The time is now to build and to experiment and to learn what it may mean to perform campus master planning when the master plan includes virtual spaces. We need to learn what it means to regulate access to institutional resources when those resources reside in virtual spaces. We need to understand the nature and limits of institutional authority inside the virtual classrooms and the virtual social spaces that bear the institution’s name.  Richard Katz.  Educause Review.  Accessed 20 Sept 2008.

The latest edition of Educause Review is dedicated to virtual worlds and related developments – remarkable.  Two years ago this would have been relegated to the bottom of most reading piles, but today it is arguably on top of most.  From CIOs, who are increasingly concerned to understand the support issues, to administrators, who already express concerns over control, to teaching staff, who rightly fear that such massive changes in teaching could overstress their already stressed lives, this is an exponential change.

Two years ago I offered an opinion in a University meeting that we might soon be providing classrooms in virtual worlds in order to save money, travel and “carbon” costs.  As you might suspect, there were smiles around, and a bit of contained laughter, but not much else.  These ideas seem to challenge the very roots of higher education across the globe, and bring with them associated complexities – such as campus planning and space allocation – that are not easily entertained by those who still see bricks-n-mortar as the pinnacle of accomplishment. 

But as Richard Katz points out in the reference noted above, now is the time to act, to explore and to experiment.  Current decision-making models around IT are simply not keeping pace with the changes in IT, and the situation could get worse.  If the pundits are correct in predicting that this Virtual World phenomenon will encompass billions of users within just a few years, then universities must begin now to understand the impact.  This virtual world phenomenon is a new World Wide Web in the making, it is not a simply passing fancy.  And these changes are coming at an ever-faster pace as well.  We must keep up.

Even with those who have been working in e-learning domains for years, this new world is proving to be a conceptual challenge.  I am noticing colleagues from across the sector suddenly scrambling to understand and become a part of this work, while at the same time expressing concern over the supposed ‘unhuman’ contact it would provide.  But this dilemma is good.  Over the past two years I’ve been quite isolated in the University as regards my work in Second Life, yet now I am seeing colleagues take ownership of the domain, with interest and energy.  This too is good.  It will take considerable people resources to shake entrenched ideas both internal to universities, and externally in the marketplace.  But make no mistake, companies around the globe have now been clued-in about the potential of Internet business, and they are moving at astonishing speed to take up this latest technology.  We must keep up.