Kelsey seems like an average American town. Many of its 53,000 residents work in plastics for Riordan Manufacturing, a subsidiary of the Fortune 1000 company Riordan Industries. They give birth at the ordinary Patton-Fuller Community Hospital. On weekends they stroll through the historic downtown or stop by the gourmet grocery, Kudler Fine Foods. And Kelsey’s high school, like too many others, has had a large number of teen pregnancies.
You won’t find Kelsey on any map, however. It exists only online, in software designed by the University of Phoenix for its business, information-technology, education, and health-care courses. Kelsey and its elaborately constructed fictional companies are what the university calls its “virtual organizations” — online teaching tools designed to simulate the experience of working at a typical corporation, school, or government agency.
By Paula Wasley