A Second Look at Second Life

Given tightened budgets, virtual worlds are earning another look as a cost-effective way to deliver development across regional boundaries. To make the most of the technology, be aware of the technical, security and instructional aspects of learning in virtual worlds.

Consider the following scenario: Your workforce is spread across a number of regions. Functional areas in your organization have common goals and learning programs to meet them, but the travel and expenses for training have become a roadblock. While the price tag always was accepted grudgingly as part of the cost of delivery, now it leaps off the budget sheet as a candidate for cancellation.

And consider this: We know education is a vital lever for bringing corporate strategy to life, for enabling people to acquire the skills, knowledge and beliefs necessary to perform. And yet, you sense that your programs just aren’t having the desired impact. Ratings are OK, but there doesn’t seem to be much transfer from classroom learning to business performance. And there is pressure to do more with less, both in budget and time; yet, you feel that somehow your audience needs much more.

Now imagine this: Your newly hired employees walk through a replica of your corporate offices and meet the people who work there. Compliance training, once a painful experience of sitting through hours of computer-based modules or classroom presentations has come to life through a series of live simulations. Your managers and their staffs meet other teams and work on product and service modeling, using their meeting space as a building ground, iterating on designs together.

Those critical moments in individual and team performance that can make or break the business are practiced in real time, with observation and coaching. Selected members of your retiring workforce sign up to meet the next generation of leaders and walk through galleries with them, telling the stories from their experience and transmitting culture and wisdom.

Everyone is there, and no one is together.

Virtual worlds rapidly are becoming part of the technology landscape. Not only has Second Life, one of the most popular virtual worlds, garnered more than 13 million residents, but other players such as Forterra’s Olive, The Croquet Consortium, Sun Microsystem’s Project Wonderland, ProtonMedia’s Protosphere and Qwaq Forums have come into the mix as providers of alternative 3-D online environments. Are organizations paying attention? Yes, with IBM leading the way, having allocated more than $10 million to virtual-world development. And it’s not just the high-tech companies that are experimenting. The World Bank, Nike, Dell, Disney, Novartis, BMW, Reuters and Unilever all have set up shop in Second Life.