[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]The Rady School of Management at UC San Diego, in collaboration with Rembisz & Associates, is proud to announce the start of student recruitment for a Global Business Simulation Competition to be hosted using the new innovative learning platform, VirBELA.

VirBELA, which won start-up funding from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) in an international competition to spur management education innovation, is a 3-D immersive virtual world created specifically to increase international collaboration among business students and to provide them with opportunities to work on multi-national teams. In October 2013, Rady will launch VirBELA by hosting a Global Business Simulation Competition and will award $50,000 USD in prize money.

“We are excited for the VirBELA launch and hope to be able to offer opportunities for many more students from various locations and universities to connect via VirBELA in the months following the inaugural competition,” said Alex Howland, co-founder and program manager of VirBELA.

“Students will be able to interact within an amazing virtual environment, which provides all kinds of new ways to break down cultural barriers, re-imagine collaboration, and provide faculty ways to deliver coursework and grade results,” said Allen Brandt, director of GMAC's Management Education for Tomorrow (MET) Fund. “VirBELA is precisely the sort of innovation that GMAC and the MET Fund seek to support in our effort to move management education forward by giving back.”