I took the Virtual Worlds class because I believe VWs are the next frontier for advertising, entertainment and education. There is some of all of those already going on in Second Life, which is the biggest and most popular of the user-created worlds.  I wanted to learn more about using these platforms for business and product promotions, since I someday may be seeking work in this area.

I had already been in SL for a year when I had started the course. I had owned property, built items, and tried my hand at setting up a store. I had done the business part at a leisurely pace, mainly with fun in mind; not considering it necessary to succeed.  It was time to get serious about it and figure out some things I had been avoiding, like learning how to really market a business and advertising in general.

I found the class very beneficial. I realize there was alot of frustration for the instructor as well as students with things that didn’t work well. Texting with avatars sitting in a circle turned out to be incredibly boring and time-wasting. We tried voice but ran into technical problems with not everyone being able to do it, and with most students being in the same room, the sound delay became quite disturbing. You would hear someone speak in the room, then hear it in-world. It made it almost impossible to have a conversation. We did experiment with everyone being remote and using voice and found it much better, but not perfect. There were still technical issues, and not everyone was on-board.

I thought all of these so-called failures were quite instructive and useful. I intend to pursue the use of virtual worlds for many things in the future, and it’s just as important to know what doesn’t work as well as what does work. For instance, I’ve learned that instruction in SL probably needs to be muli-modal. You can present print, and speech, but it has to have an interactive element to keep it interesting.

Just that i had to look at marketing in a virtual world and experiment, and watch what others did was a good enough lesson to have learned in the class.

Perhaps it could be handled as a virtual marketing intro class in the future, and then offer an advanced class that really markets a product or service as if it was a paying job. There would have to be instruction in all the necessary parts, like identifying who the targeted customer would be, how to reach them, and how to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. Perhaps internships with companies doing this sort of business in SL could be arranged.

The class would have to have some prerequisites, such as each student having proper equipment to function effectively in SL, and it should be primarily an in-world and online based class with only a couple of sessions in person for lively discussions and pedagogy.

Overall, I feel the class was useful in both its successes and failures. I only consider things to be a failure if you don’t learn from it. The class became an evolutionary process, which may have been unexpected, but shouldn’t have been, considering we are early adopters of a new and evolving platform.