INTRODUCTION INTO ELECTRONIC COMMERCE ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UNIVERSITY COURSE USING VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education helps to promote the employment of university graduates and it might be implemented in various fields of business including e-commerce. It may be appropriate for future entrepreneurs in e-commerce to experience the development and management of an enterprise in a virtual form as part of their education. This article aims to demonstrate how are virtual enterprises used for instructional reasons in the university entrepreneurial course. This particular course allows its participants to experience the first phase of the existence of their fictitious e-commerce enterprises. Students establish and manage virtual limited liability businesses operating online stores. Electronic banking software allows the settlement of payments related to their e-commerce business activities. Pre-course and post-course surveys were conducted to investigate changes in students’ self-reported evaluation between these two moments. Results show significant improvements in all investigated entrepreneurial aspects of the course suggesting that the given approach of using virtual enterprises for entrepreneurship education positively impacts the entrepreneurial skills, knowledge, and experience of the course participants. This suggests that this design of using virtual enterprises can be a suitable way of implementation in the educational process of entrepreneurship in higher education institutions.