eBUSINESS EDUCATION: eBusiness-Hope, Hype, Power, and Pain

Every Tuesday, more than 100 students and industry executives log on to Jack Wilson's eBusiness class at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to virtually tackle a major industry case study dealing with the alphabet soup of eBusiness (B2B, ASP, ERP, etc.).

The class, titled "eBusiness: The Hope, The Hype, The Power, The Pain" (http://lallyschool.rpi.edu/eBusiness/
eBusinessCourse.htm), challenges students to examine the sweeping changes technology has dealt to the business world.

More than half the class is learning at a distance and are executives at leading American corporations. The other half are local executives and full-time Rensselaer MBA students. Each student is linked by a laptop running software called LearnLinc (http://www.learnlinc.com), which is a live, online learning system developed by Wilson and two former Rensselaer MBA students, Mark Bernstein and Degerhan Usluel.

LearnLinc allows the students to interact in real time, watch and give presentations, electronically collaborate on documents, and browse the Internet.

For instance, a discussion of the Ford/GM/DaimlerChrysler joint B2B portal might be led by students from Ford Motor Company, financial executives from J.P. Morgan, eBusiness technology experts from IBM, and full-time graduate business students from Beijing, China. That discussion spills over throughout the week in online discussions facilitated by WebCT (Web Course Tools), a Web-based learning management system.

"I want students to envision they're working for an investment firm," says Wilson, the J. Erik Jonsson Distinguished Professor and co-director of Rensselaer's Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship. "In that respect, they need to provide a balanced analysis of the company, its business model, its competitors, its strategy, its finances, and its prospects. Balanced means that you have to ferret out the hype, as well as the hope and the pain, to find the power of the business model."

CONTACT: Theresa Bourgeois, (518) 276-2840, bourgt@rpi.edu

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