Maryland Regional Consortium
for
E-Commerce Curriculum and Workforce Development

Executive Summary

Technology, and in particular the Internet, is changing every aspect of our lives, but no area is undergoing as rapid and significant a change as the way businesses operate. Today, for-profit and not-for-profit businesses communicate, share information, connect to databases, and transact commerce using the World Wide Web.

Consequently, several Information Technology career cluster areas surrounding e-commerce have emerged that require new knowledge, skills, and abilities at differing organizational levels. According to the Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies, at the technician level, implementation of digital commerce will influence network administrators, workstation support technicians, web page authors, programmers, maintenance personnel, and database administrators. Above the technician level, critical technical decisions must be made concerning systems analysis and design; database design, management, and security; program changes; network security and configuration; web presence; and inter-operability between and among disparate data repositories and systems.

To meet the challenge of these new and constantly changing careers, The Community College of Baltimore County, in partnership with businesses, secondary education, and four-year colleges and universities have set the following goals:

• to develop a dynamic methodology to enable business, government, and the workforce to gain the skills needed to be competitive in the Internet-fostered global marketplace, and
• to provide training opportunities for individuals to promote personal and/or business interests in the rapidly changing e-commerce environment.

To support these goals, this project will fulfill the following objectives:

• foster the development of long-term partnerships between the faculty of the multi-campus CCBC, other community colleges, four-year colleges and universities, secondary schools, businesses, and workforce development organizations;
• develop, enhance, and maintain up-to-date IT knowledge for faculty through professional development in e-commerce, including internships;
• develop dynamic curriculum, program modules, certificates, and an Associate's degree that will be continuously updated through a web-based survey instrument supported by the business advisory board;
• provide high-quality, Internet-based e-commerce training to undergraduates, secondary school teachers, and workers with a focus on recruiting traditionally underrepresented women and minorities; and
• gather and disseminate up-to-date academic information and materials about e-commerce through a web site and an annual, educationally-oriented, e-commerce conference inviting all interested participants.

The e-commerce program will build on coursework already developed or under-development through the Internet and Multimedia Technology (I/MMT) Program at The Community College of Baltimore County funded through the NSF-ATE Program in 1999.

The evaluation activities will be conducted by the Loyola College Center for Social and Community Research and will include two main components:

• an implementation audit
• periodic surveys of project participants to insure all tasks are completed in a timely and satisfactory manner

Further, the Center will be responsible for producing the periodic, annual and final evaluation reports.