For a brief period last year, Miklos Sarvary's marketing class at Insead, in Fontainebleau, France, played host to foxes and other creatures as the human students took a back seat. The animals were not real, however, but virtual - they were the students' avatars or alter-egos in Second Life, the three-dimensional online world.

Insead set up a campus on Second Life early last year, and is one of a handful of business schools that are exploring the virtual world's potential as part of the never-ending quest for innovation in business education.