Teaching e-commerce in an information systems program: striking a balance between business models and implementations

  • Authors:
  • Zehai Zhou

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, Texas

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges - Papers of the Fourteenth Annual CCSC Midwestern Conference and Papers of the Sixteenth Annual CCSC Rocky Mountain Conference
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

This paper provides details on the development of the course "Electronic Commerce" in an information system graduate program in a Liberal Arts and Sciences university. While an "e-commerce" course in management information systems programs normally focuses on the business side (e.g., managerial, organizational, technological, social, ethic, legal, or international issues) and a related Internet or Web application development course in information technology or computer science programs generally emphasizes on the technique side (implementation, security, etc.) of Web-based, database driven application development, it is sometimes more appropriate and very important to strike a good balance between the theory/issues related to e-commerce and implementation/development of e-commerce systems in an information systems program. The author developed the course by integrating multi-tier architecture, Web technologies, and open source software (Apache, PHP and My SQL) into the teaching materials of the course as well as incorporating the managerial/business contents. Some challenging issues related to implementation are also discussed in this paper.