“You do have weird characters in the classroom,” says Miklos Sarvary, professor of marketing at Insead. “But it cheers up the class and people soon get used to it.”

Insead's use of Second Life as an extension of its classroom is just one example of how technology is extending the scope of business school teaching. And with much of the coursework for executive MBA programmes conducted at a distance, technology is proving a powerful tool at the disposal of course designers.

For a start, technologies such as wikis, social networking sites and videoconferencing have facilitated communications between students and professors and allowed students to work virtually on joint projects.