Germany-based Handelsjournal estimated in 2015 that the market share of online shops in Germany will almost double from currently 8.5 % to about 15 % in the year 2025. This development makes it clear that companies are in need for specialists in the field of e-commerce. Up to now there are only very little training possibilities for young people in this field. The vocational schools Staatliche Berufsschule II Bayreuth, SPS el-it Dobruska and Landesberufsschule Tschuggmall Brixen (Scuola Professionale Provinciale Tschuggmall di Bressanone) have formed a strategic partnership in order to develop training concepts for this emerging sector and thus give students new employment and career opportunities.The acclaimed objective of the project is to develop innovative, learner-centered, action-based materials which are designed to foster the digital competence of our students. This includes the following abilities:- developing a spirit of entrepreneurship- setting up and administrating an online shop- processing orders and communicating with customers online- evaluating shop performance, calculating key figures (e.g. conversion rate)- monitoring and evaluating website traffic- planning and implementing (online) marketing for e-commerce including search engine optimisation- creating graphic designs and content for use in e-commerce- reading and interpreting HTML code of existing websites- coding a basic internet site in HTML and CSS- publishing HTML content to the webThe materials will be thoroughly tested in three learning activities which will be hosted by the participating schools and then openly published to the project website. Furthermore a platform will be implemented in order to make the setup of multiple onlineshops for in-classroom use easy for teachers.
Since the late 2000s e-commerce has been booming. This sector has seen remarkable growth rates, however it has not played a big role in commercial education so far. In 2016 the vocational schools Staatliche Berufsschule II Bayreuth, SPS el-it Dobruska and Landesberufsschule Tschuggmall Brixen have formed a strategic partnership in order to develop training concepts for this emerging field and thus give students new employment and career opportunities. The project website offers access to multiple open educational resources which can easily be used to teach competences in this field in a learner-centered, agile, hands-on approach. The main output is an ebook describing three course concepts dealing with "Setup of an Onlineshop", "Facilitating Online Marketing" and the "Basics of Internet Programming". The materials have been thoroughly tested in three one-week learning activities and have achieved extraordinary learning outcomes. As was shown by the extensive evaluation of the learning activities, students and teachers improved their digital skills in the field of e-commerce and also developed an entrepreneurial spirit. Furthermore, during the project two software tools PrestaClassroom and PrestaCollege were developed in order to enable teachers to easily create learning environments using the open-source software Prestashop. The source code of all project results is made openly and freely available at https://github.com/fitforecommerce. The results are released under permissive license models so that they can be freely distributed, used and changed. The project was disseminated to the local press, has been featured in Google's German magazine "Aufbruch Digital" and organizing school Berufsschule II Bayreuth was awarded the "Europa-Urkunde" of the Bavarian state chancellery. The project's result were also used by many schools in Germany during the introduction of the new German federal vocation "Kaufmann im E-Commerce". All participating schools of the project have made e-commerce an integral part of their curriculum in order to make their students "Fit for E-Commerce".