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Finally, as students become active participants in virtual world classes, the student who is on “cruise control” is at risk. Students shift from being passive listeners to engaging in group interaction and activities and demonstrating that they understand the course content via the completion of projects, papers, labs, and case studies. Many classes that include case studies use role-play, putting learners in roles and contexts in which they explore the content and make decisions based on the forces and constraints placed on them. One example of a class role-play is shown in Figure 2, which depicts Ramapo’s immersive literature activity in which Suffern Middle School students enact the courtroom scene from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The students’ exploration of the content benefits from this social learning environment.

In their “lessons learned” papers, the students noted that the virtual world classes enhanced their learning experience and their perceptions of self and gave them new skills to demonstrate their mastery of the course content. The sense of presence and the customization of their avatars were high on their list of priorities for learning and participating in virtual world classes.

Classes in virtual worlds offer opportunities for visualization, simulation, enhanced social networks, and shared learning experiences. Some people learn best by listening to the course content, others by seeing and visualizing the content in context, and the rest by using a hands-on approach to demonstrate course competencies. In virtual worlds, we can leverage a mix of content and activity to support all learners: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Virtual worlds support these different learning styles and give students opportunities to explore, discover, and express their understanding of the subject. Naturally, the tool’s capabilities do not guarantee a great learning experience. The success of a course depends on effective course design, delivery, and assessment. Course designers, instructors, and IT professionals are challenged to create stimulating content, deliver it reliably, and ensure a stable virtual world learning environment. Do the benefits outweigh the risks associated with venturing into a virtual world educational platform? For me, the virtual world is my preferred learning and teaching environment. And I am not alone. Over 400 universities and 4,500 educators participate on the Second Life Educators List (SLED).1 All of us are studying how to leverage the benefits of learning in a virtual world in order to assist our students in today’s educational frontiers.

Educational Frontiers: Learning in a Virtual World Cynthia M. Calongne (“Lyr Lobo”) The use of virtual worlds expands on the campus-based and online classrooms, enhancing learning experiences. Classes in virtual worlds offer opportunities for visualization, simulation, enhanced social networks, and shared learning experiences.

Looking to the Future: Higher Education in the Metaverse Chris Collins (“Fleep Tuque”) Beyond the capabilities that virtual worlds offer us at the moment, it is the possibilities that we can imagine for the future that may be the most compelling. Virtual worlds technology, like the Internet in general, is changing the way we access and experience information and the way we can access and connect with each other.

Drawing a Roadmap: Barriers and Challenges to Designing the Ideal Virtual World for Higher Education Chris Johnson (“ScubaChris Wollongong”) When using a roadmap, one can take many different paths to reach a desired destination. Similarly, institutions can take many different turns along the road to implementing an ideal virtual world for higher education.

Alan Levine, New Media Consortium: The NMC Campus P. F. Anderson and Marc R. Stephens, University of Michigan: Wolverine Island Mary Anne Clark, Texas Wesleyan University: Genome Island Chris Collins and Ronald W. Millard, University of Cincinnati: Galapagos Islands in Second Life Ben Digman, University of Kansas Medical Center: KUMC Isle Larry Dugan, Finger Lakes Community College, and Terry Keys, Monroe Community College, SUNY LIVE Michael Gardner and John Scott, University of Essex, and Bernard Horan, Sun Microsystems: MiRTLE Adrienne Gauthier and Christopher Impey, University of Arizona: ASTR202, Exploring Life in the Universe Anne P. Massey, Indiana University, and Mitzi Montoya, North Carolina State University: Managing the Services Lifecycle Janet Nepkie, James Greenberg, and Harry E. Pence, State University of New York at Oneonta: SUNY Oneonta Music Project Ulrich Rauch, University of Trinidad and Tobago, and Tim Wang, Marvin Cohodas, and Negin Mirriahi, University of British Columbia: Arts Metaverse Beth Ritter-Guth, The Hotchkiss School, Laura Nicosia, Montclair State University, and Eloise Pasteur, Eloise Pasteur Educational Designs: Literature Alive!

Third, a secure multi-age virtual world would provide educators with a rich environment in which to study instructional practices.

Individuals using computer resources belonging to The University of Arizona must act in a responsible manner, in compliance with law and University policies, and with respect for the rights of others using a shared resource. The right of free expression and academic inquiry is tempered by the rights of others to privacy, freedom from intimidation or harassment, protection of intellectual property, ownership of data, and security of information.” Although this policy seems fairly straightforward, the ten “Acceptable Use Guidelines” meant to clarify this policy instead introduce confusion. For example, Guideline 3, which instructs the computer user to “clearly and accurately identify one's self in electronic communications,” adds: “Do not forge or misrepresent one's identity. Concealing or masking the identity of electronic communications such as altering the source of an email message by making it appear as if the message was sent by someone else is a violation of this policy.”14 So a student knows that altering the sender of an e-mail is against policy, but what about creating an avatar? And what about the faculty member who asks students to create an avatar with a totally fictitious name? Are the faculty member and the students in violation of this policy?

an instructional technologist at the University of Arizona,was supporting the implementation of Second Life in a General Education class. She was concerned about the interesting style of dress, or lack thereof, that is often seen in Second Life and felt she needed to develop a dress code for the virtual class.15 But when the vice-provost for instruction and I were discussing the process for modifying the current dress code of the university, we discovered that the university does not even have a dress code for everyday life.16

For example, at the University of Arizona, faculty have expressed frustration because they cannot learn how to sit down in virtual worlds or because they cannot figure out how to correctly set the hair on their avatar. Because of these frustrations, they tend not to invest the time needed to explore the world as an instructional resource. However, as the NMC’s Levine has pointed out: “In our first life, it generally takes us maybe eighteen years . . . to get to be fully functional adults. It’s an evolutionary process. A virtual world that had a short learning curve would be something not very interesting. So I think an ideal virtual world needs some of that complexity.”17 The challenge thus becomes how to select a virtual world that has the necessary complexity to keep users engaged while developing strategies and structures to support them as they learn.

Even more important is that if an institution wants to implement a virtual world of any type, it needs to convince faculty that the early adopters are, in fact, not all mad and that the tool does have value. Instruction may just be in a form with which the faculty is unfamiliar. Therefore the institution must begin by offering faculty, staff, and students the time and support to perform simple tasks like learning how to navigate the environment. Faculty must then be assisted in visualizing something outside of their understanding of what it means to be a teacher.

Perhaps as important as setting goals and providing resources is developing realistic assessments of the project’s success. For example, in a virtual world such as Second Life, what are the metrics that will be used to determine the institution’s return on investment?

Participants in both groups then completed the physical world PCR practical individually in the laboratory. During the physical world practical the number of questions asked of staff and demonstrators by students in each group was recorded. After the real-world practical all participants completed the in-class quiz once again as a measure of overall learning gain.

Pre-, mid- and post-tests were used to examine the learning gains seen in the students at each stage of the teaching process. The learning gains of each group at the three stages of testing are illustrated in Figure 2. Using a mixed (or split-plot) ANOVA there were found to be no significant difference between the learning gains achieved by the SL and non-SL groups, with both groups achieving the same mean increase in test score between the pre and post tests. Interestingly however, there was a significant difference between the scores achieved by students in the SL and non-SL groups overall (p<0.001), with the initial average pre-test score of the SL group being significantly higher than the initial average pre-test score for the non-SL group. Quiz scores increased significantly across the study for students in both groups (p<0.001).

The number of questions asked by students during the physical world laboratory practical was recorded for the non-SL and SL groups. As can be seen in Figure 3, the non-SL group (Demonstration) asked significantly more questions (p<0.001) during the practical than the SL group. Furthermore, the staff supporting the practical sessions reported the SL group students to be more organised in their conduct during the class and appeared to take less time to complete the task.

Overall, satisfaction with the Virtual Lab was high. Ninety-two percent of respondents said they would use Second Life again and many had commented during the teaching session that they would like to see other experiments in the Virtual Lab. There were no significant differences in opinion between the sexes and between those who are re-sitting the module (11 students) and those that were not. Students who had already completed one Semester of the course joining the programme in October 2008 (21 students) found the in world instructions on how to complete the Virtual Lab experiment more useful than those (29 students) who started in Semester B, February 2009 (p<0.05).

A moderate negative correlation was found between age and overall satisfaction (r= -0.54, p<0.001). Younger students were generally more satisfied with Second Life than older students.

Those who had used Second Life before the study (16 out of 50 students) differed significantly in their expectation of in-world feedback whilst undertaking the Virtual PCR experiment from those who had no prior Second Life experience (p<0.05). Of the 16 students that had used SL before 6 students answered Q11 of the questionnaire (Table 1) with 3 or lower while only 4 students out of the 34 who had not used SL before answered Q11 in this way. Those who had used Second Life before thought that they had not received sufficient feedback during the experiment.

A specific comment that is frequently repeated is that these reports have provided the only authoritative, reliable or comprehensive source of information on: The extent of virtual world use in UK universities. Which academics and institutions are using virtual worlds. What, exactly, virtual worlds are being used for. The reports have also been used by academics as proof or evidence that virtual worlds should at least be investigated more thoroughly as teaching and learning technologies.

Most lectures were given in the classroom, so those given in SL, hampered by the slowness of text chat versus face-to-face conversation, suffered by comparison. Many students had to be on campus anyway during scheduled online class activities, leading to situations in which students were text chatting while sitting next to one another in a computer lab.

understanding the validity and creative procedure for illustrating their papers in a three-dimensional environment

'Applying it right' would mean here: not to use the virtual world as just a fancy chat system with some visuals in the background provide real interactive experiences instead not to make as many people as possible sit down and watch yet another 2D powerpoint presentation in a 3D world encourage them to use / make them use the new possibilities offered by the system (move, discover, create, modify, interact, ...) not to try to teach them how to use all the menus in the SL software rather let the interactive objects speak for themselves on a simple click (->establish new forms of 'dialogs') leave 2D 'flatland' (info walls, in-world powerpoint presentations) embrace 3Dimensionality

the concept of interreality - the integration of physical and virtual worlds - is ‘an advantage in distance education, if it can bring distance education closer to face-to-face education.’

It is also worth noting that of the 30 students that participated, only a few had difficulty navigating through Second Life and most felt that it was superior to other Web-based learning environments.