Robert Bloomfield, professor of management at Cornell University's Johnson School imagines a 3D platform, similar to Second Life where business educators have access to virtual world building tools that can be used to create business oriented "serious games". Students from around the real world will be able to learn about finance and business by doing it for (almost) real, in a purpose built Metaverse. The project is called "Virtual Worlds for Study" and promises to "integrate carefully" aspects of World of Warcraft and Second Life.
Metaversed has been consulting on this project, so I've been fortunate enough to learn a lot about it and watch the idea grow almost from seed to where it stands now, a bigger seed! Robert has released the first paper for the "Worlds for Study" project and is seeking to enlist the aid of other educators and interested parties in developing the idea via the projects wiki site. He thinks of the open process in which he hopes to take the fledgling idea from paper to Metaverse as "Startup 2.0", borrowing from the web2.0 ethos of open communication and collaboration in order to get the idea funded and built.
Because collaboration is so essential to defining the goals of WFS, it simply isn’t possible to follow the traditional (and highly private) process for most business startups. The platform will quickly fail if it simply imposes its conceptions upon the instructors, researchers and textbook authors who will provide and use content. These parties must collaborate with game developers to determine how a platform would support their needs, how serious games could be made both fun and insightful, and so on. Populating the platform with content will require strong collaborations between game developers and experts in the particular content areas to be taught. Only through a very public process will it be possible to determine the goals of the venture, and the key players who will ultimately bring the venture to success.
So why not build it as a group of islands in Second Life? Well, that's not been thrown out just yet, but it does hinge on Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, making good on their promise to open source the server code. (The client code has been open source for some months now...). Second Life is not as obvious a choice as you may think though. There are several open source metaversal projects in development, such as Ogoglio by Transmutable, and all manner of commercial platforms that could be adapted to the project.
In light or recent financial and entrepreneurial projects in virtual worlds, it would seem a good fit for business schools to want to teach in them. Giving educators purpose built tools to develop "serious games" in virtual spaces would seem an obvious step, and Robert Bloomfield is confident that his project will be funded late this year or in the spring of 2008.
The virtual world concept would be great to develop ideal communities and determine how to implement them into real life. By creating the virtual communities we could potentially reduce costs and increase efficient and effective use of time, talent and funding.
That's right Tambra. There are a host of existing applications/platforms out there to start from as well...