I recently proposed the following course outlines to a university, which may choose to include one or more of them in its regular business curriculum or as part of their continuing education program. I could also present one or more of these in a distance education format (using chat and forum). Please let me know if you would be interested in taking one or more of these as a student, or if you might want to include them in an on-going distance education program. Suggestions welcome. Richard Seltzer. seltzer@samizdat.com
Objective -- students will build their own personal Web sites as sandboxes to learn about the Internet (demystify, inspire, motivate, empower)
week one -- Introduction
Orientation. Previous Web experience. Advice and how and where to set up a personal Web site.
Assignment -- Find and critique three personal Web sites that might serve as a model for what you would like to accomplish. Sign up for personal Web space and create a simple home page.
week two -- How to design Web pages without knowing HTML
text: Social Web, chapter 2 http://www.samizdat.com/soc2.html
Assignment -- Take an essay that you have written for another class, convert it to HTML, upload it to your site, and link to it from your home page.
week three -- How to find what you want on the Internet
from directories (e.g., Yahoo) to full-text search engines (e.g., AltaVista)
text: The AltaVista Search Revolution by Richard Seltzer, chapters 2-6
lecture slides http://www.samizdat.com/brazil/title.htm
Assignment -- Find half a dozen Web pages with content that particularly interests you, then create hyperlinks from your home page to those pages.
week four -- Being found on the Internet
Driving traffic to a site by being indexed by search engines. Introduction to the "flypaper" concept. Search-engine considerations in Web page design.
text: The AltaVista Search Revolution, chapter 8
lecture slides http://www.samizdat.com/brazil/agenda2.htm
Assignment: Turn your resume into a Web page, designing it to maximize the chances of being found by people you want to find it, post it at your Web space, and ADD URL at AltaVista; create a targeted flypaper page, post it, and ADD UL at AltaVista.
week five -- Low-tech social Web tactics
text: The Social Web by Richard Seltzer, preface, introduction, and chapter 1
http://www.samizdat.com/socpref.html and /socintro.html /soc1.html
lecture notes: http://www.samizdat.com/oak/atitle.htm
Assignment -- Identify target audience for your personal site; compile a "general flypaper" page (lots of content, lots of names, related to your intended audience) and post that at your site (add URL).
week six -- Okay, I have Web space, now what am I going to put there?
text: Social Web, chapter 3, http://www.samizdat.com/soc3.html; also Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold
Lists; links; newsletters; find a need and fill it: pro bono work for community organizations; recognition
Assignment -- Create and post at least 10 documents that would be of interest to your target audience. At least one of these should be a work-in-progress/invitation for discussion (a provocative idea, rather than a finished essay).
week seven -- Turning pages into a site
text: Social Web, chapters 4 and 5, http://www.samizdat.com/soc4.html and /soc5.html
A question of copyright; electronic texts and what to do with your own saleable work; what's the "public domain"? attack of the search engines; degrees of separation: a design goal
Assignment: Create at least 10 more documents and organize the pieces to provide maximum content for minimum clicks. One of these documents is a statement of the site's purpose, requesting feedback from visitors.
week eight -- Student presentations
Assignment -- Presenters provide tours of their sites and explain their plans for growing their audience and their content. All ask probing questions and take notes for written critique and suggestions for each site, emailing these to the instructor and the presenter. Presenters add the critiques and their replies to their purpose document.
week nine -- Students presentations
Assignment -- same as above, plus those who presented the previous week begin to make revisions based on feedback received, and add further comments to purpose document.
week ten -- Student presentation
Assignment -- same as above.
week eleven -- Wrapup
Assignment -- All students provide quick tours of their finished sites, highlighting the changes that they made and why.
Pre-requisite = "Introduction to the Internet business environment" or having a full and rich personal Web site.
Objective -- To build a personal Web site into the beginnings of a on-line business or community service project.
week one -- Introduction
Orientation. Students provide quick tours of their own sites.
Assignment: Find and critique three sites that might serve as models for what you would like to accomplish.
week two -- How to publicize your Web site
text: Social Web, chapter 6, http://www.samizdat.com/soc6.html
Search engines, directory listings, newsgroups, email distribution lists, places to discuss Internet marketing issues, on-line magazines and newsletters that focus on the Internet, mutual pointers, netiquette.
Assignment: Use all appropriate free methods to let the world know about your Web site. Plan how you will build traffic to your site over time.
week three -- Building content and audience
Dynamics of business on the WWW, learn to roll rocks downhill rather than up, how to turn a personal Web site into an on-line community or business.
Assignment: Register as an "associate" with Amazon.com, CDNow or another site with a similar program. Add links from your pages to books, CDs, etc. you'd like to recommend and that your audience would be interested in (and begin collecting finder's fees).
week four -- Opportunities to piggy-back on free offers
Assignment: Explore Geocities, Tripod, Delphi, and Xoom. Critique a total of six business-oriented Web sites hosted there. How are businesses taking advantage of this capability? How might you want to take advantage of it. Brief student presentations summarizing findings.
week five -- Building a modular distributed Web site
Assignment: Register and create Web pages at two free Web-hosting sites (other than the one where you presently have your pages). Plan what kinds of material to put where. Make links among your three sites. Brief student presentations showing and explaining what they are doing.
week six -- Community experience
Assignment: Join Electric Minds (http://www.minds.com). Explore what they have to offer, participate in at least three of their discussions. Plan what you would like to do with a discussion area.
week seven -- Building a forum
Assignment: Open an account at Delphi or Nicenet or anywhere else that will allow you to create your own forum (threaded discussion area). Post seed content. Link to there from our other sites. Begin publicizing (as in week two).
week eight -- Making public chat/forum work for business
Setting up and promoting scheduled chat; getting value from transcripts.
Assignment: Participate in my weekly chat session on Business on the WWW. Read transcripts of at least three previous sessions (on a similar topic). http://www.samizat.com/#chat Critique. Suggest improvements.
week nine -- Running your own chat program
Assignment: Plan, schedule, promote, and run a one-hour chat session at Xoom, Delphi or another site that you have access to. Then edit and post the transcript, and make sure that content is indexed at AltaVista
week ten -- Electronic commerce and community
Assignment: Find and critique three commercial Web sites that use chat/forum. Is there a close tie between the discussions and the company's primary business? Do visitors provide significant and interesting content for the site? Are the community elements of the site well connected with other content and activities at the site? Does this look like a winning business model?
week eleven -- A glimpse of the future
How technology trends and user behavior are likely to impact the Social Web over the next 5-10 years. Short-term risks and opportunities. Technology trends in a human context. People trends in a technology context
Assignment: Submit plans for the future development of your site/business. If you had money to invest, what would you do with it? What would you expect to spend? What would you expect as a return and how soon? What risks are you likely to encounter?
Prerequisite = "Building a Business on the Internet"
Objective = To develop a plan for how to take full advantage of the intranet (helping a major corporation to make better use of the new capabilities and advancing your own career by using them)
Students will report frequently to the class on what they have learned about the corporations they have chosen.
week one -- Introduction
Orientation. Students provide description of their background, their interests, and their Internet experience, with quick tour of their personal/business Web sites.
Assignment -- Pick a major corporation (could be a company that you work for or company that a relative works for). Review and critique their public Web presence.
week two -- Intranet glimpses.
Students report on the corporations they have picked and brainstorm on how to learn about the intranets of those corporations.
Assignment -- Begin interviewing individuals at target corporations and reading and reacting to published reports about their intranets.
week three -- Policy and practice -- managing performance vs. limiting access; work-at-a-distance
Assignment -- What is the Internet/intranet policy at you target corporation? What limitations are placed on employee activity? What incentives are in place to encourage use? How do they deal with behavior problems? Can employees create their own Web pages/sites on the intranet? If so, what guidelines are in place and what assistance is available? Do they encourage or discourage employees building their own personal Web sites on the public Internet? Would you feel comfortable working in that environment? What, if any changes, would you recommend? Is work-at-a-distance required or optional for different kinds of work? Is there training and are there guidelines in place for managing work-at-a-distance?
week four -- Directory services and internal news; email distribution lists, "push," and access to external news
Assignment -- What directory services are available over the intranet? What kinds of information do they provide? How did the company provide such information before? Did the company at any time use videotex for this kind of information? If so, have they made a complete transition yet? How employee communications use the intranet? Does the intranet supplement or replace print publications?
How does the corporation manage email distribution lists? Is there a simple way for appropriate people to sign up to receive particular information? Is there a corporate on-line library? Can authorized employees gain access to market research and on-line news sources over the intranet? What creative things are being done by corporate? What creative things are being done by individuals?
week five -- Dealing with MIS for intranet/Internet projects
Assignment -- Does MIS handle intranet/Internet projects on a one-off basis (starting from scratch each time)? Or are they building an infrastructure (building blocks) of capabilities that they know will be in demand? E.g., if a manager wants to schedule an on-line meeting, is the hardware and software in place, or does someone have to assemble the pieces on demand? Are people-support as well as technical support people available (e.g., moderators and facilitators and consultants) to help business people successfully use the new capabilities?
week six -- On-line training
Assignment -- How does the corporation deliver training to its employees, partners, and customers? If any of this is done using intranet/Internet, what specifically are they doing and how? Do they outsource course design and/or delivery? Do they subscribe to the off-the-shelf course offerings of on-line training providers? Or is training delivery now a piece of their customer service business?
week seven -- Building customer and partner communities
Assignment -- Does the corporation support and foster user groups? Are their on-line components of those user groups? Are there discussion areas (chat/forum) open to customers and/or partners? Are these open to the general public as well, or restricted access? What level of participation do they get? Do the visitors contribute significant content to the site? Are physical customer and partner events well connected with the Web presence? Do they use they use Internet technology to provide customer support? To answer customer questions? Are their Web-content and discussions well tied into their telephone response and telemarketing activities? Can visitors talk directly with visitors or only with employee-experts?
week eight -- Electronic commerce
Assignment -- Does the corporation use Internet technology for transactions (either with customers or suppliers; business-to-business or consumer)? Is this simply a replacement for a previous transaction system? Is this element of their business closely tied to their other uses of the Internet/intranet (for instance, community and customer service applications?)
week nine -- Databases, full-text search capability, and control of intranet content
Assignment -- Can authorized employees gain access to databases over the intranet? Does the company have a full-text search engine (like AltaVista) deployed on its intranet? Are contents of databases included in search engine indices (so untutored users can get the information they need without having to learn database query languages)? Does MIS know what's on its own intranet? Do they make a distinction between approved, reliable corporate information and information randomly posted by anyone? Is there more than one internal search engine -- one with a stamp of approval and the other including everything -- as a mechanism for encouraging (rather than forcing) compliance with standards.
week ten -- Recognition/visibility, behavior change, and corporate culture; the power of posting unfinished ideas, encouraging dialogue
Assignment -- Is the corporation actively striving to modify its culture to encourage sharing rather than hoarding information? Is the intranet a static library of directories and marketing collateral and databases? Or is it an environment that fosters discussion? Can employees freely post their unfinished ideas and invite discussion? Does the corporation use the intranet and external Web to reward and recognize high performers, and in particular to recognize active intranet participants for their efforts in sharing information and stimulating discussion.
week eleven -- Wrapup and reports
Assignment -- Students have shared their findings with one another throughout (both on the Web and orally). Now they report concise summaries of what they have learned about the corporate intranets they studied.
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