CHAPTER 1

Virtual Worlds: What's in It for the Corporate World?

You probably have plenty of technologies already at work in your organization.Do you even need to consider what virtual worlds (VWs, as we'll occasionallyrefer to them in this book) can offer you? In size and expenditures, your ITdepartment already rivals a small kingdom, and your staff is always asking formore. Why bother with a new, "unproven" technology? You have seen more than onepromising tool turn out to be a total fiasco.

Perhaps you've heard that virtual worlds can cut costs. Well, we'll be honestwith you: virtual worlds do not provide cost savings. You read itright—no cost savings. What they do provide is costavoidance. That's how they increase productivity and add to your bottomline—by eliminating opportunities to spend money. If this is not theresult you are looking for, do not waste your time reading this book. If it isof interest, let's see how we can avoid traditional costs without damagingexisting, time-tested processes and, in many cases, improving them.

The mere availability of a technology does not mean that you will benefit fromit; nor does it mean that those in a position to benefit will know how and whento use it. The good news is that, conceptually, virtual worlds are easy tounderstand, and integrating them into a corporate setting is in many wayssimilar to assimilating the Internet in the mid-to late 1990s. Corporatecommunications, information systems, training, marketing, customersupport—all of these changed drastically during that time. The same changemanagement methods that worked then are useful when deploying virtual worldstoday.

Dealing with business transformation often makes you wish you had an extra pairof eyes and ears, as so much attention is required across the enterprise. Wecannot recommend a method of growing extra eyes, but having an efficienttraining program that fully encompasses the entire production cycle will helpalmost as well. Besides fulfilling the need to train anybody and everybody,training deals with all levels of personnel, all kinds of human interactions,and all facets of technology. Therefore, in addition to its direct utility, itis a convenient, forward-looking indicator of the impact of any changes in anorganization, including adoption and acceptance of new technology. Given therecent shift toward always-accessible e-learning, student self-reliance,immersive learning, and simulations, using training as a sensor of change is allthe more attractive.

The Use of Simulations

Simulations have proved their worth since they became a cornerstone of trainingin areas as diverse as the space program and medicine. In this context,"simulations" mean expensive and expansive machinery and software thatreplicates "the real thing" by using complex technology to create a fullimpression of the reality of a process in a trainee's mind. Passenger jetsimulators, for example, use computer-generated, three-dimensional imagesreproducing views out of the flight deck windows. The hydraulic legs of thesemachines are capable of moving the simulator in all directions, and even brieflyaccelerating and decelerating. The expense of building and using complexsimulators—full-flight simulators cost up to $20 million to buy and $800an hour to "fly" (Boeing 1995)—precludes significant growth of their useoutside of the life-critical applications in a few industries.

Fortunately, the past ten years have seen development of simulations thatrequire only a computer and, perhaps, a high-speed network connection. Theystarted out as little more than a series of slides introducing a trainee to aneducational situation. The trainee had to find a solution by selecting answersfrom a menu. Within a few years of their introduction, these simulationsacquired the ability to use and reuse video and audio fragments, PowerPointslides, spreadsheets, and other documents.

As anybody who has ever faced doing several presentations over a short time willagree, recycling old slides can be a great idea, so it is easy to understand theappeal of using such simulations and the tools for creating them. The problem,however, is that these are not really simulations in the sense thatflight simulators are. Within the training context, simulation is a techniqueimitating experience in a real situation, interaction, or process via anartificially created guided experience. The experience does not have toreplicate reality in the way a flight simulator replicates the flight deckexperience. It must, however, have sufficient cognitive realism to work(Smith 1986; Herrington et al. 2007). That is, simulations must interactivelyevoke principal aspects of the real world, enabling and motivating students tolearn.

A simulation does not simply tell learners what and how to do something; rather,it encourages thinking, acting, testing different approaches, and pursuingdifferent strategies. Learners respond to the environment, questions, and otherstimuli so that they can discover solutions on their own after having workedthrough several iterations. This is something best done with an immersivesimulation—that is, a simulation presenting realistic models of anenvironment. Good immersive simulations allow for more than one path to success.Generally, they require (and, therefore, teach) flexibility as opposed to rigid,prescriptive behaviors that characterize other types of learning.

There's a whole alphabet of learning tools, from Adobe Captivate toWink. But virtual worlds are the only type of platform that allows youto create truly immersive situations and the only one where alreadyexisting tools—some of them free—allow nontechnical personnel tocreate highly technical simulations, again helping you avoid the costsof using competing technologies. Virtual worlds are in no way limited totraining: they can be used...