CBEDC Media
Medgar Evers College uses Entrepreneurship to Train Trainers in the Metaverse
By William Franklin | Monday, August 15, 2022
BankUnited sponsored a pilot program at Medgar Evers College designed to train trainers to teach entrepreneurship to middle and high school students.
Medgar Evers College (MEC) and BankUnited, come together with their community partners, New York Edge and the Central Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation to administer an eight-week test model to train GED recipients, high school graduates, and college students. The pilot program, titled MEC Train the Trainer 2022, is cutting-edge and explores entrepreneurship discovery through current techniques that are demonstrated in the Metaverse with an intent to take distance learning to the next level.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed how we interact with each other and technology reduced anxiety and hardships in learning and work. MEC responded to the challenges induced by the pandemic with an innovative approach to teaching that also addresses racial inequality by creating equity in entrepreneurship for underserved students and their communities in New York City. Teaching classes in the Metaverse bridge traditional and remote learning in ways that have the potential to increase inclusiveness, by holding access to the internet constant.
The project attempts to update entrepreneurship and business pedagogy through contemporary and innovative instructional strategies that promise to accelerate student engagement.
MEC Train the Trainer 2022 program participants are:
- guided through the entrepreneurial discovery process to learn how to form a feasible business model
- coached on how to pitch a business idea under several conditions and constraints
- mentored on how to teach entrepreneurship theory to middle and high school students
- guided to explore their effectiveness of teaching in the Metaverse.
Long-term impact:
- Opportunity to develop the use of the metaverse as an innovative and transferable skill.
- New mode of higher education pedagogical instruction.
- Cohort of student-mentors that inform career expansion and development to include job creation.
- Fundable economic model for creating equitable opportunity for underserved students in New York.
“This opportunity came at a time when college enrollment is tremendously low and awareness of economic hardships stemming from systemic racial inequality is undeniably high. This program offers solutions to these issues.”—William Franklin, Project Co-Instructor.