安德鲁·巴克斯特著

After years of relying on “take it or leave it” technology that often failed  to match their ambitions, business schools wishing to create virtual worlds or  campuses for their students are taking matters into their own hands.

随着 第一篇文章 在这个由两部分组成的系列节目中(“校园新鲜现实”), 2月24日)解释, 几所学校在“第二人生”的虚拟世界中建立了自己的地盘, 它的服装和生物多样性的化身和“岛屿”出租, 在2000年代末. 的 site still has its adherents in business education  but the overall results have been mixed.

Now a generation of virtual worlds is being developed in which schools can  pick and choose the technologies and partnerships they want to suit their own  design.

他们从, 参与到, 一个进化的过程，“将继续搅动”, 史蒂夫·马哈雷说, 全球领先的设计实践团队在 杜克大学企业教育北卡罗来纳州. “谁知道还会出现多少特定的世界?他问道。.

这些身临其境的环境可以追溯到网络游戏，如  魔兽世界 并被用于小学和中学教育, nursing or military training and other applications where simulations  in a realistic setting can produce better “learning outcomes”.

In business education as in these other spheres, evolution  means experimentation. “我们希望整个设计能够为学习提供信息，促进和促进学习, 所以我们在不断地迭代, 尝试和测试想法,Alex Howland说, programme manager for the VirBela virtual world at University  of 加州 圣地亚哥’s 雷迪管理学院. “If we were doing that with someone else’s software or  team, it would be quite expensive.”

VirBela is designed to be a virtual resource for graduate management schools  and students worldwide. 它是围绕游戏引擎构建的, 并结合了两个特点, 豪兰德先生说, 将它与其他虚拟世界区分开来.

的 first is its ability to offer complex team simulations through its close  relationship with Tycoon Systems, 生产工业大师商业模拟. “的y are really seeing the potential of bringing their offerings  into a 3D environment,霍兰德说.

Recently VirBela ran a pilot course using these business simulations for 90  employees, 横跨15个国家, 他在美国赛默飞世尔科技公司工作, 公司的科学和实验室设备, 在VirBela的顾问委员会中有代表吗.

的 second innovation at VirBela is a “back end” assessment engine that uses  machine learning to gather data on a team’s performance and provide students and  faculty with feedback.

Another innovative virtual world that mixes in-house and external technology  is Qube, 这是埃迪•奥本创立的五角星“虚拟商学院”的一部分,  英国教育家. Prof Obeng believes traditional business schools ignore virtual  environments at their peril. 虚拟工作有几个好处, 包括“把五个人聚在一起”的能力, 六次, 从世界各地来，花费只是飞行成本的一小部分。”.

大卫·洛玛斯, 五角星的首席技术官, says it was “only recently  that the technology has started to catch up with the ambition that we  had . . . it was probably about two-and-a-half years ago that we could really  start working in virtual environments in a way that was practical for the things  we were trying to do, 而不是为了好玩.”

这是一个很大的挑战, 他说, was the design of the working space: “的  range of choice when creating a virtual environment is too big . . . so we  approached the problem from another angle – what are the users familiar with,  什么能让他们迅速进入有用的工作?” 的 result was classrooms  that look as conventional and familiar as possible.

洛马斯表示，Qube的许多功能都是通过观察用户而产生的. 例如, it was felt that industry-standard human avatars could be a distraction  from learning, 所以参与者变得简单, 四四方方的“量子机器人”，既不分性别，又打破了等级制度.

Some technologies may not be full virtual worlds but offer an immersive  environment that can be purchased off the shelf. An example is AvayaLive  Engage, which uses spatial or proximity audio technology linked to avatars.  Holding the mouse over an avatar’s badge opens a webcam feed from one of the  other users.

“如果你想要一个有大量小组工作的学习经历, 这是动态的，引人入胜的, then even some of the newer tools such as  Google Hangouts don’t provide the flexibility and agility of this environment,  也没有对"存在"这个模糊概念的感觉,彼得·赫斯特说, 高管教育的执行董事 麻省理工斯隆管理学院.

的 school has been using AvayaLive Engage – originally developed by Nortel  Networks before its enterprise business was acquired by Avaya – for about two  years. 的 tool’s ability to meld real and virtual classrooms came into its own  during a two-day executive class on Big Data held at the same time as Hurricane  Sandy hits in October 2012, 预计将有120名与会者，其中许多人无法前往. 的 school took the opportunity to experiment with streaming the  sessions on AvayaLive Engage.

“We were very guarded initially in case the virtual participants interfered  with the learning experience of those attending in person,赫斯特博士说. “但虚拟和现场参与者, 和老师, 大家都说这看起来很有趣, 虚拟参与者以一种非常重要的方式参与其中.”

He sees the Avaya tool and others like it becoming embedded in business  education either as an addition to more traditional methods or as an entirely  new approach.

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