1. technology and computing
2. internet technology
3. ecommerce

A case study:
Introductory eBusiness
eCourse for students of
Computer Science
Empowering
electronic courses
by introducing
collaborative
activities
Ž. Komlenov, D. Pešović, Z. Budimac
Department of Mathematics and Informatics
Faculty of Science, University of Novi Sad
Empowering electronic courses by introducing
collaborative activities – overview
 Investigating current practice of collaborative learning in
Computer Science courses
 Introducing it into our own teaching endavours at an early
stage of studies – introductory course on eBusiness
 Open source toolbox (Moodle, Magento, WordPress)
 Collaborative assignments (wiki, eStore, business blog)
 Promising results
2
Empowering electronic courses by introducing
collaborative activities – contents
 eLearning trends
 Contemporary tools for learning
 Goals and challenges
 Collaborative learning in Computer Science courses
 Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
 Course structure
 Toolbox
 Collaborative activities
 Results
 Conclusions and further work
3
eLearning trends
 High quality eLearning succeeds only when designers
understand the
 educational
 economic
 technical challenges they face
 and the best practices to address them
 Concept of eCourses
 Learning management systems reign
 Emergence of Web 2.0, and consequently eLearning 2.0
 Enabling and encouraging participation through open
applications and services
 Aiming at collaborative nature of learning
 Bringing focus on content syndication, its reuse,
adaptation, and personalization
4
Contemporary tools for learning
 Content is
 used rather than read
 more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors
 Modern eLearning platform becomes
 a personal learning centre, where content is reused and remixed
according to the student’s needs and interests
 not a single application, but a collection of interoperating
applications – an environment rather than a system
 Educational institutions tend to apply interlocking sets of open
source applications
 In our case as means of introducing collaborative activities in an
introductory eBusiness course
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Goals and challenges
 Collaborative work bravely introduced to first-year students,
together with Web 2.0 tools
 Goal: to allow students, grouped in appropriate teams of 3-5
collaborators, to go through several phases of an imaginary
eBusiness development
 Giving them possibility to learn how to use Web 2.0 tools
 Helping them in gaining soft skills and valuable experience
through team effort
 Beneficial experience for institutions
 having similar courses in their curricula
 that are struggling with incorporating interactive Web 2.0 tools
in their teaching practice while maintaining an ever
growing LMS
6
Collaborative learning in Computer Science courses
 Collaboration in an online course – through small group
projects, simulations, case study work, or using other methods
 Enhances problem-solving and enjoyment of the task
 Presents the heart of any learner-centered online course
 Is the best way to tap into all learning styles present in the group
 Is quite appropriate for Computer Science courses, since new
knowledge is often applied to complex and unstructured tasks
Most courses in systems analysis and design and many
programming courses require students to work on group projects
As well as a number of courses in computer architecture, graphics,
software engineering, database design, project management,
multimedia and interface design, database management systems,
information systems analysis and design, etc.
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
 Introductory course on eBusiness
 Offered to students of Computer Science in the first year of
their studies
 A blended course that proposes student-centred learning
 Conducted using contemporary eLearning technologies
 Particularly eLearning 2.0 tools for the implementation of
collaborative activities, which have been gradually introduced
 Students are required to build their knowledge through
activities that engage them in active learning
 Thematically, similar courses are quite rarely offered in this
way, especially to first-year students
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Course structure
 Crucial eBusiness topics, offered as lectures and exercises,
together with supporting online resources and activities
 A certain amount of advanced topics provided as additional
self-study material
 Students can (on voluntary basis)
 use discussion boards/participate in chat sessions
 form databases of useful links
 explore eLessons that test their progress in gaining new
knowledge
 For grading purposes
 three online tests are delivered during the semester in the
controlled environment (results produced form 60% of students’
final grades)
 collaborative activities are performed completely online
(forming the remaining 40% of the grades)
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Toolbox
 Most LMSs-like platforms focus more on distribution of
learning material than social interaction or possibilities to
construct shared knowledge
 We have opted for some specific additional tools in order to
fulfil the possibilities offered by the chosen LMS (Moodle)
 eCommerce platform – Magento
 Blogging tool – WordPress
 Exclusively open source solutions
 Considerable initial cost savings
 Flexibility and availability of additional features
 Possibility to extend and customize them according
one’s specific needs
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Toolbox – Moodle
 A reasonable decision to use an existing eLearning platform
instead of developing a new one from scratch
 Thorough market analyses of the established open source
general purpose LMS solutions
 Moodle as the final choice, for its fine basic features and great
extensibility potential
 Successfully used at our Department since 2004
 eBusiness course built in Moodle, using a variety of its modules
 Some of the assignments set up and solved within it (for instance
using Wiki module)
 For others additional applications are used
subject-specific tools (for instance an eCommerce platform)
more powerful versions of means of collaboration
compared to the ones existing in Moodle (e.g. advanced
blogging functionality)
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Toolbox – Magento
 One of the best open source eCommerce platforms
 Wide range of customization and fine-tuning capabilities
 Modular architecture – each module is responsible for certain
type of features, processes or activities:
 analytics and reporting
 catalogue browsing
 customer accounts
 order management
 search engine optimization
 marketing promotions and tools…
 Reasonable complexity of the platform
 Support for the development of multiple Web stores
within one Magento-powered site
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Toolbox – WordPress
 A rather popular blog publishing application and content
management system, having
 a templating system, including various widgets
 themes
 integrated link management
 a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure
 the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles
 multiple author capability
 support for tagging of posts and articles
 a rich plug-in architecture
 Offers a nice balance of functionality and stability
 Allows an arbitrary number of simultaneous blogs to
exist within one installation
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Collaborative activities
 Inclusion of group exercises can help students get diverse
ideas, views, opinions and feedback
 A set of team assignments, all gathered around one big goal –
thinking of the online presence of an imaginary eCommerce
company/organization
 Self-assigned groups of students (3–5 per group)
 Both individual and team effort taken into consideration while
grading the assignments, based on
 the success of the final products
 the team’s own assessment of their operations
professionalism (attendance at meetings, cooperative attitude)
initiative (suggesting ideas, working towards common goals)
independence (completion of tasks at agreed-upon
deadlines, researching topics and sharing resources)
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
A set of assignments
 Online business model
 Of an imaginary eCommerce company/organization
 In a wiki form (created using the appropriate Moodle’s module)
 eCommerce Web site
 Putting the business model into practice – building a Magento
eStore
 Marketing tools and promotions
 Improving the eStore focusing on usage of Magento’s marketing
tools and promotion mechanisms: pricing rules, customer
groups, time period, landing pages for campaigns, polls,
newsletters, etc.
 Business blog
 Creating a business blog in WordPress and maintaining
it for a while to build up the online presence of the
company/organization
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Results
 In 2008 we had 71 students
 Growing interest in the course topics (41 student in 2007)
 In 2009 (67 students) we introduced the presented set of
collaborative assignments in our teaching and grading scheme
 Only the first assignment was experimentally introduced even in
previous course runs
 Still comparable results, with remarks on the way students
dealt with new practical collaborative assignments
 Final grades on a scale from 5 to 10, 10 being the highest mark,
and 5 standing for students that failed the course
 Similar to a certain extent in 2008 and 2009
 Smaller amount of both highest grades and students that did not
pass the course in 2009
 The overall distribution of grades seems to be more
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reasonable
Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Final grades
35,00%
30,00%
25,00%
20,00%
2008
15,00%
2009
10,00%
5,00%
0,00%
10
9
8
7
6
5
Comparison of final grades accomplished
in 2008 and 2009
17
Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Teamwork analysis
 Students generally managed to solve all the tasks successfully
 They could deal not only with new technologies but also with
gaining soft skills needed for effective working in teams
 Some of the assignments received with greater enthusiasm
 naturally the first one and later the last one as the end of the
semester approached
 Assignment 3, improving the eStores focusing on the use of
marketing tools and promotions, was the most difficult one
possibly because it assumed both the fulfilments and corrections of
the previous task
it also required the students to learn how to use a complex set of
Magento’s marketing tools in a short period of time in the busiest
part of the semester
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Average grades on team assignments
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Assignment 1
Assignment 2
Assignment 3
Assignment 4
Average grades on team assignments
in 2009
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Count of individual grades on team assignments
30
25
20
Assignment 1
Assignment 2
15
Assignment 3
Assignment 4
10
5
0
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Count of individual grades on team
assignments in 2009
20
Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Chosen solutions – Assignment 1
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Chosen solutions – Assignments 2 & 3
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Collaborative learning in practice – eBusiness course
Chosen solutions – Assignment 4
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Conclusions
 Collaborative work performed by students requires careful
planning on the part of the instructor, and is not without its
difficulties for students
 But the benefits can be substantial
 increased participation by students in all parts of the course
 better understanding and retention of material
 mastery of various soft skills
 increased enthusiasm for self-directed learning
 Students achieved admirable results, and the majority of them
passed the exam smoothly
 They were satisfied with the newly developed competences
for successful working in teams
 Usage of Web 2.0 tools was particularly convenient in
our circumstances
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Further work
 Developing more subtle mechanisms for group formation and
teamwork evaluation
 Control of group formation process, specially paying attention
to the diversity of groups with respect to personal
characteristics, learning styles and pre-knowledge of potential
group members
 Although students generally like to choose their own co-workers
for group assignments, student-selected groups under-perform
when compared to instructor-selected ones
 Employing techniques of data mining in order to
 form and analyse student profiles for group formation
 develop some instruments that would help us in the
process of teamwork assessment
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Questions/Comments?
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