International Office - Rationale for building project in SL

The rationale for this project derived from informal discussions with the International Office and their Marketing representive. From this discussion a need was identified to raise the profile for the international office, and inform overseas students as to how they could enage with their studies in a more academic and collaborative way, utilising a network infrastructure and using future proof tools such as Second Life.
Initially, there were some questions/ enquiry about SL in general; the capabilties of the platform aligned with the IT levels of International Students would make it the tool of a technically savvy student (which, of course, all students are not), however, it was deemed that given the amount of learning material on the LMU website and the Internet generally, this would not become a barrier to learning.
I was keen to stay away from the initial default metaphors associated with virtual learning worlds; within this project I saw an opportunity to innovate, take chances and mould something specific to myself through thinking of other ways for people to inhabit "spaces". I thought about necessity over pragmatism in that SL is a virtual world, where rooms are not necessary to the avatars- they simply act as spaces that the end-user can relate to in our real world. This became the starting point for my project. I wanted to create spaces that would work within the context of sharing and interaction but without using the "room" paradigm.
The culmination of this thinking has lead me to research user-hotspots which dynamically link to each other through their position within this world (QTVR, exisiting exhibit spaces pods etc.)
I had originally thought about a hologram idea which wasn't technically possible for me at this moment given the limitations of the SL software.
At this current time, when building is completed, I will be beta testing the pod concept with a focus group to observe the ways they respond to spaces that occupy themselves, and are not dependent on rooms/structures to define their purpose.