I have been involved in a number of conversations over the past couple of years with colleagues throughout the HE sector about hosting open days in Second Life. If truth be told, it’s a no-brainer and if the popularity of Second Life continues (and at this moment in time I’m not entirely sure where it is going) then all universities will begin to take this approach.

However, what worries me about the reports from LJMU is that the campus that they (or in this case some of their students) have created is not a true representation of the actual campus. Some of the buildings are virtual replicas, but others are reported to be fictional spaces that students would like to see built on their campus, such as halls of residence with their own swimming pools. Designed to be ‘talking points’ amongst the student amassadors and prospective students, I fear that with language barriers in place amongst even some of the best English-speaking prospective students from overseas, these fictional buildings could be mistaken by some as representations of real buildings and create a false reality.

If Second Life is to become a widely used tool for marketing universities to overseas students I think a few simple rules of best practice need to be observed by the creators of those virtual spaces:

• keep it true to life. If you are including buildings that are either planned to be developed or complete fictions then these need to be very clearly labelled as so, and in a language that is concise and not open to misinterpretation by those who do not speak English as their mother-tongue;
• if you have ‘student ambassadors’ there to speak with potential students, then you need to be true to their genuine personality and not have marketing or communications folk ‘posing’ as students, which would be very easy to do in this false environment;
• when advertising a virtual open day you again need to be clear and upfront (in a language or languages that cannot be open to misinterpretation) about what will be available for visitors to see, and whether it is a genuine representation or not;
• don’t ever see Second Life as a suitable replacement for actual visits to a campus. I have visited a vast number of university campuses over the years and nothing quite sells a university so well as the atmosphere that its people can create (a sunny day always helps too of course!). Second Life really does open up opportunities that standard print prospectuses or online 360 degree tours just can’t offer, and this is an important step for overseas student recruitment, but nothing quite beats one-to-one communication in person on a real campus and I really hope that universities don’t ever begin to see this as a replacement for that level of contact.

We certainly know the importance of practicing what we preach, and other agencies and consultancies clearly feel the same. However, the usefulness of an online PR office is not yet entirely clear to me. Face-to-face contact and real human interaction are key to building effective client-consultant relationships and, in a virtual world where everybody bears a virtual identity that can be, if they choose, so far removed from their own that they may as well be from another planet, how can that relationship really develop? I’m going to make it a mission to pay a visit, though and see what I can find. Visiting their offices with my own Second Life virtual identity feels like the ultimate in spying on consultancy competitors! Wonderful!