This article talks about a software designed by the University of Phoenix for its business, information-technology, education, and health-care courses. Through the university's "virtual organizations"--online teaching tools designed to simulate the experience of working at a typical corporation, school, or government agency, Phoenix students can tap into a virtual world where each fictional school or corporation comes with detailed, simulated scenarios that employees are likely to encounter in the workplace. The scenarios are not fully interactive virtual worlds like Second Life--they do not provide second-by-second feedback--but they do bring real-world problems to life. For the 345,000 students enrolled in the for-profit university's online or campus-based courses, the virtual schools and businesses function like case studies, in that students use them to diagnose and solve typical problems of organizations. The big difference from textbook-style cases is in the level of realism and interactivity. Phoenix created its first virtual company, Riordan Manufacturing, in 2003, for its business and accounting programs. Since then the virtual world has expanded to eight corporations, four schools, a hospital, and city-government offices. About 500 Phoenix classes--a third of the university's offerings--use the virtual organizations in course assignments. The programs, created in consultation with Phoenix faculty members, are designed to represent typical schools and businesses. The major advantage of the software, say its creators, is that it lets students examine a business or a school at a level of detail that most employees can not.