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Harvard in Second Life

Second Life (SL) is an online Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) where users are represented on screen (or “in-world”) by animated “avatars” who can walk, fly, and talk with each other in 3-D environments designed and inhabited by fellow users, known as “residents.” SL residents can buy SL virtual real estate — usually in the form of a private island — from Linden Labs, the San Francisco –based company behind Second Life. Using graphics tools provided by SL, island-owners can develop their land any way they like — by building a mansion or a dungeon, say, or creating a forest or a snow-swept steppe. Residents also get to design their own avatars, often idealized human forms, who then function, on command, in any in-world environment. (To access Second Life, you need to download proprietary SL browser protocols and sign up for membership.)

Although Second Life is not the first MUVE to gain a foothold on the Internet, the academic world is taking to its flexibility and advanced options. Linden Labs Community Manager John Lester, known as Pathfinder Linden in-world, is facilitating SL’s partnership with educators by connecting them with the tools they’ll need. Lester helped create a Campus Island, virtual real estate where educators can use an acre of land free of charge for the duration of a class.

But the Linden vision is really to let the educators run with it. “We would love to see Second Life be used for things we haven’t dreamed of,” he says, “for instructors to use it to teach things that could not possibly be taught in the physical world.” Many instructors who started with Campus Island have returned to build their own islands. Lester estimates that more than 50 universities now have representation in-world, and about 400 members have joined his educators’ mailing list. “It’s a community that’s growing on its own at this point.”

Otherworldly courses
Having an online presence and sharing ideas among colleagues in-world is only the beginning. Already, instructors are moving toward holding real-time classes in SL; several will be teaching in-world this fall for the first time.

For those accustomed to traditional forms of online learning, the possibilities presented by a 3-D teaching environment make correspondence courses seem antiquated. “Distance students have a very disconnected feeling,” says Harvard Extension School instructor Rebecca Nesson, who will be teaching her first class in Second Life this fall. For the extension school’s typical Web-based courses, a student might check in with an instructor from time to time, but interaction among peers can be iffy, with no set protocol for making it happen.