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School of business program to launch virtual campus on Second Life(Herald-Times (Bloomington, IN) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sep. 10--Pick out your best suit and tie .jpg for the upcoming IU Kelley School of Business's executive education program open house, to be held in a virtual world. Business people thousands of miles apart in real life will be able to work together in real time, conceptualizing products or services and learning together when the Kelley Executive Partners program opens its virtual campus in Second Life. The program is set to unveil its campus at an open house Monday on Second Life, an Internet-based virtual world video game where players interact with each other and their environment via avatars. The program provides custom educational programming to help meet a company's specific strategic goals. "It represents an opportunity to find new ways to provide education at a lower cost and at a greater scope and scale," said John Cady, executive director for Kelley Executive Partners. The virtual campus will let a company's employees work on group projects, even though they may be scattered all over the globe. Second Life also comes with design tools that will let the employees draw product mock-ups, said Cady. They'll even be able to gather opinions from the general population of Second Life users. Communication through Second Life, he said, will also feel more natural than working through e-mail or video conferences. "Once you become comfortable in Second Life, you relate to people you know in virtually the same way you would outside of it," said Cady. The virtual campus will also eliminate the need for instructors or employees to travel for training. "A lot of why we got involved with it has to deal with the expense of travel," said Sara Coulter, assistant for the Kelley Executive Partners program. She said Second Life, as well as Web applications such as Google Docs (a Web-based word processing program that allows for document sharing), can combine to be part of the program's toolbox, to be one of the possible learning options offered to clients. According to Cady, the Second Life campus will start being offered to clients at the start of 2009. Once the campus is up and running, some parts of it will be open to the public while other parts will only be accessible to those enrolled with the executive partners program. TO ATTEND: To virtually attend the Second Life campus open house for the Kelley Executive Partners program, sign up for a free Second Life account at www.kelleyevents.com/index.php/create-second-life-account. After that, RSVP at www.kelleyevents.com/index.php/launch-event-registration. After these steps, you will be contacted by e-mail regarding scheduled Second Life orientation sessions prior to the event. Those who already have Second Life avatars can RSVP with their existing account name. Those with existing avatars may alter them at any point in the game. The open house will be at 1 p.m. Monday. The public may also see a live Web video of the open house. RSVP to receive instructions. To see more of the Herald-Times, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.heraldtimesonline.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |