr supports the translation of MOOC content into Chinese for MOOC providers and promotes the content to users through its website.

Liu said they will leverage the Guokr MOOC platform to connect with world-class education resources, which is consistent with their recent investment in the Minerva Project, a revolutionary new provider of undergraduate education in the United States, and their angel investment in Sharkpark, a science education company.