An Introductory Course in an Undergraduate E-commerce Technology Degree Program Amber Settle Assistant Professor CTI, DePaul University ISECON November 2, 2001

2 Outline School of CTI at DePaul University Undergraduate e-commerce technology program ECT 250: Survey of e-commerce technology course  Web development sequence  A balanced approach  Course overview Future in the undergraduate CTI programs

3 DePaul CTI School of Computer Science, Telecommunications, and Information Systems: Faculty size (Fall 2001) – 80 full-time faculty – 100+ part-time faculty Enrollments (Spring 2001) – Undergraduate: 1575 – Graduate (M.S.): 2096 – Ph.D.: 40 Undergraduate programs: CS, CGA, ECT, HCI, IS, NT Graduate programs: CS, CGA, DS, ECT, HCI, IS, SE, TDC.

4 E-commerce technology M.S. in E-commerce technology – Introduced in September 1999 – See related papers: Knight 2001 – Generated undergraduate interest B.S. in E-commerce technology – Introduced in September 2000 – Focus areas include: Programming, user- centered interface design, system design, technology of databases, networking, and middleware. – Enrollment (September 2001): 65

5 Web development Web development courses in the B.S. in ECT: 1.ECT 250: Survey of e-commerce technology 2.ECT 270: Client-side Web application development i.HTML ii.Cascading Style Sheets iii.DHTML using JavaScript 3.ECT 353: Server-side Web application development Development of small-scale e-commerce transaction applications. Current technologies: ASP, VBScript.

6 Introductory courses Breadth-first approach – General survey of important topics – See related papers: Bagert, Marcy, and Calloni, 1995 King and Barr, 1997 McFall and Stegink, 1997 Depth-first approach – A particular technology in detail – See related papers: Mercuri, Herrmann, and Popyack, 1998 Hermann and Popyack, 1994 Kolesar and Allan, 1995

7 A balanced approach Combine breadth and depth topics Provides a broad framework and sufficient experience to understand the significance of an area Finding the balance can be challenging Example: Reed 2001 The key for ECT 250: Survey of e-commerce technology Using a Web development tool

8 The breadth topics The Internet and WWW E-commerce hardware and software Security Electronic payment systems Marketing, sales, and promotion Purchasing, logistics, and support activities International, ethical, and legal issues Key themes: Importance of standards, rapidly changing nature of the field, relative importance of B2B vs. B2C

9 The depth topics FrontPage Graphic formats Publishing Web pages – FTP – Telnet – Unix commands Markup languages Issues surrounding frames Web page design Focus: Preparation for subsequent Web development courses

10 The course Textbook: Electronic Commerce, Schneider & Perry Ten weeks, two lectures of 1 ½ hours per week Lecture topics: – Breadth: 11 lectures – Depth: 7 lectures – Midterm and final exam Students from CTI, Commerce, and Liberal Arts All undergraduate class levels

11 Assignments and exams Weekly assignments: 8 – Orientation via an ed survey – Web page creation and publication Home page, shrine page, subject page – Survey topics E-commerce and networking basics, Web hosting options, computer forensics, basic encryption Comprehensive exams: 2 True/false, matching, short answer, essay

12 Future New textbook E-commerce: Business, Technology, Society. Laudon & Traver Inclusion into new programs Undergraduate ECT, IS, NT (Fall 2001) Increase in enrollment – Fall 2000: Two sections – Fall 2001: Five sections – Winter 2002: Six sections A redesign of CSC 200 : Survey of computer technology

13 References Bagert, Donald, William Marcy, and Ben Calloni, 1995, “A Successful Five-year Experiment with a Breadth-first Introductory Course.” SIGCSE Bulletin 27(1): Herrmann, Nira, and Jeffrey Popyack, 1994, “An Integrated, Software- based Approach to Teaching Introductory Computer Programming.” SIGCSE Bulletin 27(1): [spreadsheets] King, L.A. Smith, and John Barr, 1997, “Computer Science for the Artist.” SIGCSE Bulletin 29(1): [graphics] Kolesar, Mary, and Vicki Allan, 1995, “Teaching Computer Science Concepts and Problem Solving with a Spreadsheet.” SIGCSE Bulletin 27(1): McFall, Ryan, and Gordon Stegink, 1997, “Introductory Computer Science for General Education: Laboratories, Textbooks, and the Internet.” SIGCSE Bulletin 29(1): Mercuri, Rebecca, Nira Herrmann, and Jeffrey Popyack, 1998, “Using HTML and JavaScript in Introductory Programming Courses.” SIGCSE Bulletin 30(1): Reed, David, 2001, “Rethinking CS0 with Javascript.” SIGCSE Bulletin 33(1): Schneider, Gary, and James Perry, 2001, Electronic Commerce, Second Edition. Course Technology.