Design of internet-related courses for it professionals

Abstract

With the emergence of E-commerce, the Internet-related activities have been escalated for the past two years in Hong Kong. As a result of this, there is an increasing demand on the IT professionals who are able to design, develop, and support the Web businesses. However, there are a few professional courses available in these areas to re-train the existing IT professionals. Although, e-commerce or related programmes are being offered by universities in Hong Kong, it needs to take a couple of years before the graduates are released to the market. There is an immediate need to design and offer related courses to meet the community need. This paper presents course design philosophy on the Internet-related certificate courses that are being offered jointly by the Division of Computer Studies and the School of Professional and Continuing Education, City University of Hong Kong. The paper covers the practicality on the course contents in order to meet the diversified skill sets. It addresses the balance between technical substances and commercial skills. These include the knowledge, skills and proficiency on e-commerce, programming, database design, IT security, legal issues, technical support, e-entertainment, web design involving multi-media technology etc. The strengths and weakness of these courses, students' behaviours, and the future direction are also discussed in this paper.