E-Commerce (BUS 2202) at UoPeople

Last term I took E-Commerce (BUS 2202) at the UoPeople. It was one of the most civilized classes I ever took at UoPeople, with the students and instructor who were equally polite and well-mannered. I must admit I have some practical experience in E-Commerce both as a buyer and seller. I have sold and bought stuff from eBay and Amazon since 2004. However, I felt some of the terminologies the textbooks discussed were quite alien to me. Suffice to say that I learned a lot in the course. If you want to run your online business, then this course offers a great insight into the challenges you might face and equips you with the tools you could utilize to improve it.

Initially, it was a huge class with over 40 students, but the number decreased to only 21 after the 3rd or 4th week. I like small classes as it gives everybody ample time to interact with one another. My instructor was also very cool. He had been an educator for well over 20 years, holding teaching positions in the U.S. Army and at several universities all these years. He was very accessible via email and helped students if they needed something to be clarified or thrown light at. The instructor also made sure that students got a fair grade each week and asked us to report the previous grades in the Learning Journals if a student felt unhappy with them. He also provided a written template for the Learning Journals and told us that we would get full marks if we followed it.

As for the Discussion Forums, Written Assignments, and Learnings Journals, most of the questions were taken from the books. It was probably the only course I have taken at the UoPeople so far that utilized close to 10 books. Some of the terms and topics were hard to find outside the course material, but you can still correctly discuss/answer them if you do the assigned readings and research the related topics on your own. You have to do a considerable amount of reading each week though. The good thing is that the chapters are quite short in the assigned books. The Discussion Assignments and Learning Journals were quite interesting. Sometimes you'll have to find an e-commerce website and talk about it, and at others, you'll have to find a legal case where a company has infringed another company's trademarks, etc. The Written Assignments were a bit demanding but still manageable. 

As for the Graded Quizzes, you have to answer 20 questions within 30mins in the 3rd and 6th week. If you do the reading assignments, make good notes, and do the non-Graded Quizzes, then chances are that you’ll do well on the graded ones. The Final Exam had 35 questions with 1hr given to you. I will suggest reviewing your notes, doing the non-Graded and Graded Quizzes again, and doing the Final Review Quiz before taking the exam. Most of the questions were directly from those materials. The Final Exam and Graded Quizzes were very fair in my experience. Bear in mind though that it’s one of those courses where you’ve to write Written Assignments and Learning Journals in the quiz weeks as well. Typically, you don’t have to write one of those reports in the courses at the UoPeople during the weeks of Graded Quizzes, but in this one, you will have to.

Overall, I would say it’s neither a heavyweight course nor a light one, but somewhere in the middle. And as always, you’ve to employ critical thinking in your assignments. You’ll do well on the course if you do the reading assignments, make good notes, do the non-Graded Quizzes, and do all the Quizzes before the Final Exam. I enjoyed the course thoroughly and learned many new things from it. The peer grading by other students was also very fair. I ended up with an A+ in the course, and I am pleased with the hard work I put into getting it.