wonderwebby

Imagine this – it’s your first interview about all this social virtual worlds and learning business and you are working from home. Suddenly – just minutes before the call – a storm hits and your house is blacked out. You have no web access. No chat access to the IBM Communications representative. No lights. You scramble through the dark to find the only (non digital) telephone that works. You find your elbow tangled up in the phone cord in the rush. The wind howls. You’re alone. The phone rings. “Hello?”

Actually, the interview itself was pleasant. I can’t recall what on earth I jabbered about in the dark, but it must have been something like this..

“You can’t just take a course and dump it into a virtual world,” according to Tragas. Instead, whole new frameworks for learning need to be developed. IBM already hosts training applications, including induction courses for new employees in India, China and Brazil, on its islands in Linden Labs’ Second Life. The expert who is actually training the new staff can be located anywhere in IBM’s network, says Tragas…

According to Tragas virtual training is particularly attractive to organisations with a widely spread workforce, where the cost of bringing together employees and expert trainers in a single venue for a period of time can be prohibitively expensive and environmentally unfriendly. More organisations therefore are exploring virtual alternatives, not just for the savings, but because of their immersive and engaging nature. This is also making virtual worlds an interesting approach for scenario planning.

Read more in the Information Age article “Fast Learners” by Beverley Head