Innovations in Information Systems Education-VIHKNet: Instilling Realism Into the Study of Emerging Trends

In this paper we describe explicit materials that were generated in an ongoing effort to help undergraduate and Masters-level students learn about off-shore outsourcing and radical technical changes in Information Technology development, and the environment in which these materials were developed and continue to be distributed. The environment provides a realistic, effective way for students to learn about emerging trends. Over the last seven years, we tried to bring realism into Information Systems education through a joint project between universities in Hong Kong, Orlando, Tilburg, Eindhoven, Grenoble, and more recently, Beijing. The HKNET project offers an integrated learning activity across multiple international institutions and brings Information Systems reality into educational contexts. It allows students to focus on organizational trends