IS3106Project

Project based on Netbeans 8.0.2 and GlassFish 4.1 Web Demo Video: YouTube

Learning Hub System Description

Our team wishes to put technology use into education and aims to design and develop an integrated learning environment called Learning Hub System (LHS) that will transform learning process to become more interactive, convenient, and systematic. LHS strives to facilitate both students and instructors (teaching assistants and lecturers) with various assistive features. LHS has two platforms, one web application for all users and one mobile app for premium users. Some core features included are:

• Account Registration (for students only, account for lecturers and facilitators is assigned by the system administrator)
• User profile management (including personal information management and premium mobile app subscription management)
• Timetable management (Calendar view that allows users to view upcoming events and allows time entry management)
• View enrolled/teaching/facilitating modules
• View module details (including viewing basic module information such as module description and exam date, browse lecturers, facilitators, students and announcements associated with selected module)
• File upload (for lecturers only)
• File download
• Create new announcement (for lecturers only)

Besides this, LHS also allows system administrator usage for:

• User management (view existing users in the system, create new lecturer and facilitators account, delete users)
• Module management (create, display and delete modules, modify module information, assign the module to students, assign TA/lecturer to modules)

Value Proposition

What Learning Hub aims to serve its users, is the convenience to access different kinds of collaborative education resources on multiple devices.

1. Versatility Every university could implement the system under assistance to ease the educational resource management process for administrator and facilitate the systematic learning process and enhanced interaction among students, professors, and teaching assistants.
2. Collaborativeness Different types of users could share documents as well as exchange information online easily and promptly.
3. Multiple Devices Additionally, the application enables all registered users to perform actions through the web application. And it also allows the premium user to access the mobile version of the system, which is convenient for students and professors who are not able to use personal computers to access resources all the time.

Business Content

Revenue Model

1. Customization fee for specific university If any customers want to buy the whole set of LHS, we offer them the customization of LHS corresponding to their specific requirements. For example, they can use their own API or add in functionalities in their system. In exchange, they need to pay the implementation and customization fee.

2. Premium user subscription fee Although Learning Hub System web version is free of charge to every lecturer, student, TA and admin staff relevant within the university which has the right to use LHS, for better user experience and greater convenience, becoming a premium user grant user the access to mobile app version of the Learning Hub System, with a monthly subscription fee of $5.

3. Market Opportunity The prominent E-learning trend in the world brings large market opportunities for online learning management system. In 2016, the National University of Singapore alone has a total enrollment of 38,596 students. Similarly, with the increasing number of people receiving higher education today, a flexible and convenient corporate learning environment becomes important for different universities. Additionally, with a large number of lecturers and teaching assistants involved, our system, LHS should have a prominent target customer group. Besides, since we provide customization and maintenance of the system for the customer, LHS is also suitable for different educational institutions who intend to develop online learning system for their students.

4. Competitive Environment As we provide our product to education institutions, our main competitors are the learning systems self-developed by technical teams in different educational institutions. The advantage of a self-developed integrated learning environment for internal use is, the education institution could implement some functions and features that satisfy their specific requirements. In addition, the education institution could make an adjustment or conduct the maintenance of their system at any time. Some other competitors are companies that design and develop customized enterprise resource system for institutions. This kind of ERPs is usually more systematic and secure, while more expensive and difficult to perform adjustment or maintenance, as institutions have to pay additional fees or take more time to get familiar with the design and structure by themselves.

Competitive Advantage

1. Multiple User Role Compared with the existing integrated learning environment, Learning Hub is an integrated system combining different user roles such as administrators, lecturers, teaching assistants, and students to contribute, upload and share learning resources. Learning Hub could easily help the universities to develop new roles.

2. Multi-Platform Learning Hub enables users to access using multi-platform devices such as personal computers and mobile phones. The website of Learning Hub is mobile-friendly so that users could access the website when they use their personal computers and mobile phones. Besides, the mobile application of Learning Hub is also developed to better cater users’ preferences to access data anytime, anywhere.

3. Time Management The time management subsystem, which includes the monthly schedule, weekly schedule and daily schedule on the website, could offer the users an intuitive way to manage their time entries and improve the productivity and efficiency of the students and the lecturers.

4. Administrator Management The administrator management system could help the managers of the Learning Hub to better manage the users, modules rather than manually check the information in the database. Also, the administrator could easily assign modules to lecturers or teaching assistants.

Marketing and Advertising Strategies

We plan to adopt a two-pronged marketing and advertising strategies: Targeting, Positioning and Messaging.

1. Targeting By filtering schools with the need to adopt new integrated learning system and schools that currently do not have an existing system, this could greatly increase the chance of successful adoption of Learning Hub System by targeted institutions. How we are going to attract potentially interested institutions is through mass media marketing such as outdoor advertisements, business directories and infomercials, direct marketing such as emailing to school IT infrastructure division, and digital marketing through social media (Facebook or Twitter) and YouTube channel.

2. Positioning Positioning is the step where we define the image of Learning Hub System. The branding process takes user needs, LHS key features as well as competitors’ products into account to set our offering apart from similar products in the market. For example, with Arts Institution, we will highlight aesthetic user interface as compared to competitors offering, while with institution containing a large number of users, we will feature on the capability of allowing users with different roles to collaborate on the integrated system.

Tech

LHS uses a number of open source projects to work properly:

• JavaEE
• Primefaces
• NetBeans
• RESTFul Services