Citation: Mennecke, B., Hassall, L., & Triplett, J. (2008). The Mean Business of Second Life: Teaching Entrepreneurship, Technology and e-Commerce in Immersive Environments. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 4(3). Retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol4no3/hassall_0908.htm
Summary: Gives an overview of an MBA class on e-commerce that was taught in Second Life. Authors provide advice for teaching this way. Advice includes lots of planning and support up front and throughout the class.
Key Points:
- MBA elective course where 2nd Life was used to teach strategic and managerial issues of e-commerce.
- Students experienced a steep learning curve.
- Complicated interface
- Students reported being overwhelmed with the complexity of the interface of the Second Life viewer. "...these students expressed their frustration with the clutter of the 3-D scene, such as numbers, texts, glyphs, and a plethora of options and settings."
- Second Life communication modes were an obstacle. "One student was upset by ...'the enormous amount of content to review and see...'"
- Complex "social canvas"
- Felt like a game environment.
- IBM rep convinced some that it would be useful to be in Second Life.
- Second Life had its own business practices.
- Students had concerns about adult content.
- Non-traditional framing of teaching and learning.
- Physical structures were floating in air, which gave students the ability to be engaged in discussions without other avatars interrupting easily.
- Liked the ability to have guest speakers come in through Second Life.
- Complicated interface
- Definition: Second Life is a persistent virtual environment where virtual representations of users known as resident avatars imagine, define and create their settings, engage in creative activities, organize events and grow networks."
- Virtual Linden dollars can be exchanged for real dollars.
- Harvard University's Extension program used Second Life to present mock trials. Avatars attend, observe, and serve on the jury.
- Seton Hall University's Mary McAleer Balkun had her students design and build virtual representations of the objects from the American Literature class texts.
- In the MBA class, one of the authors used Second Life to "create a sense of presence in an active economy to evoke student engagement and strong interest in the subject matter, e-commerce, and entrepreneurship." The class was an elective. It focused on e-commerce. Students were from the MBA program, the MS in Information Systems program, or the Human Computer Interaction program.
- The MBA class had support from the University's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.
- Class required considerable planning and development long before the course was delivered. The instructor had to build an entire course infrastructure.
- Students needed to be given an orientation.
- Students saw Second Life as a game with graphics that "...were behind their time."
