Design of a Learning Method on Business Model of Sharing Economy for University Students

Abstract

This research proposes a learning method about the subject of sharing economy business model for university students. Sharing economy has emerged with the spread of information technology such as social media and smartphones. It is expected to be an beneficial learning subject to understand today’s IT-oriented business models. However, it would be difficult for university students without industry experience to understand the abstract concept of business model. To support the understanding of the subject, this research applies a learning method based on Merrill’s first principles of instruction, in which the learners extract the concept of business model from particular company examples in abstraction phase, then they apply the concept to another example in re-concretization phase. Experimental results indicate that the learners who identified the key concept of the business model in abstraction phase were successful to apply the concept in re-concretization phase.