Electronic Commerce Entrepreneurship Education using Virtual Laboratory

The information and communication technologies (ICT) allow educators to transform education still more and more. Education in the area of entrepreneurship might be supported by the usage of a virtual laboratory of electronic entrepreneurship as in the case of our faculty. Future entrepreneurs get the opportunity to try out the establishment and operation of their own businesses in the form of virtual companies as part of their studies. The aim of this paper is to present how the virtual lab of electronic entrepreneurship might serve for educational purposes. Entrepreneurship education is supported by the virtual laboratory of electronic entrepreneurship at our faculty for several years already and our students gain practical experience of establishing and managing a small virtual business. These students' businesses operate in the field of e-commerce and their functioning is supported by the virtual bank, electronic registry, virtual certification authority, virtual e-shops and learning management system. The experience from each year is further incorporated into the educational process of the subject and our results show that virtual lab of electronic entrepreneurship is a useful tool for entrepreneurial skills development.