Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
share technical infrastructure and sell products and services to each other, often doing
business with other SMEs they would never have known about (Ince, 2000). A survey of 453
small businesses conducted in the summer of 2000 indicated that only 17% were currently
doing business online, but one-third expected to go online during the next year (Roberts &
Pepe, 2000). If that statistic is transferred to the 10 million small businesses in the United States
alone, 1.3 million more business will enter the world of e-commerce. While a slowdown in the
U.S. economy is undoubtedly impacting these numbers, businesses getting off to the right
start with e-commerce may still find success and assist in the economic recovery. Federal
government sources, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology's
Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) and local Small Business Administration
offices, are trying to aid in these efforts (Korchak & Rodman, 2001).
With our own small sample of pilot companies in Boise, Idaho, we see great enthusiasm
for expanding electronically but little understanding of the requirements to proceed. Most
prospective SME candidates assume they will accept orders online but know little about
transaction processing or the security requirements to do so. Most begin the project with
a minimal level of technology infrastructure, and often, the owner has the most computer
skills. Our consultative prototype project attempts to educate our participant companies to
the potential of e-commerce for their individual situation. The project does the following:
1.
Gives participating companies a nonthreatening introduction to Web and commerce
technology
2.
Summarizes what the companies need to know to implement an e-commerce site
3.
Provides the companies a choice of prototypes to support their business strategy with
a complementary e-commerce model
4.
Helps students learn to apply their knowledge and practice communication and team
skills
Whether the prototypes evolve into full e-commerce efforts, of course, is up to the
business owners, but the first year's efforts proved successful for those companies that went
forward with their prototypes and newly defined e-commerce business models.
TEAM PROJECT ISSUES
Why do students not like team projects? The biggest response to that question from
the author's experience seems to be the time commitment. Those students who get to know
others with similar schedules and work ethics during their academic program typically report
better team experiences. Other researchers explored various techniques for team projects,
including assigned teams (Fellers, 1996); junior teams with senior team advisors (Nance,
1998); and self-selected, guided teams (Van Slyke et al., 1999). Most of these authors
mentioned the problems in expecting students to be natural participants in the team process
without any type of teamwork training.
Several educators expanded the concept of student teamwork into group-guided
cooperative learning. Fellers (1996) experimented with teams who studied together, com-
pleted group assignments, and in several cases, received group grades, with each team
member receiving the lowest scoring member's test grade. In general, he found students to
be more receptive to the idea of group learning than in sharing a common grade. Nance (1998)
deployed a cross-class collaboration effort with students in an advanced class assigned to
