Teaching project management with Second Life

Abstract

Project Management is a field of intellectual and pragmatic enquiry that is inherently inter-disciplinary. It typically involves the integration of areas such as: project scoping, time, cost, and human resource management, whilst the management of effective inter-team communication, project risk, and procurement aspects are all central to the discipline. To try to cover all of these areas within a single university assignment presents somewhat of a challenge. This chapter demonstrates that the deployment of a Multi User Virtual Environment can indeed encompass these areas in an effective manner, both from learning objectives, realism, and assessment points of view. The chapter has emerged from the experience of three years deployment of Second Life as an integral part of a unit on Project Management, offered as part of both undergraduate and postgraduate courses within the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Bedfordshire. Examples illustrate the work that has been produced by the students of these courses.