As reported on Virtual Worlds News, North Carolina State University (NCSU) has received $400,000 from accounting firm Ernst & Young. The money will be used to fund the development of a Second Life presence for the Department of Accounting. Seventy-five NCSU alums who are Ernst & Young employees will top off this donation with another $100,000.
NCSU’s College of Management already has a very active presence in Second Life – professor Lynda Aiman-Smith and lecturer Claudia Kimbrough actively pursue collaborative teaching possibilities around the globe by using Second Life to contact people, as a report from late 2007 on the college Web site attests. The school has also hired professors who have Second Life experience, and the school has done some teaching and lecturing in-world. Aiman-Smith and Kimbrough will help the accounting school develop its SL island.
“The use of virtual worlds and Second Life in the classroom and in business settings is intensifying, and the College of Management at NC State is widely recognized as providing leadership in this area,” said Michael Constantino, partner at the EY office in Raleigh and member of the college’s Board of Advisors. “Ernst & Young’s support of this project will give us a unique and unprecedented presence in Second Life, among the first of its kind.”
Kudos to NCSU for seizing a great opportunity. As organizations in the public and private sector look to cut costs and still provide a quality training environment, the virtual classroom offers both.
While the thought of “going virtual” may seem uncomfortable to older generations of workers who are used to receiving their training face-to-face, younger employees entering the work force are very comfortable with the virtual learning technology.
Here at The Brooks Group, we’re a professional sales and sales management training company, and we’re in the process of launching our own virtual training facility, using Second Life. Many of our long-term clients are expressing interest in this option because the virtual classroom completely wipes out travel costs and travel times. The savings in time and dollars are enormous to any company that wants to provide quality training to its team.
Kevin Reinert
Chief Operating Officer
The Brooks Group