For decades, academic education has been rather static, with a limited amount of interaction and a focus on theory rather than practice and skills. Although a lot of knowledge can be gained from studying textbooks and attending lectures during courses, the practical application of this knowledge is difficult. Despite the prevalence of student projects and practical assignments, a gap between theory and practice exists affecting the quality of academic education. The goal of this project proposal is to provide students with real life experience and therefore increase their knowledge and their academic insights. Moreover, aspiring to prepare students for the ever more challenging labor market, and in order to benefit from current trends (Virtual Worlds) that have proven to be valuable for education, this project proposal describes how to provide interactive education (experience learning) by means of implementing virtual worlds, such as Second Life (SL), at the UM.
The department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management has already successfully implemented Second Life in its curricula with the 3rd year Bachelor course “Brand Management”. The subject Brand Management belongs to the major Marketing in the bachelor’s programs International Business and International Business Economics. The Department of Marketing chose to replace a written Integrated Marketing Communication Plan with a branding assignment in the virtual world Second Life, thereby offering a new form of “experience learning” to students. 160 students were divided into 33 groups and given eight weeks time to brand a personal care product. They then had to sell their products to their fellow students on two shopping days in Second Life. To stimulate other students to buy their product, students had to promote their products. They did so in various manners, thereby crossing the boundaries between Second Life and real life. Afterwards, they received feedback on their branding strategies. The Brand Management course has been thought in this innovative manner in 2008 for the first time. In 2009 the Staff responsible for the Brand Management project recieved the UM Education Prize. The jury of the Education Prize commented that creating an assignment in a virtual world the team offered students a new, creative and inspiring way of learning. Students were very enthusiastic about the assignment and felt it was "a great way of applying and 'playing around' with the knowledge (…) gained during the course". 90% of all students said they would rather do the Second Life project than a written report, and 93% would recommend using Second Life as an educational tool again. All of this was reflected in student’s course evaluations, resulting in an average course grade of 8.05, significantly higher than in previous years. Due to the immense success of the Second Life Brand Management course it will be thought again using Second Life in September 2010.
This project proposal sets out to build up on this experience and design a pilot study that will help to get a better understanding of how students interact and learn within SL. This will not only provide valuable insights on how to best device PBL-related learning activities within SL, but also contribute to a comprehensive overview of how SL can be implemented across content domains and specializations at the UM. We strongly believe that following this path of action is not only necessary, given the growing popularity of SL among other universities and commercial organizations, but also very important to further enhance our existing educational format(s) and to continue providing high quality education at the UM.
