Teaching And Learning Of E-Commerce Courses Via Hybrid E-Learning Model In Unitar

The advent of the Internet in the early 1980s did not attract e-learning instantaneously. Circa 1990s only, universities started looking for the potential of the Internet to deliver teaching and learning to the masses. Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR), being the first e-learning university in Malaysia, offers a hybrid model that combines three important components. The three components are the interactive, multimedia content on CDs and on the Web, the face-to-face meetings, and the Internet-based support systems that provide continuous interaction between the students and faculty. This paper describes our experience at UNITAR in designing and teaching Electronic-Commerce (EC) courses using the mentioned hybrid e-learning concept. EC courses in UNITAR were offered for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. The curriculum of these courses was developed and modeled after the EC Framework introduced by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B. Whinston. Our hybrid e-learning model combines the face-to-face meetings of lecturers and students, and also the use of a Web-based Learning Management System (LMS) that enables continuous interactions via an Virtual Online Instructional Support System (VOISS), Centra as the Online Tutorial (OLT) media, and the multimedia-enabled Web-based courseware.