Twice a week a group of Ball State students spends part of their evenings exploring ancient cities and distant countries, interacting with people from various cultures - all while sitting in front of computer screens.

The students are immersing themselves in a computer-created virtual world known as Second Life as part of a freshman-level composition class taught by Sarah Robbins, an English instructor. 

"Because the class focuses on how to write about research from an academic standpoint, I thought it was an excellent way for students to learn about other cultures by studying online worlds," Robbins said. "There are so many communities our students can visit and there are so many different people from around the globe they can interact with. You couldn't ask for a better opportunity from an ethnographer's standpoint."

Second Life is a privately owned, partly subscription-based 3-D virtual world, made publicly available in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab. The Second Life "world" resides in a large array of servers, known collectively as "the grid."

The Second Life client program provides its users, known as residents, with tools to view and modify the virtual world and participate in its virtual economy, which concurrently has begun to operate as a "real" market. Second Life recently surpassed 1 million residents, including students from about 60 colleges and universities.

The class began in late August after months of preparation by Robbins, who was stunned when a "quiet" recruiting phase netted about 300 student applications for 18 slots.

"First of all, the students had to have some experience with computers and own a laptop, but it wasn't surprising to still have 70 or 80 students in the running considering the high-tech atmosphere on campus," Robbins said. "When we started the first night, I was amazed by the abilities of the students. Over the summer they had spent time in Second Life, picking up the technology very quickly, and on the first night started building our new online home."

Robbins' class created a virtual version of the Ball State campus. Known as Middletown Island, the community features a tiki bar and lounge for dancing, a coffee shop and residence halls where students can "reside."

By creating online versions of themselves, known as avatars, the students have visited ancient cities built in Second Life and have toured foreign communities, learning as they interact with local residents. The program provides transcripts of conversations, allowing students to incorporate these relationships into their research papers.

In Second Life, Robbins is known as "Intellagirl" and is also collecting data for her research for a doctorate.

She believes virtual worlds like Second Life may revolutionize online teaching.
In current distance education classes taught online, students go to a Web site, watch videos and correspond by exchanging e-mail or instant messages. 

"One major complaint about online courses is that there is no sense of community," she said. "Second Life has completely changed that because by using an avatar, you feel as though you are there because you can 'see' and 'talk' to classmates in real time."