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Teaching Cases in a Virtual Environment: When the Traditional Case Classroom is Problematic
Author(s) -
Halvorson Wade,
Crittenden Victoria L.,
Pitt Leyland
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
decision sciences journal of innovative education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.52
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1540-4609
pISSN - 1540-4595
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4609.2011.00322.x
Subject(s) - class (philosophy) , set (abstract data type) , computer science , scholarship , exploratory research , virtual world , mathematics education , teaching method , metaverse , distance education , instructional simulation , multimedia , virtual reality , sociology , psychology , human–computer interaction , artificial intelligence , political science , anthropology , law , programming language
The rise in interactive digital media has catapulted faculty‐student contact abilities from the traditional Web 1.0 model to a post‐Web 2.0 world where students and faculty can have much more interaction in classroom exchanges. Since business cases have long been a pedagogy of choice among professors concerned with training the next generation of decision makers, the intent of this exploratory teaching execution was to gain insight into the case teaching experience in Second Life (SL). SL is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that enables its users to interact with each other through avatars (virtual representations of the self). While online classrooms in SL are not new (a number of universities throughout the world have set up virtual campuses), business education scholarship is lacking as related to the use of virtual worlds for educational purposes. The aim of the execution was not to suggest that SL case teaching should displace the traditional case classroom interactions. Rather, the exercise found that a case‐based class can be held and attended independent of time, distance, and location should the need arise. Case teaching in SL offers an availability alternative or supplement to the traditional case teaching and learning approach.