The Boston Globe has run an article titled: Second Life shows new promise as virtual forum for diabetes education. The article is about the Boston Medical Center training diabetics how to manage their condition via classes in Second Life™.

Blowing my diet on Food Friday

The Center did a study to see how effective the class was. They assigned half the study participants to a class in SL and the other half to a class at the hospital. Quoting the Globe:

The trial was a hit. Mitchell said the Second Life participants didn’t just sit in on the course sessions. They made friends, swapped recipes, had dance sessions, hung out. Most tellingly, participants wanted to know if they could involve their families in the game too.

The results were both groups progressed at the same rates and improved in equal amounts. But, it was the SL group that evidenced more engagement and learning persistence.

Most of the news coverage of Second Life™ is about SL. But, the blog Business 2 Community has an article about how one can use SL to promote a web site. Different.

See: How You Can Use Second Life to Promote Your Website.

The author Lori Soard promotes SL as having 20 million users… that should tell you something about this author’s knowledge of SL… or lack of… At best we probably have about a million or two unique active users in a year.

Cirque de Seraphim

Lori presents a couple of case studies; Novelist Karen Kay and the idea of Health Promotion.

The odd thing is the novelist used her RL connection with readers to promote a class in SL. Seems this isn’t using SL for promotion, just the opposite. Then Lori says, “…This is a fun way to attract new customers, or in her case readers, you might not otherwise attract.” Have you ever tried to attract people in SL to an event? What results did you get?
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