2009 Second International Conference on Education Technology and Training
Discussion on the Construction of E-Commerce Education program
Jing Yang
School of Kexin
Hebei university of engineering
Handan, China
hdyangjing@126.com
Abstract—Though e-commerce education program has
received a great development since it is launched in China, the
characteristic and advantage of this education program is not
obvious and the course system is not so reasonable, which
affects the development of this education program. By taking
advantage of the reform and development of colleges, author of
this paper raises some opinions in terms of the construction
and reform in e-commerce education program.
Keywords- e-commerce, subject construction, teaching
system
I. INTRODUCTION
Since the reform in e-commerce almost involves all the
aspects and levels of man’s economic life and each aspect
and level has its own particularities, talents of e-commerce
are required to possess different knowledge systems and
ability structures. E-commerce talents should be featured by
many-sided, multilevel and diversified characteristics. This
matter should be valued at the start of setting up the e-
commerce education program. This paper the orientation of
talent cultivation must be precise and the goal should give
priority to the characteristic of talent. The goal should be set
toward training strongly creative talents in the application of
e-commerce basic on the comprehensive advantages, like
abundant faculty sufficiency and advanced experimental
conditions. This paper concludes some operations and
experiences which are worth the effort on the basic of the
reform in traditional school-running concept and talent
training mode.
II. HISTORY AND CURRENT SITUATION
E-commerce is a cross-subject with the integration of
information technology, management and subject. Generally
speaking, a cross-subject always comes into being in the
joint of some different traditional fields through interaction
and interrelation. Computer and other modern information
technologies belong to traditional engineering field while
economic management belongs to liberal arts field. As the
final goal of science and technology is to serve man’s
production, life and civilization, of course, the information
technology must be widely applied to economic management
and business activities, which has been developing rapidly
since 1940s. When modern information technology is
applied to economic management, especially to business
978-0-7695-3936-2/09 $26.00 © 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ETT.2009.55
Hua Jiang
School of economics and management
Hebei university of engineering
Handan, China
hdjianghua@126.com
activities, there comes this uprising cross-subject, e-
commerce.
In USA, the computer institutes of many famous
universities have established the direction and special topic
of e-commerce and launched the e-commerce education
program by integrating the faculty of computer science and
management science. American famous Carnegie Mellon
University established the e-commerce institute by the joint
effort of industrial management institute and computer
institute in 1998 and declared the establishment of the first e-
commerce master program in the world in 1999. The e-
commerce education program was opened by Chinese
universities in 2001 and there were 13 universities which
were approved to open the education program of e-
commerce as the first batch by National Education
Department. By 2002, 83 of 110 universities which applied
to establish the e-commerce education program were
approved and a group in charge of the construction of e-
commerce education program in Chinese universities was
formed creating the senior consultants of four aspects,
economics, management, computer and law. Plus, the
Professor WHINSION from the e-commerce research center
of Austin branch of University of Texas and the researcher
JEN-YAO CHUNG, the director of e-commerce research
center of New York IBM WATSON were employed as
senior consultants. By 2003, the number of universities
which launched e-commerce education program reached
181. At present, 275 universities in China have set e-
commerce department and the teaching and R&D capacity
has gradually been developed. The rising and rapid
development of e-commerce education program is already an
objective fact no matter in China or overseas, which proves
that talents of this aspect are in great demand in the society.
It can be estimated that with the arrival of upsurge of global
information construction and knowledge economics, this
demand will gradually become larger and the future of this
field will be very promising.
III. RELATION BETWEEN E-COMMERCE, INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION SYSTEM
E-commerce is the goal of enterprise’s information
construction, and the extension and development of
enterprise’s management information system; in return,
infomationization is the basic and precondition of e-
commerce. That is to say management information system is
an internal information system while e-commerce is an
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external information system. The combination of internal
and external information system makes the complete
information system of modern enterprises. Thus, it can be
seen that e-commerce education program has the common
goal as for talent cultivation with the information
management and information system education programs,
the second-rank disciplines under the first-rank discipline,
engineering. E-commerce education program is jus the
mutual complementarity and the reciprocal causation of the
two. We should study the internal relation of these two
disciplines to profoundly reveal their commonness,
complementarity and sharing and accelerate the development
of e-commerce discipline by the support of information
management and information system disciplines which will
be promoted in return by e-commerce discipline.
IV. GOAL OF CULTIVATION
A discipline is built to please social demands. When
economics and social develop to a new stage, new demands
will be raised to the ability and knowledge structure of
practitioners. Obviously, the discussion on the e-commerce
education program should start from this point.
The rapid development and widespread application of
information technology is the characteristic of modern times.
As for the development and application of information
technology, the following talents are needed: information
technician, developer of information system, administrator,
maintainer and operator of information system, practitioner
of information industry, integrator of information system,
teaching staff and researcher of the above fields.
There will be no problem for some new disciplines,
such as automation, wireless and communication, to satisfy
the demands of the above technical fields of information
discipline. However, as for the demands of other kinds, it is
unreasonable to derive from engineering disciplines, so this
involves a large amount of knowledge and characteristics in
application fields. The business demands in application fields
are both the goal of the application of information
technology and the sign indicating the success of the system.
As the characteristics of disciplines are far from each other,
it is very difficult to define the goals and contents of
disciplines by generally summarizing it as “computer
application”. Under the name of “computer application”, the
cultivation target is still computer technician with computer
knowledge as the core and knowledge of management and
business as accessories.
On the other aspect, since the traditional economics or
management disciplines are within the range of liberal art, no
matter from the aspects of faculty, students or technical
methods, it is very hard to adapt to the demand of largely
enhancing the training of technical ability.
Therefore, according to the practical demands of
society, to meet the demands for the above talents, it is very
important to open the e-commerce education program within
the scope of management science in order to apply
information technology to business field. The rapid
development at this aspect throughout the past decade has
also proved the urgency and actuality of this kind of demand.
V. ORIENTATION
Being clear about the orientation of a discipline is
important to strengthen the construction of this discipline. A
new discipline is not just the simple combination of original
disciplines. The best choice we could make is integration,
which means an organic integration is required by e-
commerce to construct a set of proper and appropriate
education implementation scheme so as to feed to the society
the professional e-commerce talents who have solid
foundation of e-commerce, wide view, creativity, strong
manipulative ability and wide adaptability.
Universities should standardize the construction of this
education program on uniform basic and change the situation
that though under the same name, the core of discipline is
different and students from different schools vary largely
from each other in terms of professional knowledge and
professional skill and employment direction is also different.
E-commerce itself is a kind of management science. As a
cross-discipline formed by information technology and
information management science, it stresses on the mutual
combination of IT and management systems and the
integration of frontier disciplines. Therefore, Chinese
universities should standardize the construction of this
education program on uniform basic to produce the
graduates who are both expert in IT technology and business
knowledge.
VI. PRINCIPLE OF DISCIPLINE CONSTRUCTION
Long-term and many efforts are needed to construct a
new discipline. Correct direction and principle is the key to
healthy development. The following principles are critical:
(1) Persist on social demand as the drive. As an
application-based education program, it must closely relate
with social practice. This basic principle must be embodied
in the arrangement of course, content selection and teaching
method.
(2) With the construction of core course as the center.
Many problems occur from the poor performance in this
aspect in these years resulting in the appearance of the so
called “scratch up” teaching scheme. It is necessary to try
great efforts to set up a leading course system matched by
teaching outline, teaching material, software and
experimental instruction in the shortest time.
(3) Enhance practice and figure the e-commerce talents
featured by advanced technology, modern e-commerce
knowledge and skill. It is a must to introduce various
channels both inside and outside the courses to educate and
instruct students to value the formation of practical ability in
order to practically enhance the practical working ability of
students.
(4) Promote the construction of discipline gradually
and step by step. Due to the reason of faculty and equipment,
discipline construction must be carried out gradually and step
by step. Any sweeping approach or impatience won’t work.
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 VII. REFORM IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF E-COMMERCE comprehensive ability to put theoretical knowledge into use
EDUCATION PROGRAM by course design and social practice.
E-commerce teaching system should be built upon the
To construct the training and teaching system of e-
“student-oriented” modern education and teaching concept in
commerce talents integrating experimental teaching system,
order to establish the new teaching system which is for the
theoretical course system and practice teaching system into
sake of students and adaptive to the goal of discipline from
one, the course system needs to represent the characteristic
three aspects, knowledge, quality and ability. The new
of “basic + core + characteristic”. To create the experimental
system could give full respect to the interests and strong
teaching system featured by the emphasis on the cultivation
points of students, stimulate the individuality of students,
of comprehensive quality, innovative consciousness,
fully motivate the initiative and enthusiasm of students, and
practical ability and the engineering ability. Besides, it
promote the formation of excellent style of study, such as
should also be equipped with the ability of self-optimization.
self-discipline, self-encouragement, daring to compete,
Build up a practice teaching system to train students’
initiative to study and keeping moving. E-commerce
coordination ability, communication ability and
teaching system is shown in figure 1.

SAP experiment; ERP CRM MIS object-oriented software

internet marketing; engineering; e-commerce website design; SAP
security and application and implementation; supply chain
payment; management; IT project management and so Large course design
website design on.
experiment;
Characteristic electives

E-commerce
experiment; Social practice
Experiment of e-
commerce system
Principle of e-commerce;security
development;
payment;modern logistics;network marketing;
development and management of e-commerce
system.

Database Core courses

experiment; Forum and talk of e-
Network commerced
experiment;
Program design
experiment

Economics;computer;management

Theoretical basic

Experimental teaching course system practice teaching

Figure 1 structure diagram of e-commerce teaching system

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 Surrounding the above teaching system, some reforms in
teaching method should be adopted to improve teaching
level and quality. The specific reforms include: updating
teaching contents and developing high-standard teaching
materials; optimizing educational technical measures, setting
up a multimedia courseware library which contains the
materials of e-commerce discipline toward various directions
and using communication website to form a teaching
interaction with students; pushing the reform in teaching
method and experimental course, encouraging heuristic and
case-based teaching, self-learning-based and research-based
learning, and advocating practice and creativity; building up
tutorial system in which tutors are responsible to instruct the
learning, practice and creativity of students who are
advantageous and good at e-commerce; building up a
professional forum to provide students with the latest
dynamic information of the industry; perfecting the
monitoring system of teaching quality and introducing
incentive mechanism.
To work in the cultivation of innovation ability of e-
commerce talents, we will build up a laboratory for e-
commerce and try to make it become a new experimental
platform for the exhibition of student’s skills. Build up a new
management and operation mechanism of laboratory and
management system of student’s creative project and special
machine, and implement open experimental teaching and
encourage students to take part in technology and innovation
activities, for example the National Mathematical Modeling
Contest; pay special attention to teachers’ scientific and
technical achievements and convert them to experimental
teaching contents, and combine experimental teaching
contents with extra-curricular technology activities for
college students, and extend and implement open
experimental teaching; plan the experimental courses of e-
commerce according to uniform standards and implement the
teaching syllabus of experimental courses; to adapt to the
demand of times and embody the modernized, information-
based and integrative experimental teaching contents, we
may set up a professional management website for the
laboratory of e-commerce.
VIII. CONCLUSION
Studying the characteristics of E-commerce professional,
clearing training object of professional, formulating a
scientific and feasible teaching plan, preparing teaching
books in conformity with the requirements of the teaching
professional to make professional features, which are the
major topics faced by the teachers engaged in professional
teaching of E-commerce. We must rely on the professional
institutes and wisdom and strength of teachers of all the
colleges to tackle this problem as soon as possible. We make
unremitting efforts for organizing well the E-commerce
professional and training more outstanding talent of the E-
commerce.
REFERENCES
[1] Construction of e-commerce course system, Cuiping, mechanical
vocational education, 2003 (2), pp.28-29.
[2] Primary discussion on the several problems in the construction of e-
commerce discipline, Yuan Shenguo, Journal of Guangdong
University of Foreign Studies, 2002 (2), pp.65-69.
[3] Discussion on the orientation and construction of e-commerce
education program, Zhangwen, Modern Computer, 2002 (8), pp.77-
79.
[4] Discussion on the cultivation mode of e-commerce talents, Maqiang,
Higher Educational Research in Areas of Communications, 2004 (6),
pp.102-103.
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