Six months ago Monroe Community College and Finger Lakes Community College kicked off a SUNY-wide experiment in the use of virtual worlds in college education.

They established a beachhead in Second Life, held a one-day conference, and offered plots of land for educators to play with. More than 30 SUNY institutions and RIT took Larry Dugan (coordinator of learning environments at FLCC) and Terry Keys (director of instructional technologies for MCC) up on the offer to innovate.

Last week a second conference was held for participating educators to share their success stories with their peers, and more than 20 colleges were represented. Though the conference signaled the official end of the conference series, MCC has already bought more land in Second Life to continue offering spaces for schools to build in. Several participating schools already had or acquired their own islands in Second Life and used their SUNY Live island space to link to or expand their existing projects. "This project had become a "proof of concept" that has enabled many to move forward on their campuses." says Keys. "We now have 50 people in the SUNY Live group in SL to carry this project on."

The projects were as varied as the schools. SUNY Oswego was well served by an experienced Second Life friend of Dr. John Lane, who recreated a Long Island diner that served as an on-line meeting place for Lane's classes. A group of RIT new-media freshmen, led by student Bartholomew Moore, built a three-story clubhouse (out of "brick," naturally) with a first-floor auditorium, a second-floor dance club with streaming music, and an "open air" rooftop gallery for student artwork.

Some sites were content specific, like museum exhibits. Moraine Valley Community College's beta site was designed to support the college's "One Book, One College" program, this year's text being Malcolm X's autobiography. Lehigh Carbon Community College students designed "Lou's Tavern," a Chuck Palahniuk-"Fight Club" themed exhibition. MCC developed an experimental music library.

One of the education programs that really took advantage of everything that can be done in Second Life was Buffalo State's fashion program. Students developed their own fashions in Second Life and sold their virtual designs in Second Life and their real-world versions in virtual storefronts on the Web. They even created a virtual runway and a set of avatar animations for professional-quality virtual fashion shows. Most of this occurred on Buffalo State's own Second Life island, but information about the program and a portal to the fashion-program work was provided on the SUNY Live island space.

"We had no idea six months ago just how popular this project would become," says Dugan. "This really does give a face to the Web 2.0-3.0 movements happening right now and is acting as an incubator for some real innovations in education. If nothing else, it is giving educational technologists and researchers new life that is making a wave throughout the field. You can't go to a conference today without at least one, if not 10 Second Life presentations. This is truly the first innovation I have seen in a long time that looks like it may be part of something much bigger going on in the field. "

Dugan singled out some personal favorites from the SUNY Live experience. "My personal favorites" says Dugan, "were the MCC music library project and the Malcolm X exhibit. "

The Malcolm X exhibit also served as a test bed for the students to try different ways to display and exhibit information and is still a work in progress. The MCC librarians used the space to provide general information on different styles of music and "jukebox" style systems to stream different types of classical music, amongst others.

A cheerleader for the use of virtual worlds in education, Dugan has seen some real transformation in the way some of his colleagues have taken to these new teaching tools.

Yet he's aware that educational change comes slowly, if at all. "Time will tell if Second Life (or something that evolves from it) will make a significant enough impact to drive some real movement in Higher Ed." Are you a Rochester-based Second Life citizen? You can visit the different SUNY projects by using this SLURL (that's Second Life URL).