1. Beyond frontal lecture Virtual enterprise Daniele Gualdi daniele.gualdi@unibo.it RESINT - Project General Meeting 1

2. Daniele Gualdi daniele.gualdi@unibo.it 2 Our goal was to help students apply their theoretical knowledge regarding the company in a setting which exactly reproduces a corporate structure, by engaging in virtual exchanges of goods and services with the over 7,000 virtual enterprises within the Europen-Pen international world network.

3. 3 Our objective is to equip students with skills which can make it easier for them to get a job after university and to successfully find their way in the academic world because the application of know-how to practical corporate experience helps produce new knowledge.

4. Beyond frontal lecturing As a matter of fact, in recent years, Scholars of business administration from major Italian and other universities, noted the limits of teaching based exclusively on frontal lecturing as traditionally practiced in economics degree programs.

5. A more active role of the students. They invite to overcome the limits of the traditional teacher-student dialectic and to look for a more active role of the students.

6. New Skills It is important to develop these abilities: working in groups, problem solving, communication learning by doing

7. 7 Fifteen years after this method was introduced, we can now try and draw some conclusions, especially in order to understand whether it is still appropriate for the goals which we had originally set ourselves.

8. 8 The relevance of this course as part of the student’s university curriculum is indeed confirmed by the turnout at our courses, which has always been outstanding. This shows that students feel the need to approach learning from an operational angle, with a view to filling a substantial gap in knowledge for anyone pursuing business administration studies.

9. 9 Over the past few years we have also achieved the following important goals: Supporting the establishment of foreign virtual enterprises through international projects Testing this method in innovative virtual environments such as Second Life Fully taking advantage of the Internet’s potential to share learning platforms with other universities worldwide Successfully taking part in meetings as part of other international projects, including the “Global Business Challange in NYC” where our students got top marks. Proving the usefulness of this method for international projects, including the ones which we are currently involved in; this has demonstrated how flexible Simulimpresa can be for the students’ purposes

10. Simulation techniques Learning is much more effective when it occurs in situations that simulate reality, that reproduce it and force students to deal with problems.

11. What is Virtual enterprise? Virtual Enterprise is a teaching method based on reproducing company processes, especially about : environment, organization, relations virtual trade of goods and services with other simulated enterprises within the national and international networks

12. Virtual Enterprise’s Departments Administrative Commercial Consulting Personnel

13. Practice firm activitities In Virtual Enterprise, students are required to actively participate in the company activities in all the aspects related to the company management: Accounting and drawing up of a balance sheet; Organization; Administrative and fiscal duties; Internal and international trade management; Financing, investment, relations with banks; Application of Information and Communication Technology

14. 14 What are the students’assessments in respect of this virtual enterprise teaching method?

15. 15 The research clearly showed a very positive judgement regarding the practice firm course, with no significant problems apparently having been experienced by students. In this respect it is possible to conclude that the reasons for choosing the course were fully met, whereby the willingness on the students’ part to play a more proactive role in their studies compared to traditional frontal lectures is noteworthy, as well as the resulting more effective and hands-on knowledge of company offices

16. 16 There is a dual aspect emerging from the comparison between different teaching approaches: on the one hand the relational element which is much less present in frontal lectures; on the other side the chance to put theoretical knowledge to the test through its applications in an experimental setting which reproduces the way in which firms actually work.

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