Trust in Electronic Learning and Teaching Relationships: The Case of WINFO-Line

Electronic relationships in the context of electronic commerce and especially in the context of electronic learning and teaching are on the rise. However, besides the well known technological or infrastructure security issues many other problems and questions still exist concerning the constituent elements and dimensions of electronic relationships. This leads to a high degree of uncertainty at the intersections between actors in electronic relationships. It becomes obvious that to build up trust in order to reduce uncertainty at the intersections becomes a crucial success factor in these relationships in general, and specifically in electronic learning and teaching relationships. Different means of how to create trust from a relationship marketing perspective are discussed against the background of the Web-based learning and teaching environment WINFO-Line. Finally, we support the idea of elaborating a “Level-Concept for Trustbased Electronic Commerce Relationships” (LeCoTrust). I. ELECTRONIC LEARNING AND TEACHING RELATIONSHIPS AS PARTS OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE Internet and its hyperand multimedia service “World Wide Web” (the Web) gain in importance concerning electronic relationships, specifically in the context of business or commerce with diverse goods and services [1], [2], [3]. Decisive reasons are at least the use-friendliness of the Web and its growing spreading. For instance, the US-American Department of Commerce estimates the worldwide market volume of electronic trading up to 325 billion US-Dollars until the year 2002, International Data Corporation (IDC) even up to 425 Billion US-Dollar. However, Forrester Research shows that 78 percent of all sales are exclusively transacted between companies [4]. As far as that goes, only 22 Percent are spread over the other important actor relations “companies-to-public administration”, “public administration-toprivate customers”, and in particular “private customers-tocompanies”. Still, one important area [5] which is interlocked with all four actor relations are electronic learning and teaching relationships between “students” (individuals, groups, or institutions, at home, at private or public schools/universities, or at work) and “instructors” (individuals, groups, or institutions, the latter also including corporate universities for example), at least due to the growing need for life-long learning. Compared to the U.S.A. European companies perform far worse in Web-based electronic relationships [6]. Germany might take a leading position until the year 2002 in Europe due to positive market growth, increasing consumption, and deregulation of the telecommunication industry [7]. However, the Main Federation of the German Retail Trade for example does not rate electronic commerce as a realistic competitor for the conventional trade in real stores [8]. In this sense business is very rarely transacted over the Web. Reasons therefore might be: the shortage of appropriate transaction concepts and/or insufficient electronic security and payment standards. Accordingly, initiatives from both sides, theory and practice, mainly focus on security or infrastructure issues respectively, like for example the new research program of the German Research Association (DFG) “Security in Information and Communication Technologies” [9] or practice initiatives like “Global Trust Enterprise” [10] or “TeleTRusT Germany” (http://www.teletrust.de). II. CHARACTERISTICS OF ELECTRONIC LEARNING AND TEACHING RELATIONSHIPS FROM A “CUSTOMER’S” PER-