A most enlightening and thought provoking article. I am involved in tertiary education and have been pondering the best way to utilise the immersive environment of SL to teach Mandarin Chinese to my undergraduate students (the very generation you are writing about). I have definitely noticed that when I have a structured lesson in SL that has clear objectives and rules my students join in fairly enthusiastically, but when I try to set up let formally structured events I get very little response from the students.

If SL is to survive as an educational platform the issues you raise need to be thoroughly researched and addressed. This is a fascinating area – what motivates, stimulates and captures the imagination of our students and how can we leverage these driving forces to achieve our educational goals. I will definitely be buying your book when it comes out.

Scott Grant
Chinese Studies Program
Faculty of Arts
Monash University
Australia

A most enlightening and thought provoking article. I am involved in tertiary education and have been pondering the best way to utilise the immersive environment of SL to teach Mandarin Chinese to my undergraduate students (the very generation you are writing about). I have definitely noticed that when I have a structured lesson in SL that has clear objectives and rules my students join in fairly enthusiastically, but when I try to set up let formally structured events I get very little response from the students.

If SL is to survive as an educational platform the issues you raise need to be thoroughly researched and addressed. This is a fascinating area – what motivates, stimulates and captures the imagination of our students and how can we leverage these driving forces to achieve our educational goals. I will definitely be buying your book when it comes out.

Scott Grant
Chinese Studies Program
Faculty of Arts
Monash University
Australia

Schon bei meinen Vorlesungen an der MDH musste ich feststellen, dass Second Life für junge Leute zwischen 18 und 28 keinen anhaltenden Reiz ausübt. Ganz anders bei Leuten jenseits der 30. Meine Erklärung damals: Junge Leute leben schnell und tra…

Students in SL who are millennials will only suffer the from the need to be able to freeform play if their class consists of instructions such as “go and explore Second Life and write a report.” Whilst there may be classes like that, most classes have someone creating a structured learning environment and setting goals – whether you call them the teacher, lecturer, professor or whatever. No need to set your own goals as a student in Second Life, you still have that authority figure there to do it for you. However, your analysis may suggest a reason why students tend to view SL as a place to learn only and don't remain active outside of class time, although in my experience about 10% of students go further than that despite the demands on their time which is a much higher rate than LL think are retained (of all users) going through the orientation process (they currently estimate 1%).

Any given class in Second Life has the same structure as a RL class. There are a small number (maybe only 1) of Gen X's or Baby-boomers, and a larger number of Gen Y's/Millennials. The students come with a pre-formed pool of their contemporaries with whom they have or will develop a relationship, and probably outnumber the older generations locally. Perhaps we should apply your analysis and stop teaching them altogether since they won't trust their RL educators either and are outnumbered in their educational institutions by those evil older generations?

Now, if we move away from considering students your comments about why SL doesn't appeal widely to millennials might hold up – except SL doesn't appeal widely as it exists to any generation. Gen X-ers by your dates may predominate (although one of the other comments suggests this isn't as heavy a domination as you think when adjusted for population profile) and this may be a generational thing. It may also be a financial thing (Gen X-ers and older have the free cash to be in SL from home reliably and well more than Gen Y-ers), it may be a time thing (kids are older and demand less time, working a single job, etc.) and I'm sure there are a several other things that are related solely to being older rather than generational differences that could equally be advanced to support this.