Introduction

Target group: Who could benefit from this course?

  • Students in the fields of Business and Economics.
  • Small and Medium size Enterprise Managers.
  • Teachers in Business and Economics Schools and Colleges. 

Objectives

The students should learn how to set up a Business on the Internet and how to use Internet for their business - for communicating, sales, marketing, research, human resource development and customer relations. A main goal of this course is to enourage students to set their own learning direction, giving them more control. The final projects will serve as the valuable output from the course. Students should demonstrate their ability to use certain skills and to participate in discussions.   As a result of this course, students will be able to: 

  • Sell products and services in the Internet;
  • Evaluate the quality of services and products offered in the Internet;
  • Make an Internet presence (i.e. marketing with WWW);
  • Create and use their own Company's Intranetwork;
  • Establish new buyer-seller relations (with banks, other companies and clients).

Instructional Strategy

The course will involve a combination of lectures, student presentations, self-learning, project work, and case study-based discussion. Students will be provided with opportunities to learn from the best expertise identified on the internet, establishing their own learning agenda. To help the students to become better oriented a set of business cases will be used. The course is organised in two parts: 

  • Background - serves to remind the expected prerequisites and to unify the terminology. Provide training in the prerequisite areas via horisontal links, if a student is not feel competent enough about business background (simple business transaction model) and technological background
  • Business transaction activities - serves to present the objectives of a particular activity, its characteristics, and how Internet can apply; discuss important problems, related to use of electronic commerce: marketing. contracting, logistic, settlement, and reporting.

Regular homework assignments (short cases to be solved) will be announced throughout the course. Simple individual tests could also be offered from time to time. 

Evaluation of the individual results

The final assessment will be formed by the results of the assignments of the modules (55%) and the project assessment (45%). The assessment scale is: fail, fair, good, very good, excellent (or 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 points). Technically the final mark will be formed as a weighted average of the points obtained for every module and the project. For instance:   

  • New Information Technology (5% weight) - good (4);
  • Business Background (10% weight) - very good (5);
  • Technological Background (10% weight) - good (4);
  • Marketing (10% weight) - fair (3);
  • Settlement and Logistics (10% weight) - good (4);
  • Contracting, Reporting and Other Legal Issues (10% weight) - very good (5);
  • Course Project (45% weight) - good (4).

The total mark is good (4.1). 

Feedback

Every student who wants to help the authors could mail any problem, inconvenience, found mistake or offer for improvement to the webmaster.gif (952 bytes) .

Or you can use the Contact person address: 
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Krassen Stefanov, 
Faculty of Math & Informatics, Sofia University,
5, James Bouchier Blvd., room 302, Sofia 1164, Bulgaria
tel: +359-2-6256 511, fax: +359-2-656157