The witty and engaging Professor Robert J Bloomfield, JGSM, of Cornell University will be running a subject entitled Directed Studies in Business and Oversight in 'Second Life'. Professor Bloomfield is offering a 1- to 3-credit directed study to students interested in exploring and reporting on business and regulatory oversight in Second Life.

Second Life is a fertile ground for studying free market business in an unregulated environment - either because regulations do not exist, or the regulations that do exist for bodies claiming to be banks and stock-exchanges are not observed by proprietors - who may be dismissive or ignorant of the applicability of physical world regulations on their virtual businesses.

Students will choose course deliverables in coordination with the Professor and one another. Examples of likely deliverables include:

• Written analyses of key industries, with particular emphasis on Second Life stock exchanges and those industries with significant representation on those exchanges (including banking, real estate, fashion, media and entertainment).
• Written proposals for implementing regulatory and oversight bodies and practices within Second Life in a way that is appropriate and sustainable (perhaps by students at Cornell or elsewhere who enroll in future courses like this)
• Written analyses and development of software tools that assist business or oversight organizations in Second Life.
• Written analyses of the real-world legal implications of inworld activities (including tort, contract and intellectual property law, securities regulations, and taxation).

Class meetings will include panel discussions, lectures and interviews with Second Life entrepreneurs, journalists, and regulators, as well as executives of Linden Lab, and experts on the business, legal and technological aspects of virtual worlds. Many, if not most, of these meetings will take place in Second Life. Because minors are not permitted in Second Life, participants must be 18 or older to enroll.

Professor Bloomfield is the director of the Business Simulation Lab at Cornell's prestigious Johnson Business School, and an active writer at virtual worlds blog Terra Nova. His research uses laboratory experiments and mathematical models to examine the effects of financial market regulations on investor welfare, and to explore how psychological forces can alter the behavior of financial markets.