The JP Allen Blog

I gave a talk today at the AIS Special Interest Group on Education conference on a new way of introducing business students to Information Systems.  Like many others, I argue that the traditional “Intro to Management Information Systems” course is passive, boring, usually out of date, and drives business students away from tech-oriented careers.  Instead of focusing on databases, or building toy web pages, our approach is to have students launch digital products or services using their own domain name (like jpedia.org), low-cost web hosting, open source software, and freely available web services.  Students are able to do serious stuff themselves, rather than just read about how wonderful it all is, even if they have no previous tech experience.  I’ve written about these ‘digital business’ or ‘internet business applications’ classes a bunch of times before on this blog.

After the enthusiastic reception I received at the AIS SIG-ED meeting, it’s clear to me that many profs in the field agree that customer relationships and analytics (real-time information on customers) are a new tech ‘gold mine’ for business.  While Information Systems knowledge is clearly needed to understand and manage information resources (our traditional ‘bread and butter’), and is increasingly needed to manage processes, the shift towards digitizing products, services, and the customer relationship itself is injecting technology even deeper into every business.  ‘Digital business’ is a great place for newly graduating students to develop skills that will allow them to make a unique contribution to organizations right away.

Slides from my Digital Business talk at AIS SIG-ED are available here.

Our teaching case, using WordPress as a simple content management system for small business, has been nominated for the Best Teaching Case Award at the 2008 WITS Technology Instruction in Business Curriculum Competition.  Nice!

The teaching module, “Instant Websites:  Using WordPress as a Content Management System”, is now available:

• The “Instant Websites” Teaching Case Executive Summary
• The “Instant Websites” Instruction Module
• The “Instant Websites” Teaching Note

I’ve developed a teaching module that helps students start to create a simple business web site using WordPress.  The students launch a new site on a web host via an install script, come up with a simple category structure, and download/upload a new theme.

As an example of a business WordPress site, I use nextbusnews.com.  NextBus is the groovy technology that tells me real-time how late my next MUNI bus will be (more details on how NextBus uses WordPress as a simple content management system here).

It amazes me that only 36% of US small businesses with net access have a web site (as reported in the Wall St. Journal last week).  This is 2008, not 1998!

Is there an opportunity for WordPress to become a kind of generic small business solution?  Business sites can be done now, of course, with some tweaking and geeking.  But, following the analogy from Stephen O’Grady’s talk at WordCamp on Saturday, perhaps someone needs to build a company on top of WordPress, in the same way that Google builds its services on top of open source software.  A small business website service built with WordPress, but where 99% of the users don’t even know what WordPress is?  Edublogs for small business, but maybe without even using the term ‘blog’?  Is this a good idea?  Is somebody doing this?  In the meantime, we think there are lots of good reasons to teach students about open source business platforms and basic content management via WordPress.

(I’m going to wait on an official release of this teaching module until after I hear from reviewers at the WITS 2008 Technology Instruction in Business Curriculum Competition.)

At USF, we’ve been using great open source software platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, and phpBB in the classroom for some time. What’s really interesting about these open source platforms is that you can start using them with almost zero technology experience. They provide all the basic functions of a website, a starting point from which even non-technical students can add content, customize the look and feel, and add functionality.

The project website for our most recent Internet Applications course is now available at spring08.jpedia.org. Check out the projects, the course content, and the philosophy of technology immersion behind the course.

I believe that a lot of our technology teaching is done the way I had to learn a foreign language in school: years and years learning grammar, but never learning how to actually speak to someone. Instead of assuming that students build technology from a blank page, open source platforms allow students to start delivering functional sites ‘out of the box’. Soon, they’re hearing from their users, and their requests naturally motivate students to learn and do more with the technology.

We’ve had some success with this model over the past three years, so now we’re making an effort to spread the word to other schools and compare notes. We think that teaching with open source platforms can motivate students in ways traditional IT teaching might not. This is important, given recent studies suggesting that business students aren’t interested in IT not because of job concerns and outsourcing, but simply because they don’t find traditional IT topics interesting (Walstrom et al, Journal of Information Systems Education, Spring 2008).

The award-winning Internet Business Applications class for MBAs is gearing up for its third offering in Fall 2007. It’s been gratifying to hear how our alumni have used this class to create really interesting career opportunities for themselves. I hope to highlight some of these techno-Dons in future posts.

The class flyer is available online, but some have been asking for more details.  The course will include these topics and skills:

• An overview of modern Internet applications, and their business significance
• A quick introduction to web pages and style sheets
• How to connect to outside web services (such as PayPal, Amazon, and Skype)
• Web hosting, FTP, and domain name registration
• Google AdSense and Analytics
• How to create and manage sophisticated websites without programming, using CMS (Content Management Systems)
• Launching a WordPress blogging/community site, and customizing with freely-available themes and plugins
• Launching a more sophisticated CMS-driven website, using either Drupal or Joomla
• Using other important open source application categories, such as CRM (vTiger), forums (phpBB), wikis (MediaWiki), e-commerce (OS Commerce), and education/training (Moodle)
• Online collaboration services, and community management basics
• Podcast/video creation, RSS newsfeeds and syndication
• Virtual world (e.g., Second Life) business applications

Please consider joining us! No programming or previous techie experience required.

The creator of the USF MBA Podcast Series, Tiago Alves, visited the Internet Business Apps class last Thursday to show our students how it’s done.

Tiago’s MBA Podcast Series began as a class project in last fall’s MBA Internet Business Apps class. His podcast series has subscribers around the world, and is a great tool for keeping up with the interesting guest speakers and visitors that come to USF. Search for “MBA podcast” on Google, and you’ll find the USF MBA Podcast Series on the top page.  As of this post, he is up to episode #25.

Tiago uses the open-source Audacity program for sound editing, the PodPress plugin for WordPress to publish his podcasts without having to stress over news feeds, and FeedBurner for analytics. Very impressive, effective, and surprisingly easy.