Teaching and learning of e-commerce at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University : from a business education prospective

This paper gives an overview of the work done at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s (PolyU’s) E-Commerce Laboratory on teaching and learning platforms for electronic commerce (EC), ranging from an E-Mall shopping platform to an agent-based EC Trading Platform. The platforms are designed and developed to encourage the nontextbook learning of EC concepts through active learning in role-playing games. We describe the overall design and development of some EC platforms used for undergraduate business and management students at PolyU. Our experiences indicate that students like the practical components of the course and are interested in a nontextbook approach to learning by playing games. We believe that other business colleges with EC curricula will benefit from this approach.