A Study on WeSupport, a WeChat-based Learning Platform
1) WeSupport users have significantly higher education levels compared to other migrant / factory workers. Also, female users and those with higher education levels tend to subscribe to more WeChat public accounts, while rural migrants subscribe to fewer accounts. These differences highlight the varying habits of people ' s WeChat usage. For example, 45 % of the users found“ obtaining knowledge and information” to be the most useful function of WeChat. It is interesting to note that female users regard this function of online learning significantly more useful than their male counterparts.
2) Only 26 % of the users subscribed to CCR CSR ' s WeSupport platform through infactory promotion, while 43 % joined through recommendation by a friend. While this points to the potential of WeChat-based eLearning to reach a large number of users beyond the scope of project factories, we also found that the workers who were introduced to WeSupport through in-factory promotion utilize the platform more frequently and find it more effective.
3) Higher than average education levels of WeSupport platform users points to a challenge: that it may be more difficult for workers with lower education levels to access and utilize eLearning platforms. However, it can also be a potential opportunity for such users as they are significantly more active on the WeSupport platform than their better-educated peers. This result indicates that the content of the WeSupport platform is appealing to workers with lower education once they are introduced to the platform, even though they are not used to accessing knowledge and information through such channels. If we link this to the fact that peers are the key channel to introducing the WeSupport platform and that peers often share content with people similar to their own background, we can conclude that new innovative ways are needed to lower the hurdles for workers with lower education to access WeChat-based learning.
In general, we can conclude that WeChat played an important role in helping migrant workers better integrate into society, both from a social aspect and from a personal development point of view. In terms of social networks, we learned from both the survey and interviews that WeChat made it easier for users to make new friends and enrich their social life. It is not surprising that male users are more likely to use it for expanding their social network than females. As for personal development, CCR CSR’ s WeSupport eLearning platform on WeChat had a significant impact on workers’ integration into society.
We found that in just over a year since its launch in June 2015, the WeSupport platform has had a positive impact on factory workers. While such surveys often trigger positive bias from respondents, the feedback of users clearly indicates positive changes in their awareness and perception, which is the necessary first step towards achieving behavior change. For example, the majority of parent users reported that parenting lessons very much helped them improve communication with their children, and helped foster closer bonds between them. In conclusion, the survey highlights the fact that when eLearning content and style speaks to and attracts workers, WeChat possesses the potential to become an indispensable tool for migrant workers with low-education levels in terms of social integration, increasing awareness, gaining knowledge and support.
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