"Home of OUC students" is the OUC’s official WeChat account open for the students of the OUC. The account is designed to strengthen mutual learning communication, share life experience, witness the growth of the OUC, transfer positive energy, and promote the campus culture of the OUC. The WeChat platform selects and organizes the contents from the point of view of the students, with an effort to build a service platform that integrates in one place announcements, good personal examples, learning guidance, information enquiries, and exchange and interaction.
The platform account was launched in January 2015. It issues one edition of news every week, covering the OUC news, profile publicity, learning methods, personal development, psychological counseling, career planning, book recommendations, etc., with an aim to enrich the study and life of the students in open universities. So far, the "Home of OUC students" has distributed 17 issues of the contents to readers.
To meet the growing personalized learning needs of the students, the platform opened the menu query function in April 2015, setting up three menus ("WeChat Learning", "WeChat Service" and "WeChat Investigation") to provide comprehensive support services for students.
WeChat Learning
It is intended to provide academic support services for students during their learning. When the students click on the sub menu, they will get the corresponding learning guidance. The contents of the sub-menu are shown as follows:
(1) Learning Method: introduces self-regulated learning, online learning, group learning, face-to-face tutoring and other personalized approaches to learning, so as to meet the diversified and personalized learning needs of students.
(2) Learning Resources: introduces the diversified learning resources of the OUC, including print teaching materials, multimedia teaching materials and online courses.
(3) Learning Support: introduces teachers and management personnel from the OUC headquarters, branches, and study centres, providing one-stop services and support.
(4) Course Examination: introduces the test types, test requirements and test platform.
(5) Degrees: introduces the qualifications and requirements for obtaining degrees and diplomas of the OUC.
WeChat Service
It is intended to provide non-academic support services other than course learning for students. When the students click on the sub menu, they can browse the personalized service items launched by the OUC. The contents of the sub-menu are shown as follows:
(1) Scholarships: introduces the types of scholarships set up by the OUC, and the requirements for receiving the scholarships.
(2) Excellent Graduates: introduces the accomplishments of the outstanding graduates of the OUC, and the conditions for application.
(3) Student Activities: introduces the large-scale student activities carried out by the OUC, and how to sign up for such activities.
(4) Counselling Services: introduces the department of the OUC that provides counselling services, the service scope and the consulting channels.
WeChat Survey
Through the form of questionnaires, it is intended to get to know trends among students, the hot issues they are concerned about, and the difficulties encountered in their learning to get first-hand information about the students.
Since the launch of WeChat public platform "Home of OUC students", certain progress has been made. However, it is still in the stage of development, and yet to be more deeply studied and explored. First of all, it is necessary to define the service orientation of the platform, and properly plan the platform services. For example, we should regularly get to know the students’ needs, periodically adjust the menu settings, update the menu contents and so on. Secondly, we should try to use more features of the platform and enrich the ways that the contents can be displayed. For example, based on the original information distribution, online questionnaire surveys, and other single issues of information, we should explore the function of two-way communication support, such as "BBS". Finally, to attract the attention of more viewers and enrich the contents of the platform, we should broaden the publicity channels, actively absorbing information from national branches, study centres, and Chinese TV News to constantly improve the platform in its process of operation.
By Di Xiaoxuan, OUC