February 14, 2010 at 15:06How I taught e-commerce at a university (Part 1, preparation for the semester)
After graduating from high school in the summer of 2009, I was quite naturally upset, having decided that I would never return to alma mater. A lot was connected with the institute in my life: I always actively participated in various conferences, worked as a methodologist in two junior courses, helped with exhibitions and other events ... However, I didn’t have to leave for a long time: at the end of the summer they called me and asked if I wanted to read e-commerce course? Of course, I wanted to. Apparently, there were no other applicants, since I had classes on Saturday so that I could not break away from the main work, and even agreed to close my eyes to probable departures on business trips, provided that I would report all the hours that were set.
So, I got a stream from two groups of undergraduates. The groups were of different specialties - “Applied Informatics (in Economics)” and “Computers, Complexes, Systems and Networks”. I will make a reservation that the discipline I taught is not included in the mandatory list according to the standards of these specialties, being the so-called "Component of the choice of the university." For this reason, at the end of the course, only credit is taken, not an exam. True, this affects the seriousness of the attitude towards discipline among students a little.
The full official name for “my” discipline is “E-Commerce Application Development”. Alas, I knew the level of students in my native university very well and didn’t doubt for a minute that we won’t have to do development, 3-5 students are capable of it in the stream, the rest will have to chew on the basics in the literal sense of the word. Therefore, I decided to focus on those students whose level is “above average”. My plan was this: it was they who mainly came to classes, but we will do what they heard and know about, but have not yet systematized their knowledge and skills. The rest, if desired, are quite capable of catching up in the process. Thus, the course from "Development" has turned, in fact, into just "E-commerce." Also, since the course was not out of standard, I could afford decent liberties in the contents of the course — that is, explain what was interesting to me and to the students, without being constrained by the framework of the “standard curriculum”. Our course was to last one semester, it was supposed to conduct two pairs weekly. Before the start of classes, I did not scribble a dull curriculum, confining myself to a mindmap with drafts of those and relying more on the impromptu more generally:
As you can see, the approximate content of the e-commerce course I have determined very freely. Such liberty is dictated by the goal: to reduce the level of ignorance among relatively weak students, while touching on a small part of purely economic issues that were not covered in the relevant disciplines. The fact that they were not affected was known to me as a graduate of this university. Especially glaring this knowledge gap was, of course, for students of the specialty “Applied Informatics”.
Having outlined all this (of course, there may be many questions for the mind map, but these are nothing more than notes in the style of “what we should talk about”), I started to study the available textbooks of varying degrees of obsolescence. The main emphasis in them was placed on classic online stores and payment systems, which was reflected in my “plan” with red flags. Actually, the textbooks were quickly left by me and I switched to reading the primary sources :)
Refreshed and a little streamlining the available knowledge, I wrote a rough compendium of the first lecture. Before the first lesson, I was very worried, despite the experience of school teaching (as a student, I taught computer science at school for six months). On the night of the first Saturday of the semester, I was not allowed to fall asleep questions: "How will senior students accept me, who just graduated from the same university a year ago?" during the lecture? ”, and, finally, the panic problem“ How to behave at all ?! ”.
The continuation in which I will tell about the first lecture, the first lab, relationships with students, as well as about problems and discoveries during the semester and much more, I hope, will follow. If it will be interesting to anyone;) Simply put, write or not write?
So, I got a stream from two groups of undergraduates. The groups were of different specialties - “Applied Informatics (in Economics)” and “Computers, Complexes, Systems and Networks”. I will make a reservation that the discipline I taught is not included in the mandatory list according to the standards of these specialties, being the so-called "Component of the choice of the university." For this reason, at the end of the course, only credit is taken, not an exam. True, this affects the seriousness of the attitude towards discipline among students a little.
The full official name for “my” discipline is “E-Commerce Application Development”. Alas, I knew the level of students in my native university very well and didn’t doubt for a minute that we won’t have to do development, 3-5 students are capable of it in the stream, the rest will have to chew on the basics in the literal sense of the word. Therefore, I decided to focus on those students whose level is “above average”. My plan was this: it was they who mainly came to classes, but we will do what they heard and know about, but have not yet systematized their knowledge and skills. The rest, if desired, are quite capable of catching up in the process. Thus, the course from "Development" has turned, in fact, into just "E-commerce." Also, since the course was not out of standard, I could afford decent liberties in the contents of the course — that is, explain what was interesting to me and to the students, without being constrained by the framework of the “standard curriculum”. Our course was to last one semester, it was supposed to conduct two pairs weekly. Before the start of classes, I did not scribble a dull curriculum, confining myself to a mindmap with drafts of those and relying more on the impromptu more generally:
As you can see, the approximate content of the e-commerce course I have determined very freely. Such liberty is dictated by the goal: to reduce the level of ignorance among relatively weak students, while touching on a small part of purely economic issues that were not covered in the relevant disciplines. The fact that they were not affected was known to me as a graduate of this university. Especially glaring this knowledge gap was, of course, for students of the specialty “Applied Informatics”.
Having outlined all this (of course, there may be many questions for the mind map, but these are nothing more than notes in the style of “what we should talk about”), I started to study the available textbooks of varying degrees of obsolescence. The main emphasis in them was placed on classic online stores and payment systems, which was reflected in my “plan” with red flags. Actually, the textbooks were quickly left by me and I switched to reading the primary sources :)
Refreshed and a little streamlining the available knowledge, I wrote a rough compendium of the first lecture. Before the first lesson, I was very worried, despite the experience of school teaching (as a student, I taught computer science at school for six months). On the night of the first Saturday of the semester, I was not allowed to fall asleep questions: "How will senior students accept me, who just graduated from the same university a year ago?" during the lecture? ”, and, finally, the panic problem“ How to behave at all ?! ”.
The continuation in which I will tell about the first lecture, the first lab, relationships with students, as well as about problems and discoveries during the semester and much more, I hope, will follow. If it will be interesting to anyone;) Simply put, write or not write?