The Use of Virtual Environments for Knowledge Sharing in Distance Learning Education, with a View to Informing Industry

As social media and virtual world technology become increasingly commonplace, this paper considers how educators and industry can leverage the tools and systems of these mediums, to enable engagement and knowledge transfer between parties, with a view to informing industry from the lessons learnt. Virtual Worlds have become an extremely powerful phenomenon with millions of users. Businesses are only now beginning to acknowledge the benefits of using virtual worlds to enhance employee and supplier collaboration and to support new ideas and innovation through knowledge sharing across functions and organizational boundaries. Many businesses are still trying to understand the various implications of integrating internal communication systems with social media tools and private collaboration and networking platforms. The KNOWNET project (an EC funded Marie Curie IAPP) seeks to assess the value of virtual worlds and social networking for knowledge exchange across supply chains.