Modeling and Simulation as a Quantitative Pedagogical Approach to Teaching E-Commerce to Diverse Audiences

摘要

Simultaneously teaching a vast and complex subject like e-commerce to a diverse audience of undergraduate and graduate students in computer science and management information systems in face-to-face and online environments is a daunting challenge due to the many conflicting needs and expectations. This work describes a stochastic discrete-event simulator grounded to a pedagogical framework, which together seamlessly expose students to an end-to-end process of analyzing, designing, building, evaluating, and refining e-commerce models, as well as reporting on all these aspects. It especially focuses on analytical and communication skills. The simulator provides the basis for designing and executing controlled experiments on almost any aspect of e-commerce. It generates quantitative results that allow students to make informed, justifiable, and persuasive decisions, from which they can not only solve actual problems, but also learn from the experience.