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"2007 - Without using Second Life, student interview skills average grade: 58%," Ken Hudson of Loyalist told New World Notes. "2008 - after using Second Life simulation, student interview skills average grade: 86%."

“I thought, ‘Gosh, this is amazing! You can teach classes in it’,” he recalls. The first time he taught a course registered in Second Life, Professor Washburn, a.k.a. Duncan Innis, led a 15-week, one-hour lecture to 25 students in the island’s amphitheatre.

There is no audio, just words flashing on screen like an MSN chat session. The discussion veers from “fluff journalism” to magazine branding. Nobody raises their hand to voice an opinion; an avatar makes a typing motion in the air if it wants to comment. Professor Washburn and his students often interrupt each other, since you can type whenever you want.

The learning curve that comes with Second Life is a drawback mentioned by all professors, online communications personnel and students, and this is one factor that makes some universities reluctant to use the program. Jason Toal, who works at SFU as an experience designer, spearheads most of the university’s projects in Second Life. “If you’re going to use Second Life for your course, you need to spend at least the first couple of classes teaching your students how to use it,” he says. “You have to walk them through what it’s all about, how to hook it on your computer.”

Two British researchers have just completed a study of undergraduate students that found "many young students are far from being the epitomic global, connected, socially-networked technologically-fluent digital native who has little patience for passive and linear forms of learning."

Instead, the study found that students use a limited range of technologies for both formal and informal learning and that there is a "very low level of use and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools such as wikis, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies."

The study included a questionnaire survey of 160 students, followed up by in-depth interviews with 8 students and 8 staff members at both institutions. The findings show that many young students are far from being the epitomic global, connected, socially-networked technologically-fluent digital native who has little patience for passive and linear forms of learning. Students use a limited range of technologies for formal and informal learning. These are mainly established ICTs - institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking. Findings point to a very low level of use and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools such as wikis, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies.