Lancaster University

Strategic Leader Unit, The Management Development Division, The Management School

Project Coordinator
Dr. Jonathan Gosling

Chris Fenton
c.fenton@lancaster.ac.uk

World Name: Ayodhya
 

Project Description

The Strategic Leader Unit (SLU), is a virtual faculty within the Management Development Division (MDDD) of the Management School at Lancaster University. With the exception of a core administrative and research resource, almost everyone within the unit is in different countries associated with other academic institutions. The faculty is a space for members to share their experience in business leader development and to reflect on that experience. In order to facilitate this SLU has launched e-groups, and is about to launch more. These allow members to communicate through e-mail and to post documents. One of the purposes of the SLU is to act as a 'gallery' for avant-garde leadership development, and act as a test-bed for its own ideas. Therefore, the basis of the research project is to launch an e-group using the Active Worlds Educational Universe. The research behind the project will involve participant observation to explore how the members of the group interact with their avatars, with other members through their avatars and with the avatar environment itself. The aim is to build up a body of knowledge of the various narratives that exist at different levels in avatar environments, and to create an understanding best practice and set down criteria for their use in knowledge sharing between different members of a disparate educational group. This project is compatible with the aims of the SLU to be innovative and act as an incubator for new contributions to leadership. SLU itself is one unit within the MDD. The are seven units in total recently re-organized to operate separately but with a working brief to exchange knowledge and share best practice across MDD. A further aim of the project, using SLU as a test-bed, is to experiment with the suitability of the AWEDU as a means of achieving such knowledge sharing in a wider arena, acting as an umbrella across units that otherwise work independently of each other.