Wieczorek and Wang Team Xiao Wang a Multidisciplinary Studies graduate student from China who is studying with Dr. Tao Tang in the Geography Department and working with Dr. William Wieczorek from the Center for Health and Social Research.

Implementation Evaluation of Second Life Project at Buffalo State College
Xiao Wang PLN 615?, Program Evaluation
Faculty Mentor Dr. William Wieczorek, Director, Center for Research
Presented at the Ninth Annual Student Research & Creativity Celebration Saturday, April 28,2007

Second Life (SL) is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. As widely accepted and acknowledged, SL enhances the virtual presentation in various fields so that it more closely reflects real world activities and interactions. Based on this novel platform, a virtual reality pilot project at Buffalo State College (BSC) was proposed and developed. This paper reports the detailed evaluation of the implementation of the Second Life project at BSC. It presents the obstacles and the manners of improvement in each step of the project in order to insure accountability of the resources utilized by the project and provides strategic insights on how to move foreword after this initial implementation. By monitoring of each step, we analyze it in the way of SWOT that stands for the four essential factors – that are strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, to assure the quality and effectiveness of the project implementation. It traces the ongoing project in the four different perspectives and the result shows that SWOT worked well to assist the leaders and other project participants. The final report discusses the entire approach used for this project and summarizes the implementation evaluation as a conclusion. link to Xiao Wang poster