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April 17, 1998
College Class Learns How to Make Digital Money
By JERI CLAUSING
ASHINGTON -- They offer pet embalming services, fetish photos and the chance to "throw away those cumbersome old Voodoo Dolls and dangerous old stickpins" and cast spells from the comfort of your PC.
Others sell food, rugs, even financial services.
A quick sampling of the newest Web merchants? Sort of. Theses are some of the mock businesses established as part of unique e-commerce class offered this spring at George Washington University.
Michael Henson's Virtual Voodoo page is one of the projects produced by the George Washington University e-commerce class.
Although a number of universities around the country teach e-commerce classes, GWU believes its class, offered for the first time this spring, differs in its interdisciplinary approach.
Most e-commerce classes are offered through business or marketing schools, and they focus on that one aspect of conducting business on the Internet, according to Rachna Dhamija, a master's student who helped develop the class with computer science professors Lance J. Hoffman, director of GWU's Cyberspace Policy Institute, and Rachelle S. Heller, interim associate dean for academic affairs in the computer science school.
The GWU course combines all the business and technical aspects, from security and payment systems to marketing, Internet publishing and even public policy issues like privacy.
In following that theme, the computer science professors intentionally took students from all disciplines and levels of study.
Indeed the class seems to represent a true cross-section of the evolving world of Internet commerce, evidenced by the students' Web pages and the lively class debates over security, privacy and payment systems.
"Every visiting speaker has told us how realistic the class was," Hoffman said. "We've had disgruntled techies; systems promised that go up and then down, and then disappear -- just like in real life -- yet everyone is learning more than I have seen in over 30 years of being a professor."
The students seem equally pleased with the approach.
"This is without a doubt the best class I have taken in college," said P.J. Doland, who intends to use what he learned to launch a real Internet business.
Daniel Hoffman, who created an Internet newsletter about the class, said he hopes to use what he has learned in his current business of computer consulting for non-profits.
"I took the class with the intention of being able to use it in my company and eventually bring the company fully online," he said. "I think overall the class has been very representative of what is really going on over the Internet."
During the semester, students heard from an impressive list of guest speakers, including David Chaum, the founder of DigiCash; Becky Burr, a senior adviser in the Department of Commerce; and Tim Dorgan of the Chicago-based online grocery service, Peapod.
“The group projects have really taken off and mirror what's going on in the real world.”
Rachna Dhamija, a George Washington University graduate student
During Dorgan's lecture, it was clear that privacy issues were just as important to the class as security and marketing. The students grilled him about what information was collected, how it was used and what pledges the company made to protect their customers.Dhamija said the students for the most part became strong privacy advocates because they saw just how much data is collected by companies just in setting up payment systems.
The students themselves had to compete to take the course. Drawn from across the university, 22 graduate and undergraduate students from the schools of business and public management, engineering, arts and sciences, and international affairs were selected from about 45 applicants. Half were graduate students; the other half consisted mainly of seniors and juniors, although there were a few freshmen and sophomores of exceptional promise, Lance Hoffman said.
Dhamija said that at first she was afraid it would be difficult to teach computer security to both technical and non-computer types.
"What really surprised me is the amount of learning and teaching between the students," she said. "The group projects have really taken off and mirror what's going on in the real world."
During the course of the semester, the students visited many e-commerce sites, registered their own digital certificates, created their own Web pages to sell a product or service on the Web, and participated in one of six groups that set up security systems, credit and debit systems, banking and certificates of authority, and push and pull marketing.
One student even had a customer wanting to buy a rug from her site. After that, the students put up disclaimers that their sites were not real businesses, but a class project.
Dolan, whose class project offers adult-oriented fetish photos, said he never got any bites, but then again his Web page, being on the school server, was rather tame by the Internet's adult-content standards.
So why did he choose that theme? "Some of the most financially successful Internet businesses have been adult-theme Web sites," he said.
Of course, he also thought he could raise eyebrows. "In all honesty, I thought it would be funny to set it up for a class project. But if you look at the marketing, the way it is designed, part of the success of adult sites is that they have really taken advantage of what the Web has to offer."
Doland said he hopes to launch a real Internet-based business, though it won't be a spinoff of his class project. "That's not going to be my career goal."
Related Sites
Following are links to the external Web sites mentioned in this article. These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. When you have finished visiting any of these sites, you will be able to return to this page by clicking on your Web browser's "Back" button or icon until this page reappears.
- George Washington University
- Lance J. Hoffman
- Cyberspace Policy Institute
- Rachelle S. Heller
- E-commerce course syllabus
- Student Web pages
- DigiCash
- Department of Commerce
- Peapod
Jeri Clausing at jeri@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.
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