A Virtual Environment for Enterprise Engineering Education

Several resources highlight the need to effectively use modern technology to gain more productive and rewarding undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. In addition to the growth of information technology, the importance of hands-on practice and active learning has been highlighted in various resources. These factors, coupled with inadequate and insufficient real-world experiences in undergraduate education, have become a major reason for under-qualified and under-employed graduates. This paper discusses the creation of the University of Missouri Virtual Enterprise, which provides context for development of learning modules for enterprise engineering education. This approach will improve the undergraduate education experience by developing, and introducing into the classroom, a variety of real-world enterprise engineering concepts developed in coordination with on-going research projects.