Abstract:

In the 21st Century students and educators can exist beyond the classroom walls and beyond the physical space of their bodies, but how does this impact teaching in higher education? This three-year study examines gender choices and behaviors of students in Second Life (SL), which is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). Second Life is a virtual learning and networking tool that impacts collaboration, identity and education for college students on a global level. There is an opportunity to enhance higher education, but there are also drawbacks within this virtual community. Many students chose to use SL educationally by visiting the Sistine Chapel or art installations, while others attempted to use the virtual environment purely as a social networking tool. Students participated in surveys and wrote detailed essays chronicling their experiences within the virtual environment. Higher education, globalization and internationalization all use virtual environments to create varied discourse, which can improve product, outcome and image. This study examines the connection to student learning (decision making) in SL and gender identity. If we move beyond our physical bodies or recreate our gender, how is learning impacted? Gender and sexual identity in physical space are becoming more and more difficult to ascertain as technology moves forward creating virtual spaces where gender alliance and sexual identity are in question or even unimportant. In virtual space the digital projection (avatar and chosen environment) is the user’s gender identity, which may or may not reflect the user’s actual gender or sexual preference. If gender is a mute point in virtual space, how is learning impacted? This study focuses on student avatars and the reactions and relations in SL and first life.

Keywords:

Second Life, Higher Education, Gender, Identity, Engineering and Design Students.