An old coworker of mine recently appeared as a keynote speaker at a local tech workshop. This previous coworker has done well for himself moving out of the ranks of corporate America (we were both at the time in a large corporate training organization) and moved into Academia landing himself at Duke University. Not a bad gig if it comes with free basketball tickets.
He has made a name for himself exploring the usefulness of the virtual world environments and speaks not just on the applicability for fun and games, but for traditional learning as well. Many times they are the same. I personally was familiar with Second Life but never thought it was much more than a social interaction site and never thought it was ready for the corporate needs for quality IT training. The question posed awhile back was:
Are virtual worlds a breakthrough technology that will forever reshape learning and business?
You can read the many responses to the question at http://www.elearningguild.com/content.cfm?selection=doc.777
Or, I can summarize. No, not yet.
While these virtual worlds have come a long way and more environments exist than just Second Life, they still cater to mainly gaming (from single player to massive multiplayer gaming) with some conferencing and chatrooms features thrown in for good measure. While the multiplayer gaming is good, and conferencing, chatrooms and other features work fine, none excel and are pale in comparison to what a user can get from other, dedicated devices such as gaming consoles (Wii, PS3, etc) for multiplayer gaming or the many other products offering conferencing, chatrooms or any other feature companies have wrapped into their virtual world products.
The area where virtual worlds do shine is cost. Free (in most cases) is good and we all love free. But the question I pose is not one of cost; it was“Virtualized IT Training. Is it Real?” At this time I conclude that IT training content is a long way off from being delivered in any virtual world. The content relies heavily on close interaction and this interaction is still pretty far off from being worked in a virtual world. Other content, Medical training, Business, Pharma and K-12 are examples where progress has been made. IT content has yet to see any real advancement using this medium.
You may have experienced something different. You may have used a virtual world space to either train yourself or other IT professionals. If so, I would love to hear about it. As always, I look forward to your continued feedback and feel free to contact me anytime at aust1648@gmail.com
