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 Virtual
Enterprise (VE) is a technologically driven business simulation program
in which student entrepreneurs conceive, develop and manage enterprises
that trade their products and services in a global marketplace utilizing
various web-based technologies. For the past eight years, Virtual Enterprise
(VE) has been a growing and increasingly vital program on the campus of
Kingsborough Community College. Virtual Enterprise is an interdisciplinary,
technology driven simulation program in which students develop and manage
global entrepreneurial enterprises in a virtual business environment.
Students trade their products and services through a worldwide network
of 5,000 firms in forty countries through the MarketMaker, a web-based
banking, credit card and stock market developed at the City University
of New York. The Virtual Enterprise course of education employs a student-centered
approach towards teaching, learning, and working which provides goal oriented
instruction in a simulated yet real entrepreneurial environment. This
educational approach, using synchronous and asynchronous components, has
revolutionized both teaching and learning by creating dynamic and assessable
educational models to serve students of the 21st century.
Since its inception, the Virtual Enterprise
program in New York City has stemmed from a powerful and ongoing collaboration
among Kingsborough Community College, the New York City Department of
Education, and the Kingsborough College Now program. This program now
encompasses nearly one-half of all New York City high schools. IVE works
collaboratively within the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions with a
consortium of Colleges and workforce development sites.
Students often do not see the connection
between what they are learning and why they should learn it. Created to
bridge the gulf between the classroom and the workplace, IVE provides
high school, community college and university students with the necessary
skills and experience needed to become readily employable in today’s
job market. IVE is focusing on students from the high school level through
graduate schools within the New York metropolitan area and region. Using
this approach, no matter when the student chooses to enter the work force,
he or she will have a sense of what that real world is all about, and
be better positioned to succeed. These students will be given a level
of responsibility higher than what would be given through an internship
or apprenticeship, as well as the assurance that mistakes will not end
their careers, but provide a valuable learning opportunity. Although the
enterprise is virtual, the skills acquired are real, as the simulations
are based on real-world problems.
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