Virtual Campus Pilot

Our training department are about to run an experimental Online Campus pilot using a virtual event platform. It has a lot of rich out-of-the-box functionality that I feel will make the experience truely interactive and interesting enough for learners to browse the content and enrich their training. Why did we select such an unusual environment? We wanted to identify a cost-effective but captivating platform that could be setup quickly, easily maintained and needed almost zero development work. Sounds almost impossible, right? Well, with a bit of creative researching we found a number of ready-made virtual world platforms that offered most of what we wanted. When I say virtual world I don't mean a true 3D world like Second Life, but you can get 2D worlds that maybe are not as immersive but provide enough of a walk-about and feeling of depth experience using some clever Flash programming to do the job. Once we launch and get some learnings, I will publish them to this blog. To whet your appetite, here are some features that swayed the decision to use the platform: Chat, On-Demand Video, User Profiles, Save and Download to your personal space, Synchronized PowerPoint and Video, Live Q&A, View Who is Online, Excellent Reports, Mini-Sites or Booths within the central Site, Registration Screens, User Management, Mail Notifications, Ability to Customization with Colors and Images. Just some of the items that were ticked off to meet this pilots requirements for a Training Campus.