New Life for Corporate Training - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 433

Chapter 23
New Life for Corporate Training

David R. Dannenberg
Virginia Tech, USA

ABSTRACT

While the educational use of Second Life by the academic community is well established, the number
of corporate training and development programs utilizing Second Life has yet to be fully determined.
However, while the corporate training use of Second Life may not be as prolific as the academic use, it
is occurring. To support this argument the author combines the use of ethnographic evaluation with a
review of the existing literature surrounding the corporate use of Second Life. Presented within are what
the author found to be the main advantages and hesitations that surround the corporate use of Second
Life. The affordances of Second Life, the communication channels, the immersive self-directed building
opportunities, and rich, content driven environments, are a unique mix that makes Second Life an ideal
medium for developing corporate learning programs.

INTRODUCTION

before. Stoerger (2008) notes that, “Virtual worlds
enable students to learn through seeing, know-
ing, and doing within visually rich and mentally
engaging spaces” (p. 56). One such MUVE that
is particularly well suited for educational pursuits
is Second Life. Second Life, one of the oldest
virtual worlds in existence, stills remains one of
the most used virtual communities with over a
million different users logging in during the course
of a month ( Economic Statistics , 2009). Over the
last few years educators within academia have
seemed to herald Second Life as the MUVE of

In 2008 Larry Myatt proposed that “Schools
must walk away from text-driven instruction and
embrace developing technologies if they hope to
stem the loss of students” (p. 186). Multi-user
virtual environments (MUVEs) allow educators
from all fields to ebb the flow of lost students by
providing a rich, immersive environment that al-
lows students to interact with content like never

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61692-822-3.ch023