Teaching e-commerce Web page evaluation and design: a pilot study using tourism destination sites

Investigation of whether a minimum of formal training and interaction between two groups of female students at a Japanese university studying either tourism or Web page design would result in an increase in the “design” students’ awareness of content issues in page design showed only slight improvements.

Abstract

This study explores a teaching method for improving business students’ skills in e-commerce page evaluation and making Web design majors aware of business content issues through cooperative learning. Two groups of female students at a Japanese university studying either tourism or Web page design were assigned tasks that required cooperation to investigate whether a minimum of formal training and interaction between the two groups would result in an increase in the “design” students’ awareness of content issues in page design, and an improvement in the “tourism” students’ ability to evaluate Web pages related to tourism. The results showed only slight improvements, suggesting that either the amount of cooperative learning must be increased or some formal instruction must be introduced.