Electronic Commerce (EC) / Electronic Business (EB) has been (and is expected to continue to be) a dynamic, rapidly evolving area of technology, requiring skilled people with up-to-date knowledge and skills. The global community has required (and still requires) tertiary academic programs to prepare and train these people quickly. In the late nineties, following a tidal wave of tertiary EC program development in the United States, new tertiary programs began to appear in the Asia-Pacific (AP) region to satisfy this need, over a very short period of time. This research project aims to examine whether the development and effectiveness of tertiary EC/EB educational programs can be enhanced through employing a particular marketing paradigm. Four regions - Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong SAR and the Republic of Singapore were selected from the AP region, for this study. Based on a review of marketing literature, an inductive approach is adopted to build a model for new educational service product offerings. I also provide a description and comprehensive analysis of EC/EB education, and explore the model empirically, examining how it applies to the way EC education programs have been developed, to date.
Essentially, this project consists of two major activities: theory building and theory testing and is divided into three parts.
Part 1: Preliminary study literature review for theory building. This section of the thesis provides a literature review of the domains of curriculum development, EC/EB program development and management, EC/EB component models and new service product development.
Part 2 : Understanding the marketplace quantitative analysis. This section comprises five major surveys which provide an understanding of EC/EB education.
Part 3 : In-depth analysis qualitative research for theory testing. This section discusses the results of the multiple case studies of EC/EB degree programs undertaken over a five year period.
The results of this project highlight both theoretical and practical aspects of the topic. In terms of the theoretical aspect, I provide a contribution to existing theory concerning the planning and development of new tertiary education programs.
Research into academic course development in the past has tended to assume that all program development is pedagogically based and influenced. There is an assumption that people only develop academic programs and academic courses for pedagogic reasons.
What this research project has done is to suggest that there are, in fact, many possible reasons for developing new programs and that, although these reasons might be pedagogic in nature, they can also be industry-focased, and market-oriented in the following ways:
-the university is shaping the way it is perceived by the public that is, the market;
-the university is highlighting where its expertise lies. This led me to a form of new service product development consistent with the new image of the university. There is a clear need for diverse models for program development which accommodate the dynamic roles of modern universities. My research project develops such a model based on conditions in the Asia-Pacific region, and discusses findings arising from the overall project, which can be used to improve new educational program offerings in future, in both the Asia-Pacific and, I suggest, in other regions. This potential use of my findings highlights the practical contribution made by the research Project.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/217006 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Chan, Elsie Siu King, mikewood@deakin.edu.au |
| Publisher | Deakin University. School of Information Systems |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.deakin.edu.au/disclaimer.html), Copyright Elsie Siu King Chan |
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