eCommSports Kit Curriculum Guide

Instructor Introduction

Things an Instructor Needs to Know Before Beginning an eCommSports Kit

1. There are seven steps to completing a successful eCommSports Kit with your class. These steps are as follows:

   1. Conducting Business Reasearch through Case Studies
   2. Brainstorming and Selecting a Sports Team to Market
   3. Creating a Business Plan
   4. Forming Your Sports-Marketing Company
   5. Creating Your eCommSports Web Site
   6. Implementing Your Marketing Strategy
   7. Analyzing Your Performance

2. All of the materials and resources you and your students will need to complete each of the above steps are included in this eCommSports Kit and available on-line, via links found in two special areas of your eCommSports Web site: “My Project Documents” and “My Wizards and Reports.”

3. During this project, your class will transform itself into a live sports-marketing Company and work on behalf of one of your school’s sports teams. Your goal will be to get more people to attend one or more of the team’s games. One of the key services your company will provide this team is the development and maintenance of a team Web site. At the conclusion of the project, your class will analyze the effectiveness of your efforts on behalf of the team by measuring performance versus the goals established during the organization and planning stages of the project.

4. You begin each step of the project by studying the lesson plan for that step. The lesson plan can be found in the “My Project Documents” area of your Web site. Each lesson plan includes a section on “Teacher Preparation” for the lesson.

5. After each lesson plan has been presented, your students have an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned to their in-class company and to the individual jobs each student performs for the company. All of the materials you and your students will need to complete these applications are included in the “My Project Documents” area of your site.

6. Neither you nor your students will need HTML or Web site design skills to create and maintain the Web site you will manage during this project. The eCommSports Kit is equipped with very user-friendly Web site building tools, called Wizards, that do all the programming work for you. Tutorials that lead you and your students through the correct operation of some of the most-often-used of these Wizards are available as part of Step 5 of your project in the “My Project Documents” section of your Web site.

7. eCommSports also makes it very easy for the instructor to make sure that no inappropriate material appears at the Web site your students will create and manage as part of this project. Here’s how this works:

   • The instructor has control over which students have access each of the site-building Wizards.

   • No one can access these Wizards without an instructor-authorized user name and password. You will assign user names and passwords for your students when you set up your class on your eCommSports Web site, using the Class Setup Wizard. A tutorial on using this Wizard is provided.

   • The eCommSports Web site utilizes filtering software that automatically detects and blocks attempts to post inappropriate words.

   • The eCommSports Web site your class creates and manages as part of this project will have two versions: a “stag version that can only be accessed only by you and your students, and a live version that can be accessed by the general public.

   • Your students have the ability to post or edit content only at the stage version of the Web site.

   • The instructor has access to an electronic log that keeps track of all of the new content that’s been added to the stage version of the Web site since the last time the instructor reviewed and approved it. This log identifies each site entry by date, time, and the student who made the entry. This log also provides the instructor with a direct link to each change on the stage version of the site so it can be quickly accessed, reviewed, and, if appropriate, approved for publication.

   • Only the instructor has the ability to approve the transfer of the content at the stage site to the live site. The instructor can transfer all approved content on the stage site to the live site in seconds, on a page-by-page basis. The Wizard used by the instructor to publish the stage site to the live site is very easy to operate.

8. The eCommSports Web site your class will manage is not meant to replace your school’s or your school district’s official Web site. To avoid any confusion and to comply with any conditions of your school’s official Internet or Web site usage policy, a disclaimer statement can easily be added to the homepage of your eCommSports Web site, letting visitors know that it is not your school’s official site. You are urged to include links to your school’s official site at your class’s eCommSports site.

9. Optional grading rubrics for the eCommSports Kit have also been included in the “My Project Documents” area of your Web site. It presents a structured criteria for determining the learning outcome of each student who participates in the Project.