Real World Experience, Virtual World Environment: The Design and Execution of Marketing Plans in Second Life

Abstract

Marketing educators rely upon projects in marketing courses to enhance student learning. This teaching innovation builds upon a commonly used project in principles of marketing courses — the marketing plan project. Student teams complete a marketing plan for a business in a virtual world, such as Second Life. The project design is based on the principles of authentic assessment. Specifically, the project benefits from an authentic environment and client, rubrics for setting expectations and assessing outcomes, and chunked assignments. Planning for marketing strategy in Second Life results in a realistic setting in which student recommendations can be executed and evaluated.