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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.

Respondents didn’t feel that using the Second Life client was too difficult. The majority of the respondents answered that moving (73.3 percent) and navigating (66.7 percent) in Second Life was easy or fairly easy. Almost all of the respondents felt that it was easy to take part in Second Life–based lectures and discussions, and that they gained additional information from other students in discussions.

Respondents were asked to estimate the usability of Second Life as a learning environment by comparing it to other learning methods. When compared with face–to–face education, the respondents felt that learning in Second Life was somewhat more difficult. Face–to–face education was considered overall as a “better” (versus worse, as literally asked in the survey) form of education. But learning in Second Life was considered to be clearly more fun. Nevertheless, 60 percent of the respondents answered that lectures in Second Life could replace face–to–face lectures. This question raised strong opinions.

In addition, 83.3 percent of the respondents thought that the barrier to participate in discussions or to ask a question was lower in Second Life than in face–to–face lectures

When compared to Web–based learning platforms, Second Life was not considered to be neither easier nor more difficult. But even in this case, learning in Second Life was considered to be a lot more fun (a response from over half of the respondents). In contrast to the comparison with face–to–face education, Second Life was considered to be a “better” form of education than learning from Web–based learning platforms.

One–third of the respondents considered Second Life to be “better” — against 13.3 percent of the respondents that thought Second Life was “worse” — than Web–based learning platforms. The respondents graded a lecture in Second Life to be “better” than webcasting and discussion boards, almost as good as videoconferences, but clearly not as good as face–to–face lectures and meetings.

A question about how the students experienced the presence of other students gave very mixed answers. Compared to Web–based learning environments the interaction between the students was thought to be more comfortable by almost 50 percent of respondents. It was considered to enhance interaction and the feeling of presence was stronger. Most of the students (56.6 percent) felt that other students were actually present in the virtual classroom. The respondents said that it was “fun” to meet all of the other students in the same location without having to leave their homes and that the campus–like atmosphere made it feel “real”.

Second Life was also considered to be a functional environment for teamwork. Assignments that students resolved in teams were considered to be fun and productive. The respondents felt that their teams produced more than they would have done individually. Students also felt very strongly that they were part of the team (56.7 percent).

When the respondents were given a chance to freely express their opinions about their experiences in Second Life, it became apparent that using Second Life in education may even have somewhat surprising positive consequences. One of the respondents wrote that using Second Life in education had brought her closer to her 16–year–old son’s world.

Another surprising observation outside the survey was that some of the students used Second Life on their own time to improve their language skills. One of the students told us that she spent a lot of time in the French–speaking areas of Second Life exercising both her written and spoken French. This discovery strengthens our belief of the huge potential that Second Life has for language education, an area certainly requiring further research.

In general, Second Life was considered to enhance interaction between students and between the instructor and the students especially when compared to Web–based learning environments.

Provided that participating face–to–face education does not require too much traveling and learning outcomes are satisfactory, Second Life does not necessarily provide any significant benefits, at least not when using it only as a platform for lectures and teamwork.

When considering distance only as a physical measure of separation, Second Life provides a means to overcome it. The existence of multimodal and non–interfering means of communication and socialization by using chat, instant messages and voice calls in personal and group interaction provides users a wider range of possibilities to communicate than in face–to–face sessions. Of these varied means, each student can select an option one that feels most comfortable, an observation also made by Paquette–Frenette (2006). In this study, all of the students were participating at a distance through Second Life, avoiding problems noted in Paquette–Frenette (2006).

The mixed responses to questions about Second Life being comfortable or better than other environments of learning indicate a variety of emotional and cognitive reactions. This study did not give clear answers to the interplay of different distance variables (Nooteboom, 2000; Duval, 2006; Hargreaves, 2001; Garrison, et al., 2000) in Second Life–based learning. However, the results indicate that the feeling of presence and distance is a multidimensional issue that needs further attention in future studies.

In comparison to lectures, the benefits of using Second Life in teamwork were more obvious. The physical presence of avatars, the possibility to communicate in real time and the existence of a shared local space explain why Second Life produces a more realistic feel of presence than discussion forums or chat rooms. In a sense, Second Life brings distance education closer to face–to–face education, supporting Jones, et al. (2005). The strong feel of presence noted by respondents and the immersive nature of Second Life seem to do just that.