Enterprise 2.0 in Engineering and Business Education: Engineering and Business Students' View

Contemporary engineers and entrepreneurs need to become more cognizant and responsive to the emerging needs of the market for engineering, enterprise and technology services. Enterprise 2.0 which penetrates our society more thoroughly with the availability of broadband services has the potential to contribute decisively to the sustainable development of engineering and business education. Aim of the following paper is to analyze student engineers' and entrepreneurs' view on Enterprise 2.0 of Web 2.0 technologies within engineering and business education. The meaning of the key concept of "Enterprise 2.0" is studied. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the key concept is related to the idea of "engineering and business education." Finally, the study presents how the steps of the process are related: determining Enterprise 2.0 [right arrow] revealing Enterprise 2.0 within engineering and business education [right arrow] empirical study within a multicultural environment. The present empirical research was conducted during the implementation of Bachelor's programmes at the Faculty of Engineering and at the Faculty of Business of Wismar University, University of Technology, Business and Design, Germany and during the implementation of Fifth Baltic Summer School "Technical Informatics and Information Technology" at the Institute of Computer Science of the Tartu University, August 7-22, 2009, Tartu, Estonia. The results of the empirical study reveal that the student engineers' and entrepreneurs' view on use of Enterprise 2.0 for individual, organizational and professional purposes is heterogeneous. However as shown by the Fifth Baltic Summer School, students are able to adapt new technologies and their benefits easily, which leads to new ways of socializing. The findings of the research allow drawing the conclusions that the student engineers' and entrepreneurs' view on Enterprise 2.0 in engineering and business education is a condition for successful use of Enterprise 2.0 in acquiring engineer's and entrepreneur's profession. (Contains 7 figures.)