New Life for Corporate Training - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 450

CONCLUSION and learners should be very comfortable within

an hour or two. Cost was another area of concern.
To truly control a space companies will have to
spend between $2700 and $5000 (USD). Then
there are other tangential costs, such as in-world
development expenses or hardware equipment.
However, these costs are not any different than
those spent purchasing new development software
and exponentially less that developing your on
virtual world from scratch. Security might prove
the biggest stumbling block of all. While precau-
tions can be made once development has started in
Second Life, the fact that traffic must be allowed
through company firewalls might keep many
organizations from moving into Second Life. In
the end it is up to each company to weigh the ad-
vantages and disadvantages of conducting training
or other educational activities in Second Life and
decide for themselves the best course of action.
The ongoing use of Second Life for educa-
tional pursuits for both academic and corporate
use cannot, nor should be, disputed. The mix of
available tools, opportunities for collaboration
and endogenous nature in which content can be
intertwined within the environmental context
can make Second Life a dynamic learning envi-
ronment. Because of this unique blend, Second
Life will remain a vehicle of instruction that will
draw practitioners in the years ahead and I can
only image what will happen when corporate use
begins to flourish.

This chapter examined the use of Second Life by
corporate training and development programs.
While the number of corporations currently
exploring Second Life for training exercises are
significantly lower than the academic realm, we
have seen that Second Life is very well suited
for such activity. Currently, Second Life offers
instructional designers the opportunity to create
affordable, immersive learning environments in
which instructors and students can work together in
ways not previously seen. Because of the 3D nature
of virtual worlds content becomes intrinsically
interwoven with the context and this intermingling
creates a dynamic instructional environment in
which the learner must fully understand both in
order to be successful.
While we do not know the exact numbers of
colleges, universities or corporate training pro-
grams currently working within Second Life, we
can assume this number will rise over the next few
years as more and more educators, from all levels
and fields, become aware of the advantages and
tools Second Life provides. Within this chapter
we examined three tools of primary interest in
Second Life: media screen, which allow us to
push more dynamic content to learners, holodecks,
which allow for the more creative use of smaller
spaces by having multiple scenes ready at a mo-
ment's notice, and lastly bots, which allow for
programmed interaction and the appearance of
intelligence. Collectively, these three items could
revolutionize corporate training programs.
This is not to say there are no challenges to
consider when implementing Second Life. This
paper examined four of those challenges: security
concerns, cost, necessary resources and a steep
learning curve. While each does have a basis for
concern, none are insurmountable. The learning
curve is not unlike the time spent learning any
new development tool; however, for those not
developing heavy scripted content and for learn-
ers themselves the learning curve is relatively low

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Baker, S. C., Wentz, R. K., & Woods, M. M. (2009).
Using Virtual Worlds in Education: Second Life
as an Educational Tool. Teaching of Psychology ,
36 , 59-64. doi:10.1080/00986280802529079