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Behind the scenes of innovative retail websites like Amazon.com or on-line grocery store Peapod.com, is a complex Internet architecture that lets you store books in a virtual "shopping cart" or choose your food according to calorie content. It allows you to provide a credit card number to have books or bread delivered to your door, then remembers your address so you don't have to enter it each time you shop.
This January, Continuing Education and Special Programs (CE/SP) will launch a new Software Development for Electronic Commerce track as part of its Computer Technology & Applications (CTA) program. The curriculum will focus on how to design, program and implement electronic commerce sites on the Web.
"If you talk to just about anyone, if you read the newspapers and periodicals, or watch CNN, the prevailing wisdom is that businesses with something to sell - financial institutions and retailers, for example - who don't join the e-commerce revolution are going to lose business to on-line competitors sooner or later," said Dennis Green, director of Computer Training Programs for CE/SP.
Participants in the four-term, eight-course program will receive a certificate in software development for electronic commerce and will emerge from the program with the skills needed to design and maintain sophisticated commercial websites. The typical graduate might go on to start his or her own e-commerce business; work as a consultant for hire developing websites for multiple companies; or join a team in the e-business department of a company.
"There's such a push right now for e-commerce," said James Keogh, director of the new track. "This new curriculum goes from start to finish and covers everything a person needs to know to develop e-commerce applications."
The program will combine high level programming and database creation, graphic design and fundamental business knowledge relevant to the e-commerce marketplace.
In the first course, "Introduction to E-Commerce," students talk about how to apply these new technologies in the business world. In a second course, "Software Engineering for E-Commerce," students examine different types of e-commerce Websites, including sites that sell products directly to consumers (like Amazon.com) and others that offer primarily business-to-business transactions (like Federalexpress.com which mostly offers accounts to other businesses).
For example, students might analyze and discuss a company like Bluemountainarts.com , a business that allows people to send electronic greeting cards for free, and realizes profits exclusively through the sale of advertising placements on its site.
In the second term, students learn how to create on-line catalogues and shopping carts, process on-line transactions and create the applications that can download video and audio. They also begin the programming component of the curriculum, mastering the tools that will allow them to create a visually-arresting user-friendly interactive website.
Third term students will be immersed in the high-level Java, Perl, SQL (Structured Query Language) and HTML programming languages. They will also learn how to use SQL to program the databases that interact with Java and Perl. These databases process information a customer provides - an address, for instance, or an annual household income, storing the data in fields which can be sorted to target marketing efforts according to age, income level, previous buying patterns, or whatever demographics are available.
By the fourth and final term, students will have developed their own models for e-commerce websites. Keogh said he expects some students to use their sites as models to show prospective employers. Others, he said, will actually use them as templates for their own businesses.
"The addition of the e-commerce track to CTA's offerings reflects Continuing Education's commitment to developing programs at the cutting edge of technology," said Paul M. McNeil, associate dean of Continuing Education and Special Programs. "We have long been a leader in Information Technology education, a role we will maintain into the new millennium."
Continuing Education and Special Programs' Computer Technology Applications prepares adult students for professional advancement in the fields of data processing and information systems. It offers certification in C++ and Java: Programming and Software Development; Database Application Development and Design; Network Administration and Design; Analysis and Design of Information Systems; and Software Development for Electronic Commerce.
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