Cost and Effect: Virtual Worlds and Training Budgets
It’s December, and as the end of the year approaches, it’s likely that you have spent some time looking at training budgets as one year ends and another begins. It seems with the economic slowdown making news and cutbacks haunting everyone’s consciousness these days, everyone’s thinking about ways to make training less expensive.
Virtual worlds do not fit into this particular trend.
However, this does not mean that virtual worlds can’t be the most cost effective solution for a particular training project. Along with other complex simulations or learning games, virtual world learning solutions can be the most effective solution in a variety of situations.
The stakes are high. Flight simulators are the classic example, because mistakes made when flying airplanes are more expensive than building a simulator to practice on. These days high stakes can include legal, as well as physical consequences. In highly regulated environments, for example, the statements of a sales person can have significant consequences for a business. A lot of business have explored sales training in virtual worlds.
The training group is large and or geographically dispersed. Once you have built a simulation or the components needed within a virtual world, the incremental cost for training additional people are small. IBM uses Second Life for applications like new hire orientation, to systemize the experience employees from all over the world have the same experience.
There isn’t any other practical way to simulate the experience. Situations like large-scale emergencies or natural disasters are not practical to recreate in the real world. The Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago has created Second Life simulations to conduct disaster drills and improve disaster planning.
Tags: Second Life, Virtual Worlds
December 8th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Harvard’s Beckman Island does mock trials. It’s surprising the number of learning applications that fit virtual worlds very well.There’s always a learning curve with new technologies, but when the benefits are understood as desirable, the participants will do it.