GCC Business Students Experience a Maricopa “First”
December 8, 2008
Contacts:
Suzanne Higgins
suzanne.higgins@gcmail.maricopa.edu 623.845.3808
Patricia Rhodes Vogel
pr.vogel@gcmail.maricopa.edu 623.845.3014
Thanks to the efforts of an innovative Glendale Community College business professor and a cutting-edge teaching tool called Virtual Enterprise, two sections of Professor John Gibson's "Introduction to Business" students were able to collaborate "live" with business students around the world.
To do this, they used the popular web conference meeting software GoToMeeting, and City University of New York's (CUNY's) award-winning Virtual Enterprise (VE) system (a project supported by the National Science Foundation and other major partners.)
Having students use this powerful combination was a first for any college in the Maricopa Community College District. The exciting project is designed to inspire and engage beginning business students, helping them learn 21st century global business skills.
The rest of the semester the students will continue to using the VE web site to interact with each other's businesses. The VE system allows students around the world to do/observe the same kinds of business transactions that real businesses do every day. Students create virtual enterprises, interact with each other, sell products, manage websites and inventory, manage bank accounts, take their companies public on the virtual stock exchange and much more. So far, students are just scratching the surface of what is possible through VE!
The students' first day of virtual sales on November 12 spanned nine time zones and connected 37 college, high school and ESL virtual enterprises from Austria, New York, Ohio, Arizona and California. There were 1,137 transactions completed with a total sales volume of more than $274 million.
As Dr. Schulman, director of CUNY's Institute of Virtual Enterprise has pointed out, "As educators, we must foster a strong attitude towards entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education, since this is, and will be, the most viable option to (re)grow the economy and create those jobs that are currently being lost."
