A Second Life for classrooms with vision

By Andrew Baxter
Published: March 3 2008 02:00 | Last updated: March 3 2008 02:00 Financial Times

For a brief period last year, Miklos Sarvary's marketing class at Insead, in Fontainebleau, France, played host to foxes and other creatures as the human students took a back seat. The animals were not real, however, but virtual - they were the students' avatars or alter-egos in Second Life, the three-dimensional online world.

Insead set up a campus on Second Life early last year, and is one of a handful of business schools that are exploring the virtual world's potential as part of the never-ending quest for innovation in business education.

The weird creatures in the classroom did not last long. "At the beginning people tended to fool around," says Prof Sarvary, who is also director of the school's International Centre for Learning Innovation. "It was great fun, but then people realised that if you are not in gaming mode but in some sort of purposeful activity, there is a benefit to providing a clue about your identity."

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