Nursing Education 2.0: a Second Look at Second Life (EMERGING Technologies Center‪)‬

IT HAS BEEN TWO YEARS since I wrote a column on Second Life (SL). (See Nursing Education Perspectives, May/June 2007, pp. 156-157.) At that time, there was a lot of hype about SL, especially by corporations trying to sell products, but there were very few health-related applications. And only a few pioneers in education were using this virtual world for teaching. Now, many in the corporate world have left SL as the dollars they projected did not appear. But SL is thriving in education. Numerous universities, from community colleges to Ivy League schools, have property on SL. At last count, more than 13,000 people were involved in three user groups: Second Life Educators (SLED), Real Life Education in Second Life, and CC International (Harrison, 2009). Higher education is using SL to recruit and retain students, to teach classes, and as supplementary learning experiences. SL is all about experiential learning, being immersed in a virtual environment. It adds another dimension to simulations and allows for role playing, collaboration, real-time interactions between students and faculty, and experimentation. So, as you read about high-fidelity simulations in this special issue of Nursing Education Perspectives, understand that there are alternative environments to create real-life scenarios for nursing students.