Simulating the relocation of the European Headquarters of a global corporation using the Blackboard virtual learning environment

The use of virtual learning environments (vle) to enhance autonomous learning by students is being introduced into a number of real estate courses throughout Europe. At the same time the built environment professions are moving towards a more multi-disciplinary and international approach in solving ever more complex real estate and business problems. There is a need therefore for built environment education to ìcollapse boundariesî between both professional disciplines and across European borders. This paper evaluates the ambitious and extensive use of the Blackboard vle for a project titled ìThe European Challengeî which simulates the re-location of the European Headquarters of a US based corporation of 303 employees and examines the strategic issues of defining and integrating the business issues and location /real estate demand criteria, researching city locations against those criteria, the decision making process, building selection and evaluation and space planning and design. This ambitious multi-disciplinary project initially brought together over 60 students in pan European teams from 6 countries in the pilot, and has a target of growing this to several hundred students from 10 countries. It provides one of the most complex case studies of vle delivered projects in Europe. Using control group variations of the European Challenge as a case study and comparing it against other vle delivered projects it utilises the statistical monitoring and evaluation tools within the vle itself, further triangulated against student perception analysis to evaluate the autonomous learning potential of pan-European and multi-disciplinary projects. This paper takes the reader/listener through the project, critically examines the role of a vle in supporting autonomous learning and provides a critical and comparative evaluation of the project in terms of: the students autonomous learning experience the engagement of the vle and what is perceived to be ìvalue addedî the impact of multi-disciplinary collaboration and the opportunities and problems of collaborative projects. The initial results show interesting findings in terms of what factors drive students commitment, motivation and interest in vle delivered projects and which components of the vle provide the most ìadded valueî especially when used in a pan European project.