SECOND LIFE AND OTHER VIRTUAL WORLDS HOLD
PROMISE FOR A NEW GENERATION OF LEARNERS.
BY ANDERS GRONSTEDT
It’s exhilarating and addictive. It’s immersive and
social. It’sWeb 2.0 in 3-D. Think “Matrix”meets Smurf
Village, topped off with a dash of Facebook thrown in
for good measure. It’s virtual worlds, and it’s all the
rage.
Last year was a banner year for virtual worlds learning,
with no fewer than 1,200 Second Life educational islands
created.
Universities and corporate learning organizations by the
hundreds are already betting that the future of online
interaction won’t be built on flat, static Web pages but
rather in traversable 3-D spaces. IBMis investing
millions of dollars in learning projects at 25 Second
Life islands and already has some 8,000 employees
conducting meeting and learning activities in Second
Life. They are collaborating, role playing, simulating,
scavenger hunting, job interviewing, mentoring and
hanging out in the booming virtual world of Second Life.
“I’m so enthusiastic and anxious to get a Second Life
program started that I’ve already designed and uploaded
an Emerson golf shirt,” says Bruce Smith, elearning
manager at industrial giant Emerson. Smith — aka
“Papertrumpet Smit” in Second Life — logs on to Second
Life both from work and home several times a week.Moving
his cyber-self avatar using the arrow keys on his
keyboard, he frequently rides his horse to meetings.
“I’m a history buff and chose a Civil War uniform for my
avatar,” says Smith, who believes the customization of
the avatar offers a useful form of selfexpression.
Communicating, learning and collaborating remotely have
never been so much fun. Finally, a break from the
drudgery of staring at your phone while talking to
disembodied voices on a conference call or watching a
PowerPoint during a Webinar.
WHAT IT IS
In the virtual world, you are “seeing” the meeting in an
immersive 3-D environment. You’re moving your avatar
around in a 3-dimensional world, interacting with other
people through their avatars, by talking straight to
your computer via a headset. As you move around, the
sound changes direction, all at an extremely high sound
quality. The sound from an avatar located to the right
of your avatar will come from your right speaker. It’s
sound in 3-D. Green waves radiate from the avatar that
is talking, as it starts gesturing. You can also chat or
IM, gesture and change appearance.
It is an immersive environment that keeps participants
completely focused on the task at hand. Besides, if they
drift to other desktop activities, their avatar would
quickly slump over and fall asleep, an embarrassing
reminder to everyone that his mind and fingers have
wandered off.
Virtual worlds represent a “perfect-storm” convergence
of social media, simulations and gaming, and if we can
believe the latest Gartner Group research, 80 percent of
active Internet users will be in nongaming virtual
worlds by the end of 2011.
What makes this environment different from traditional
training is that it’s first person. Instead of learning
that is mediated by symbolic language of books,
PowerPoints and voice-over narration, virtual worlds are
experiential, interactive, fast-paced, multimodal,
multisensory and collaboarative. People who spend time
in virtual world don’t think of their experiences as
“virtual,” because they are, in fact, real.
These experiences promise to do for learning what
“first-person shooter games” did to gaming. The idea of
a “first-person thinking game” would make educational
theorists as far back as Aristotle proud. He pointed out
that one cannot learn what one has not personally
experienced. Virtual world offers ample opportunity for
learning-by-doing.
More to the point, virtual worlds offer a new way to
socialize. We know from research that one of the primary
reasons people stay at the same company is that they’re
well tied into the social fabric of the organization.
Companies lose top performers because they aren’t
sufficiently mentored or connected. Virtual worlds like
Second Life offer a unique opportunity to facilitate
serendipitous connections and conversations. When did
you last strike up a conversation with a new person
during an e-learning program or Webinar? Those kinds of
conversations happens all the time in virtual worlds.
EXPLORING
Virtual worlds can’t be described, they have to be
experienced. In the words of Morpheus, “no one can be
told what the matrix is; you have to see it for
yourself.”
One way to understand virtual worlds is to open a free
Second Life account, download the software reader, and
create your own avatar. Start your exploration by
visiting a serious meeting. They are listed on Second
Life’s Website and “in world” when you hit the “Search”
button. This author is hosting a weekly Second Life
meetings at Gronstedt Group’s “Train for Success,” which
continue to grow as we attract more and more expert
speakers and participants with each passing week. Get a
good headset and come as you are—whether that’s as Darth
Vader, a giant spider or an enhanced digital version of
your “first-life” self.
After a visit or two to a virtual world meeting, any
traditional e-learning program is going to appear flat,
soulless and boring with no chance of capturing the
imagination of today’s digital native employees.
WHERE TO START?
Once you’re sold, how do you sell it in your
organization and get a program started?
Some organizations make the mistake of treating it as
another top-down implementation project where employees
are shoehorned into a new software system. Instead,
start in small scale. Set up a “Skunk Work” project.
Rent an area in an open virtual world like Second Life
or Active Worlds to hold a class and get some feedback,
or negotiate a trial license with one of the private
virtual world providers. Hold a meeting with the
training group just to get warm in your clothes. Pilot
and test. Solve specific problems. Get immediate
feedback. Build internal success stories. Iron out kinks
early and create a groundswell of support and an army of
evangelists. Aggregate upward and outward to generate
scale and drive the organization toward enterprise-level
adoption.
What kind of learning challenges are best addressed by
such a pilot? Examples of “low-hanging fruit” that are
particularly appropriate for a first virtual world pilot
are new-hire introduction and sales training.
Large numbers of new employees are frequently “digital
natives” who have grown up with 3-D games and will
appreciate a company that “gets it.” They might not have
experience with Second Life, per se, but with numerous
other 3-D environments. In addition, new hires are
equipped with brand new computers, which are souppedup
to run the virtual world without hangups. Imagine
sending new employees through a time machine in Second
Life to see the company’s storied history; have them
walk around 3-D models of factory floors, call centers
and offices around the world—facilities they might never
get to experience first-hand during their career at the
company; walk around and fly around 3-D models of the
company’s products and meet with other young people who
are about to start at the company.
Sales training and product roll-outs are other common
virtual world applications. Companies will role-play
sales skills, show models of new products, host guest
speakers. Sales reps are typically geographically
dispersed, motivated to learn and eager to socialize
with colleagues.
Virtual worlds provide learning organizations a
powerful, unique ability to engage and empower employees
in ways that accommodate their digital lifestyles, adapt
to their individual learning needs and encourage
collaboration. It is revolutionary, but it’s not an
overnight revolution. For now, the virtual worlds can be
perplexing and intimidating. It is a lot like the World
Wide Web in 1993-94: clunky and slow, but we could all
see the potential. Most companies aren’t clamoring for a
place in virtual worlds yet as the notion is still new
and the learning benefits are still emerging. But
dismissing the importance of Web 3D technologies that
millions are already using in learning strategy would be
like dismissing the Internet in 1994.
—Anders Gronstedt (anders@gronstedt group.com)—aka
“AndersWildcat” in Second Life—is president of the
Gronstedt Group, which helps companies like Dell, Jamba
Juice, Ericsson and Volvo improve sales and work place
performance with virtual- world programs, pod and
vodcasting, video-based simulations and other innovative
learning approaches. Join him and other learning
professionals every Thursday from noon to 1 p.m. Eastern
time at “Train for Success” in Second Life to discuss
learning implications of virtual worlds, teleport from
www.gronstedtgroup.com.
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Predictably, a number of training vendors and
organizations are already in hot pursuit to make
virtual worlds boring. They are trying to make
the virtual worlds a reflection of corporate
America instead of making it a playground for
learning and exploration. By insisting on doing
“old things in new ways” instead of “new things
in new ways,” they are eliminating some of the
critical features that make the virtual world
unique and appealing. Just take these examples:
>>
One training vendor is already hawking a virtual
worlds platform that replaces the customizable
avatars with a handful of default male avatars
in suit and tie and female avatars in dress
pants that all look like they are 45 years old.
What 20-year-old would want to be in a virtual
world as a 45-year-old person in suit and tie?
And more to the point, what 45-year-old wants to
be reminded about his receding hairline by his
avatar? What kind of virtual world doesn’t let
you be young, sexy, brawny, or let you fly, ride
your pet elephant, dance salsa, or even drink a
cup of steaming hot java? The ability to express
your personality through your avatar and
communicate with playful expressions and
inventory items is an integral part of the
virtual worlds experience.
>>
A virtual worlds platform by another vendor
doesn’t offer instant messaging, which is one of
the most popular ways to communicate in Second
Life.
>>
In a gorgeous world of rolling grass-covered
hills and snowy mountains, lush green cattle
pastures, eucalyptus forests, aspens that sway
gently in the
breeze, majestic waterfalls with musically
tinkling water, numerous learning
organizations have created sterile classrooms,
conference facilities and auditoriums. As if we
don’t have enough of those in our real lives.
In taking all the fun out of virtual worlds, the
digital immigrant generation is
declaring its own irrelevance to the new
generation of digital natives. Training
departments that use new technology to deliver
the same old straight-laced
training courses have to brace themselves for a
train wreck as digital natives
enter the workforce.
—Anders Gronstedt
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