A new course named “China Marketing on Internet” was offered this year by the International Marketing Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This course deals with a new paradigm of marketing management in modern enterprise. It primarily explores the business implications of new developments including computer networking, information technology, artificial intelligence, hypermedia, and visual arts on the emergence of electronic commerce in the Internet. Students are taught basic skills in creating and publish Web pages, and, in the process they develop a new perspective on marketing in the 21st century, and come to understand changes as the cyberspace grows increasingly important in the global economy which plays such a decisive role to Hong Kong's future.

To enable students to appreciate the power of Internet and "Turbo Marketing", this course provided Mailing List, Electronic Conference Room, and Virtual Office for students to exchange knowledge and experience on course materials, discuss homework and term project, share worth-reading homepages and articles, and explore business opportunities over the Net. It is anticipated that the most effective learning should result from students' motivation, involvement, and strong will to succeed.

In order to investigate how this kind of course structure affects students’ learning styles, a questionnaire was administered in July 1997. The purpose of the questionnaire was to find out if the students thought the new technology would help their study, and whether they would prefer it to the traditional method as a learning medium. Forty-six part-time students enrolling in the four-month Diploma of China Marketing on Internet course were surveyed. The students were mainly middle class executives with an average age of 32. Results of the evaluations are reported below, followed by a discussion on the implications of future courses provided through the Internet.

The questionnaire consisted of 39 items and was categorized into 3 groups besides the general information of the participants. The groups include those used to collect students’ ideas on their Internet experiences before and after the course, their perception of the course materials, and their attitudes towards Internet marketing.

On the students’ Internet usage, 44 (95.7%) of the students claimed they had access to a computer either at home or at their workplace, and that on average, they spent 13.12 hours a week on computers. Among all the participants, 32 (74.4%) of them had accessed the World Wide Web but most (77.5%) had less than 1 year's experience. Thirty-four (81%) of them had email addresses but only 13 (30.2%) subscribed to any of the newsgroups. Data collected shows that the students did had experience, although rather short, in using Internet, but only a small portion of them were interested in subscribing to news groups. The exact reason for this is not known yet and may need further investigation. Some of them (47.1%) even confessed that they relied on their team members to do most of the Internet.

Only 26 (57.8%) of the students had browsed through the course material. The reason may be that they had not received enough training in using Internet as was claimed by the students (62.8 %).

Most of the students (84.8%) found that the course objective was clear and accurate. They thought that the content was appropriate to the discipline (71.5%) and that the content was accurate (69.5%) and interesting (76.1%). However, only 54.3% of the students thought that the content was designed to cater to their needs and only 54.3% thought the design was attractive. On the inclusion of graphics and animation, approximately half (55.6%) of the students did not have any particular opinion. On the navigational design of the web pages, 41.3% thought the design was good, while 45.7% of the students gave no comment.

The discussion list was originally thought to be a good collaboration tool for the students. However, it was found that over half of the students (62.8%) did not participate in the discussion list, and that most of the students (79.2%) used the discussion list for social interactions. Only 5 (20.8%) of the students used the discussion list for instructional interactions with teaching assistants or professors.

Since most of the students did not participate in the discussion list, a large portion of the students did not comment on the use of the discussion list. However, those who did, reflected that the discussion was easy to use (46.2% of all the participants), that if increased the amount and the quality of their interaction with other students (60.5% 52.7% respectively). It also increased the amount and the quality of their interaction with the instructor (51.3% and 49.3% respectively). Besides, 44.7% of the students claimed that the use of the discussion list increased their time they spent on study and their motivation towards learning (44.7% and 42.1%). Finally, 27% of the students thought that the discussion list generated lot of business insight for them.

The comments on the whole course were generally good. More than half of the students (54.3%) rated their overall experiences in using Internet in the course as excellent, and that they would like to take another course using Internet (60.9%). Quite a large number of the students (71.7%) thought the use of Internet in the course was appropriate.

The last section of the questionnaire was used to collect students' attitude towards Internet marketing. Most of them held positive attitudes toward Internet marketing: 84.8% of them thought that Internet was important to Hong Kong's economy, 84.8% agreed that Internet marketing was important to their future career, "Virtual Office" was useful for exploring global business opportunities, and the course web sites can enhance their life-long learning through the web.

These results show that most of the students could access the Internet, but were unfamiliar with this new technology. Not all of them had browsed through the course materials and only a small number of them subscribed to the newsgroups. This may be explained by the fact that since these students were executives and were studying in a part-time basis, they did not have much time to participate in Internet activities. Besides the time constraints, they did mention that they had not received enough Internet training. This may imply that even for these mature students, training in Internet use is essential for more effectively learning results.

The content course materials were generally accepted by the students, but they indicated that the design required improvement. The discussion list, which was originally designed to promote collaborative learning among students and enhance interactions between instructors and students, was not well utilized, although quite a large portion of them thought the discussion list easy to use and was useful. Again, this could be explained by the fact that the students did not have enough time to participate in Internet activities.

The students generally accepted Internet as a learning tool and they thought that Internet would be important both to the Hong Kong economy and to their future careers. Hence, it can be concluded that this Internet course was successful in promoting Internet as a learning tool as well as emphasising the importance of Internet in International marketing. On the other hand, although learning through Internet should save students' travelling time, it was found that the students did not have sufficient time to benefit from it. Further effort should, therefore, be made to maximize the benefits of this form of learning to this particular group of students in the future.