One of the benefits of learning another language is that it allows you to conduct business with those who speak that language. This lesson is suitable for intermediate/advanced language students who have a solid grip on the fundamentals and who are now learning the vocabulary of the business world.  Throughout the lesson, students prepare and present business “pitches” to each other in a virtual world via a role-playing activity. If you’re interested in role-playing activities in virtual worlds, I wrote a post on this topic here.

The way your class conducts the activity depends on your classes particular schedule. If your entire class is able to come together online at the same time, you could have students present their pitches to the rest of the class and then rotate. You could also have your students pair up and meet online when they can and give presentations to each other one-on-one.

In advance of the lesson, claim an Edorble world by going to www.edorble.com and clicking the “Claim World” button. You’ll need to share your world code with your students.

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Lesson Objectives

• Practice business and entrepreneurial vocabulary in spoken and written activities.
• Prepare and present business “pitches” to each other in a 3D virtual world, Edorble.

Steps

1. Pitch Preparation

Suggestions for teachers: Tell your students to imagine that they are trying to convince a group of investors to invest in a company, either an existing company or a company that they have come up with. Get them excited about it by encouraging them to be creative or by asking them about the companies that they already respect and are optimistic about. Let them know they will be delivering a “pitch” to the investors. To go along with the pitch, they need to prepare a presentation (7-10 slides) that they will show during their pitch. For guaranteed compatibility with Edorble, have your students upload the pitches as Powerpoint files to Dropbox. This can be individual or group work.

Prompts for students: You are about to speak to some investors. Choose a company, or come up with an idea for a company, and prepare a presentation about why this company would be a good investment. Possible questions to answer: What is the name of the company and its mission? What product does or will the company make, and what makes it valuable or innovative? Why is this company a good investment? What makes you confident about their future stock price?

2. Pitch Presentation

Suggestions for teachers: Make sure your students have the world code of your world in Edorble. Either schedule a meeting for the whole class online or have students meet in Edorble when they can. Once in Edorble, at any point in time one student or group of students should play the role of the presenter(s) and everyone else should play the role of the investors in the audience. Students can meet in the auditorium, and the presenter can use the in-world web browser to display a presentation and move through slides. If students have uploaded their presentations to Dropbox, they can easily use Dropbox from the web browser to display and move through their presentation. Otherwise, they may want to post their presentations on a blog and then navigate to that blog from the in-world web browser. To add depth to the activity, and to make it more engaging for the “investors”, have a question-and-answer session after each pitch where the investors can ask the presenters question about the pitch. Have your students email or send the link to the presentation to you as well.

Instructions for students role-playing as presenters:  You are representing a company, and it’s your job to try to get the investors in the audience to invest in that company. In time for the presentation, join your teacher’s Edorble world. It might be wise to get your presentation loaded on the web browser before the scheduled meeting to make sure that you can start on time. If you used Dropbox to upload your presentation, use Dropbox on our web browser to find and display it. Give your presentation as clearly and persuasively as you can. Really try to convince your audience that they should invest!

Instructions for students role-playing as investors: You are an investor trying to decide how to invest $100,000 dollars. You are interested in new companies or existing companies, so long as it seems like a good investment. Listen to the presentations closely and come up with some questions that would help you

3. Written Debrief

Suggestions for teachers:  If you’d like to have your students write some more and reflect on the activity, this is where you can have your students do a little writing. Ask them to write briefly in response to the questions below.

Questions for students: 

1. Were there any words you had to learn for your presentation? What are they?

2. When you were an investor, were any of the pitches you heard convincing? Why or why not?

3. As a presenter, how would you rate your own presentation. Looking back, would you change anything about it?

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Let us know if you have your students try this activity…we’d love to hear how it went!

If you have ideas for lesson plans that can take advantage of virtual worlds, we’d be happy to post it on our website and blog.  We’ll be keeping a library of these lessons so that teachers interested in 3D worlds have a place to find some great ideas about how to take advantage of them.

Let us know by emailing gabe@edorble.com or tweeting us @edorble