Tuesday 19 February 2008

MBA role-play on Eduserv Island

I was really pleased the other week when Simran Grewal in the School of Management at the University of Bath asked if she could use the offices on Eduserv Island for a role-playing exercise for some of her students.

Why was a I pleased? Because for the first time it meant that Eduserv Island was going to be used for some teaching and learning.

The role-playing, which took place yesterday, involved small groups of students discussing the pros and cons of various organisational changes in the context of one of six well known companies, each student adopting a different role within the company. I did some preparatory work, making six of the offices in the Office Space look vaguely like offices of the organisations concerned. This amounted to little more than putting their logo on the wealll of the office - but was probably sufficient in the circumstances.

I went in world while the exercises took place. Things seemed to go well... at least from my perspective.

Firstly, I don't know if the turnout was 100%, but the numbers of students involved looked very impressive to me. I'd be very interested in their reactions to SL - given the general impression that students of that age group don't think much of it. As I was loitering outside the offices I did overhear one of them say, "Who's that Art Fossett geezer"! Lol.

The six groups came in one after the other, to allow Simran to make sure that each group knew what they were doing and stuck to their alloted time. Several of the groups stayed silent while waiting for Simran to get to them. Others chatted amoungst themselves - I dunno if they just knew each other better in RL - asking each other what preperation they had each done... just like waiting for the lecturer to turn up in RL I guess.

I'm going to try and get some de-briefing info out of Simran at some stage - just to see how she felt the sessions went. I'll try and report those here if I get a chance. But my informal impression is that this is the kind of thing that SL is very good for. It's certainly something I'd like to see more of on Eduserv Island.

1 comment:

Kathryn said...

Hi Art,

Did you manage to get feedback as to how this session went?

Cheers, Goldfinch