Value of Applying E-Business Tools - Virtual Communities in Education - Essay Example

E-Business Assignment Students Name: Institutional Affiliation: Department Course: Date Value of Applying E-business Tools: The Case of Virtual Communities in Education E-business refers to business activities conducted electronically[Nah12]. It became popular in the mid to late 1990’s due to increase in internet speeds and increased internet users. E-business can be either through the intranet in the organizational level or through the extranet in the intra-organizational level. In virtual community settings, e-business involves the setting up of social networks and communities. Distinction is made between social media and communities in that community entails the tight interlinking of members, acknowledgement of shared fate or purpose, a distributed leadership network, a core membership that is relatively stable and active. Social media on the other hand entails conversationally enabled content with comment/response transaction over a loose network structure with a content creator and audience. E-business involves the use of tangible equipment that can access the internet such as computers, modems, internet adapters, a database and internet security. E-business platform should employ proper design for visitors to navigate easily, and the user to post information easily. Also involved in e-business platforms is the email account. E-business using social media involves more of servicing and responding to clients and visitors as opposed to buying and selling. Much of what is done through the social media is advertising; attracting new members to the organization’s community. Some of the most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Tumbler, Youtube and Pinterest and Weibo. In the education business environment, one of the tools used in e-business in education the virtual communities. Virtual communities are run through online forums, blogs, instant messaging, and social networks, among others[Qua10]. Creation of value over the internet spans more that firm and industry boundaries because they are based open networks and virtual markets provide possibilities to extend products or services to incorporate complementary products[Ami01]. Opportunities to create value may come from new ways of combining information, services and integration of resources and capabilities. Although the monetary value of virtual communities within the education environment may be difficult to cost, their use is nevertheless reported to be advantageous to both students and staff. By participating in virtual communities, students are able to improve learning outcomes because it is documented that the communities result in to higher academic attainment, better view of college life, improved thinking skills, higher retention rates, and ability to bridge the gap between the academic world and the world of work. According to Lenning and Ebbers “Faculty benefits include diminished isolation, a shared purpose and cooperation among faculty colleagues, increased curricular integration, a fresh approach to one’s discipline, and increased satisfaction with their students’ learning” (1999. p.6). Virtual communities also offer opportunities for collaboration at increased speeds. In a virtual community, participants are able to share research, knowledge, skills and practical experience with ease (Spaulding, 2010). The internet, for instance, allows experts who are far removed from each other to interact in total disregard of the challenge of distance. This goes a long way in ensuring that information is shared faster and more effectively. Furthermore, if well-planned, virtual communities have the potential to foster better multicultural relations and by so doing it enhanced versatility and diversity. In a ripple type of effect, the virtual communities (through multicultural interactions in social networking) are able to create higher levels of interaction. This in turn leads to improved social skills[Gil09]. Thus the communities make it possible for global observations, skills and knowledge to be accessible in other parts of the world where they would never be availed in the absence of virtual communities. Depending of the functionality of the social media developer, an organization will employ various aspects of its content on their social media platform[Bos09]. Manchester University has employed Facebook and Twitter for accommodation, admissions, heritage, IT services, Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre and open days. Only Facebook and Twitter have been used for student service centre and schools and colleges (widening participation) respectively. Others aspect such as Withworth Art Gallery, Social Responsibility, Sport, policy, museum, Business, school, Library, John Rylands Librar, Careers and Alumni use more than 2 platforms. How E-business Tools Provide Value Social technologies, in their relative brief period of existence, have found favour with consumers faster than all the previous technologies did. In analyses done by four industry sectors, social platforms were found capable of unlocking between 900 billion to 1.3 trillion dollars in value in those sectors[Spa10]. Two thirds of this value creation opportunity was found to lie in improving communication and collaboration within and across enterprise Jacques Bughin et al, 2012). Effective advertising, good usability and creating value are important in an e-business environment to attract and retain customers. All adverts in social networks might not generate a positive total customer experience. It is thus important to ensure customer relationship management are integrated into the design of the e-business environment[Qua10]. Social features can be added to almost any digital application that involves interaction among people with a wide range of uses. Advertising over social media casts a wide net. Facebook in May 2012, Facebook logged its 900 millionth user. Twitter Doing e-business through Facebook therefore reaches a lot of people. Twitter has an average of 900 million users per month. Using social media therefore enables reach to a very large number of people. Facebook also provides the organization the ability to customize branding, with custom pages, fan contests and paid ads placed at organization timelines. Targeted posts are possible according to demographics, geographies and specific interests. Audience can also be customized, from which more audiences with similar interests can be added[Gil09]. Posts and ads created on Facebook enable tagging and interest targeting to reach people who already like to have connection to things similar to what you are posting. Twitter offers different promoted tweet campaign structures to increase engagement between users and advertisers with targeting keyword, user gender and interests, device, geographical and user ID. Twitter has created new ways to make tailored audiences, providing advertisers experimental tweet campaigns, and the ability to target lists of twitters IDs[Pir05]. Social media tools, including Facebook and Twitter, can give links to videos, photos, websites and other platforms. Furthermore, both Facebook and Twitter can provide platforms where client can shop. Indeed, many educational institutions are now harnessing the potential of social media sites to advertise their courses or to share information about their institutions. The University of Manchester, for instance, has a Facebook page where information is shared (https://www.facebook.com/TheUniversityOfManchester?fref=ts&ref=br_tf). Within learning/ education circles, a good number of modern educators are interested in novel ways of creating new deliberate online communities to support teaching-learning[Spa10]. Communities are formed guided by similar interests, for instance for collaborative effort, and their formation is approached using either the pure (fully virtual) model or the hybrid model whose communities interact in both a physical and virtual arena[Nah12]. Challenges in the Use of Virtual Communities for E-business One of the challenges is the problem of authentication of participants. For a learning institution such as Manchester University, the challenge is mitigated by the use of primary groups of communities; for example, where only learners are able to engage in discussion forums on the institution’s learning management system platform. It is possible to control such a group and authenticate users through registration of accounts[Bos09]. Nevertheless, authentication is still a problem, especially among social media users. It is common to find people who in registering accounts have not used their personal details. It is difficult to tell, for instance, if those who have ‘liked’ the University of Manchester Facebook Page are genuine user accounts or not. This lack of authentication is closely linked to the problem of cybercrime. Some people may be members of a virtual group on the pretext of shared interests whereas in the real sense they are using the virtual communities to stalk other participants and to commit crimes. Finally, there is the challenge of poor moderation. If community forums are not well planned and well-moderated, there is the risk that they can turn into ‘wars of words’ among the participants[Nah12]. Relating Theory to practice Two theories are commonly applied to guide thought and practice in virtual communities: Communities of Practice and the Activity Theory[Gil09]. However, virtual communities, for example social media platforms do not always deliver the enormous numbers it promises. Accommodation sector on Facebook platform of Manchester University has 1,627 likes and 39 visits. This is a very low turnout in relation to Facebooks 9 million users. In addition, virtual communities do not always ease communication. For instance, given the low number of active Facebook users of Manchester University, communicating through such a social platform would not efficient, and other forms of communication would need to be resorted to. Today, only 5% of all communications and content use in the United States takes place on social networks[Bos09]. Furthermore, iIt is hard to calculate the value of social media in terms of return on investments, because normally, numerous other platforms come into play to generate the returns realized. Returns cannot be simply evaluate on likes, followers and social engagements. Recommendations In light of the foregoing discussion, we conclude that virtual communities have great potential that can be harnessed to conduct business in education. Virtual communities enhance creativity in knowledge communication, have the potential to enhance collaboration, and to ensure that the content created makes sense within the context in which it is created. It is recommended that institutions of learning can do a lot with virtual communities for e-business. Nevertheless, the potential benefits of virtual communities will only be realized if there is careful planning, execution and monitoring of the virtual environments. Two thirds of the value creation opportunity afforded by the social technologies lies in improving communication. By organizing technologies, an estimated 20 to 25 percent productivity could be raised. Real gains will not however need to be evaluated as a total sum of all management practices. Bibliography Nah12: , (Nah, 2012), Qua10: , (Quan-Haase, 2010), Ami01: , (Amit, 2001), Gil09: , (Gilbert, 2009), Bos09: , (Bosch, 2009), Spa10: , (Spaulding, 2010), Pir05: , (Piris, 2005), Read More