Work in progress — An interactive, execution-safe system for teaching e-commerce using real-time feedback

An e-commerce sandbox is being developed to supplement a course teaching the technology and business aspects of e-commerce at the University of Virginia. The system consists of a collection of relevant course materials and a sandbox environment for students to perform guided modules and receive useful automated feedback. The primary goal of the sandbox is to allow students to safely practice real-world e-commerce skills while promoting a self-guided learning approach. The system currently provides 22 modules covering topics in PHP and MySql. The administrative interface provides tools to create arbitrary modules so that the sandbox can expand and evolve with the state of the practice. Based upon our first classroom experience, we found that use of the interactive modules increased student code quality while providing a beneficial adjunct to the lecture portion of the class.