session overview

Virtual environments

Virtual worlds have established themselves, and with the Chinese investing heavily in server farms capable of providing an avatar for every person the planet, you'd better believe that they are here to stay. But how extensively are they used in real learning and development? Join Robin Teigland who has made this area her speciality, as she examines the real ways virtual worlds are being used, and check out the overlap with social learning and online gaming. This is a technology that is becoming pervasive, and like it or not, it's going to affect how learning is delivered in the future.

P1: Real learning in virtual worlds

Robin Teigland, Associate Professor, Stockholm School of Economics

Learning in virtual worlds such as Second Life is now a reality. In this interactive session, Robin Teigland discusses the current range of training and learning out there – she researches this area extensively, and has practical experience of training in Second Life herself. She will examine how virtual worlds overlap with social networks and how learning is not always directed, but often happens in other virtual world activities, such as internal communication and project meetings.

• Enabling users to experience the impossible
• Using online worlds to break down organisational silos
• What online gaming tells us about virtual worlds
• More than a cartoon: how we emulate our online avatars
• The barriers to virtual world participation and overcoming them