Insights from a pilot project on developing and piloting an e-Learning module

E-commerce is becoming increasingly important for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Europe due to communication and marketing channel cost-effectiveness. By engaging in e-commerce, SMEs can potentially extend their business to a global scale. However, SMEs often do not have adequate knowledge and expertise in targeting European or global customers to exploit the marketing potential of the Internet. This is especially true when it comes to addressing the linguistic and cross-cultural issues of creating, translating and localising an e-commerce web site. The Languages For E-Commerce (LFEC) project funded by the European Commission aims to provide an online educational resource, which integrates cross-cultural communications and e-commerce web site design to aid higher education learners and SME employees in the creation, translation and localization of e-commerce web site. The outcome of this project includes three e-Learning modules and an ontology dictionary tool for e-commerce. The e-Learning modules are Languages for E-commerce, E-marketing for International E-commerce and E-commerce Application Design. The ontology tool is a multilingual dictionary of e-commerce terminology that is easily searched and cross-referenced. This paper reports the design, development and piloting of the e-earning module on E-marketing for International e-commerce module. The pedagogical considerations in e-Learning design and development are discussed. Eleven higher education learners from different countries have participated in this pilot study. This evaluation employed an online questionnaire that incorporated both qualitative and quantitative data based on Salmon's (2000, 2004) Model of e-Learning. The feedback shows that the e-Learning module is appropriate for the subject area. The findings also indicate a linear staged progression of pedagogical development in e-Learning.