The e-Business Success Programme was an ESF funded project delivered over 20 weeks in the summer of 2000 by the Centre for Electronic Commerce, part of the University of Sunderland. Two cohorts of trainees/students/participants completed the programme.
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Programme Specification ... from the project documentation
The aim of this programme is to promote the growth of electronic commerce and so help SMEs acquire a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The provision of this specialised course will nurture the necessary knowledge and skills required to develop a successful e-business strategy.
The post-project report described the progamme as:
Aimed at owners and managers of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the course was conceived to facilitate the development of the skills and knowledge required for them to exploit e-business opportunities.
Delegates attended one evening per week over a twenty-week period. As well as the three hours 'contact time' each attendee completed ten hours study 'off-site' using literature and the programme's bespoke
virtual learning space - something we now know as a virtual learning
environment
[VLE].
The attended sessions included lectures, workshops, group discussion, guest presentations and computer based exercises.
What made the ESP different from other training courses offered was that it looked not only at e-commerce, but encompassed all aspects of the business and how it is, or will be, affected by Internet applications. Course participants were encouraged to think strategically about their business. This involved them assessing their organisation as it is now, where they want it to go in the future, and how e-business will help them fulfill their objectives.
Attendees fell into three distinct groups:
1 Organisations who wish to use e-business in existing enterprises
2 Organisations who wish to launch new products / services using e-commerce
3 Individuals or groups who have new 'dot com' business ideas.
It is indicative of the state of play with regard to 'e-business' at that time, that this is the content list for my week one 'lecture':
The Internet
* What is the Internet?
* A brief history of the Internet
* What can the Internet be used for?
Getting Started - What you need
* Suitable computer
* Connection
* Modem, ISDN, cable modem or DSL
* An Internet Service Provider - ISP
* Internet access software - Browser
The World Wide Web
* What is the World Wide Web - WWW?
- Hyper Text Transfer Protocol - http
- Domains
- Web page addresses
Younger readers might need to look up some of these terms in a history book [OK ... Wikipedia]
This page was first published in January 2018