Hi all,
you might find this report interesting:

Knowledge Transfer in High-Stakes Online Learning
Guy Boulet, an instructional designer at the Navy e-Learning Center of
Excellence, recently explained how knowledge is transferred from virtual
environments to the real world, and indentified several requirements of the
virtual world for this to happen. It's especially important to consider
knowledge transfer when the trainees are dealing with high-stakes scenarios in
the real world, such as firefighting, flying aircrafts, and carrying out
search-and-rescue missions.

"To support the construction of meaning," he writes, "students must have roles
similar to those found in the real world, and they need to accomplish authentic
activities in contexts similar to those in which these activities will be
performed in the real world. In this context, peer interaction can also enhance
the construction of meaning and foster the acquisition of knowledge."

http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=93-1

Regards

Edmund