A small group of my accounting students basically started a small e-commerce project by using “Ebay platform". They had the opportunity to handle all aspects of managing and running an “Ebay Store”. They were able to apply “hands-on” many of the accounting and business concepts that they had learned in ACG2021 and ACG2071. This fun experience gave them a little more exposure to what it takes to run a successful business of their own. For instance, some of their responsibilities included:

• Responding to emails from potential customers from all over the world. We even had a customer who is serving in Iraq, and we had to ship the item via USPS priority mail to an APO.
• Handling all the logistics (packaging/shipping) and making sure that they would get 100% positive feedback from their customers.
• Creating attractive listings and standard templates using HTML.
• Learning how to delegate among themselves to get the work done. We used WebCT to stay informed and all the students created posting on their own.
• Creating a new business in QBooks:

1. Opened the chart of accounts specifically for our type of business
2. Recorded invoices, payments, deposits, etc. in QBooks
3. Recorded bills, payments, and created A/P reports.
4. Created all types of financial statements and reports including the I/S, B/S and SCF

How was the project accomplished?

• I recruited students from my accounting classes (Homestead and Kendall). The students that decided to participate knew that we all had to meet every week and attend a mandatory meeting on Tuesdays for +- 2 hours. Once I knew that I could count on a group of +- 8 students, we basically broke down the project into “areas of expertise” (see attachments). For instance, a group of students selected marketing, logistics or accounting, etc. The students worked together and they helped each other. Some students had more experience than others. We created a WebCT for this project, and the students were able to stay informed. Basically, during the implementation phase, most of the learning took place in the classroom. We met every Tuesday in a classroom (w/internet access), and my students were able to learn “hands on” by actually doing it themselves.

We worked together and we basically set goals every week. We delegated among ourselves. We had a game plan and every week we made sure that we were making progress toward our goal. For example, during the early stages of the implementation, we created all the accounts with Ebay, Yahoo, Paypal, etc. so we could be ready to start selling. We also created a nice (standard) HTML Template so we could use it for all the items that we were going to be selling on Ebay. We also made sure we had enough items to sell.