Member Article

University takes on Second Life

The growing population of the virtual world is being targeted by one of the North East’s universities, which hopes to turn the online game Second Life to its advantage. The ebusiness research team at Newcastle University Business School are focusing on the seven million residents who use the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG).

In the Second Life world, it is possible to speculate in virtual land, sell virtual designer clothes, pets or cars and when it is time for a break, even take a virtual holiday on a virtual beach. All this is accomplished with Linden Dollars, the virtual currency operated by Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life.

The team plans to use their Second Life ‘island’ to promote its MSc course in Ebusiness and Information Systems. One aspect of this has been its Ebusiness Island Second Life Competition which has two themes – Ebusiness and the North East of England. The three competition winners will each receive 7,500, 15,000 or 25,000 Linden Dollars for their entries, and will be judged on originality, relevance to the themes, design, scripting and complexity as well as the execution of the concept presented. Apart from familiarising entrants with the technology involved in Second Life, the competition will also provide a platform for e-commerce opportunities.

Savvas Papagiannidis, a lecturer in Management, said: “Our involvement began when we were working on an electronic marketing paper about nine months ago and since then Second Life and virtual worlds in general have become one of our main research areas. We have also used Second Life for teaching purposes in our MSc in Ebusiness and Information Systems this year and we are considering potential ways in which we could utilise it further from next year. “Our ebusiness students are undertaking consultancy assignments using the Second Life concept which throws up different scenarios in the real world versus the ideal world. They really enjoy it and one of them even started his own business selling virtual furniture!”

To visit the ebusiness island go to: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ebusiness/125/125 after downloading and installing the Second Life software, available at: www.secondlife.com.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .