Design Research on Customized Online Education Platform Catering to Business Demands

The Chinese College Graduates’ Employment Annual Report (2017) (the annual blue book of employment) which is released by the third-party social investigation agency MyCOS in Beijing on June 12th shows that the number of college graduates has been continuously increasing in recent years. Comparing with the 7.7 million postgraduates in 2016, the number is expected to reach 7.95 million in 2017, with an increase of nearly 250,000 graduates. The employment rate of the 2016 college graduates six months postgraduate was 91.6%. Comparing with the percentage of 91.7% in 2015 and 92.1% in 2014, the proportion gradually decreased. In particular, the employment rate of undergraduates declines by 4% per year, while vocational graduates keep an employment rate at 91.5%, almost at the same level as in 2014. However, it is thought-provoking that according to the annual blue book of employment, the demand for professionals is 218 million people in the primary industry and 12.2 million people in the secondary industry, mainly in the areas of IT, microelectronics, automotive and environmental protection. The talent gap in the tertiary industry reaches 3.25 million people, so the total number of professional talents is still in short supply. In the face of the unbalanced situation of supply and demand of talents, graduates who have not been employed shortly after graduation can only re-employ their jobs through education and training. Therefore, many online and offline education and training institutions were created in the market. Although traditional offline education and training institutions are still the main focus of the education and training industry, the rapid development of online education has made itself an important part of the rising departments in the education industry (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

In recent years, online education has been developing rapidly and has attracted investment from various industries. The year 2013 was called as “the first year of online education in China” by education industry. According to statistics, there are more than 200 hot online education products designed for the purpose of student employment or improving students’ professional abilities. The present paper will make a classification of online education products from the perspective of the industry nature of the products’ developer.

Based on the industry nature of the products’ developer, online education products can be divided into professional education institutions and common business institutions. MOOCs are the most representative ones of such products developed by professional educational institutions. In Chinese, “MOOCs” means Massive Open Online Courses, of which the typical products are iCourse, xuetangx.com, NetEase Open Course and so on. The courses offered by these products are the same as traditional university courses, covering a wide range of disciplines, including computers, economic management, tests, psychology, literary history, engineering, etc. This type of platform developed by common business organizations can be thought as an integrated online education platform under the umbrella of Internet companies of all sizes (including e-commerce). It can offer online courses in the form of recording and live broadcasting and its representative products include NetEase Cloud Class, Chuanke.com(Baidu), ke.qq.com, etc. These platforms design their courses by adopt leading platforms of learning practical skills and aiming for students’ willingness to apply for jobs.

It’s found through research that different businesses have different technical requirements for the same position. For example, in Internet companies, visual designers of the same position may have different skill orientations. Some are responsible for banner designing, others mainly deal with H5 designing; some are responsible for UI designing, others for animation effects designing. However, the curriculum in school is different from that. It includes Information Design Principles, Interaction Design Principles, Design Discipline Design Methodology, Fundamentals of Interactive Technology, etc. Through observation, it’s clear that there’s a disparity between the curriculum in school and the skills required by businesses in that the former focus more on theory and academic learning. It pays lesser attention to students’ skills teaching and intensive practical training, leading to their lack of expertise and proficiency in practice. This is because schools and businesses see talents differently. What matter to businesses are the interests of the company so they are concerned about whether the person is competent to the job responsibilities and acquires skills applicable to the company’s business. While schools focus on “cultivation”, that is to say, cultivating students’ comprehensive abilities (both academic and practical abilities) and exploring students’ potential to the best extent. Therefore, students need to improve their vocational skills in addition to learning school courses.

The education of vocational skills needs to be combined with the demands of the company. Vocational education combined with the needs of the company not only allows students to be more targeted and efficient in the learning process, but also can save the cost of pre-service training for employers and improve the economic efficiency. Therefore, customized education came into being. There are many kinds of customized education, including preschool education, basic education, exam-oriented education and so on. The purposes of these educations are to meet the different needs of different users. The present paper will discuss the customized online education platform catering to the business demands.

“Aoki Cloud” is a customized online education platform catering to business demands and its service targets are companies who have specific requirements for the jobs they are providing. “Aoki Cloud” also customize courses for these companies. At present, 35 companies have settled in the platform. Through the platform, more than 80 kinds of professional customized services and courses are provided. These customized courses catering to business demands are learnt by students on the platform. These courses are in line with the company’s operating strategies and there will be an assessment at the end of the courses. When students pass the tests of these courses, they will then have the skill qualifications to get the position of the company, as well as the opportunities to be employed. This kind of learning process and assessment mechanism will inspire students’ learning motivation and speed up the employment process of those unemployed job-seekers. This clear teaching assessment model also solves the problems of recruiting talents faced by companies. At present, Huawei University and Alibaba Institute are both schools established by companies with certain strengths in China. The platform of “Aoki Cloud” will be able to establish a mechanism for training talents for small-sized and medium-sized companies with certain strengths, allowing more companies to develop their talents at relatively affordable costs and to save costs.

Figure 2 above shows the lo-fi main flowchart of the basic functions of “Aoki Cloud” (Student Version), in which the main function modules include “Course”, “Company”, “Message” and “Mine”. There are two versions of “Aoki Cloud”, namely Student Version and Enterprise Version. Students can view various customized education services developed by different companies on the homepage of “Course” module. These products of customized education service are all based on the company’s own demands. If there are products of customized education service satisfying the student, then he can swipe right to add the product into his collection or he can apply for them directly. Only when the student’s resume is examined by the company, can the student learn the products of the customized education service. This is also the protection of the company’s own knowledge and achievements. Besides, this is also the guarantee of student’s learning efficiency, ensuring that the student have the potential to get the position and guaranteeing fairness. Through the module of “Company”, students can first select the company that they are interested in, and then look at some of the company’s products of customized education service to continue learning. The module of “message” is mainly about the result of the resume delivery, that is, the feedback of qualification in course learning. The other part is the course list. The course list lists the courses that students have enrolled in. The courses are listed in time order. By clicking them, students can move forward to the live page of the course (as shown below) (Fig. 3).

Lo-fi main flowchart of the basic functions of “Aoki Cloud” (student version)

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Live page of “Aoki Cloud” online studying

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As shown in the Fig. 4, the design strategy of “Aoki Cloud” is that students can learn some featured courses catering to business demands on this platform. Enterprises can solve job recruitment issues on this platform while teachers can complete their teaching work through this education platform. Besides, schools can manage their own courses and assessment mechanisms in a better way through this platform while society can solve the problems of re-developing unemployed college graduates.

Design strategies of “Aoki Cloud”

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Unlike other vocational education online platforms, customized online education platforms catering to business demands permit direct participation of businesses. As proved by experiment, in the study of vocational courses, students can achieve higher efficiency while with specific targets than with subjective preference. Therefore, customized online education platforms realize the win-win situation between students and businesses while schools can be able to manage their curriculum and assessment mechanism with better effect and relieve the pressure of social employment.