Would you pay to attend a class that takes place in a video game on your computer?

Northern Michigan University graduate program is offering an online course this semester on Teaching Science in a Virtual World. This course is designed for K-12 teachers and will take place during the second half of the semester in the Teen Grid.  It begins next week - in Second Life!

This course is part of the Masters of Science in Science Education program at NMU and is part of a growing trend to leverage virtual environments in K-12 education.  This is another example of how seriously higher education takes learning in the virtual world.  The notice continues:

“The course will begin with some basic skills.  At the same time we will be developing a project to be used with teens. Teachers who have the ability to bring students into SL will be encouraged to do so but it is not required.  During the second half we will be working on the NOAA islands in Teen SL with kids developing the project we created.”

Sounds great!  I love how educators are buying into the idea of using virtual realms — continues to bolster my growing opinion that the immersive learning platform is more effective than the antiquated message based system that has been struggling to gain a following (I’m talking about Moodle, Blackboard, etc…)  ”It’s the best we have” is the most common sentiment about the most popular platforms we have today and I agree.  But as our technology evolves to comfortably and reliably support virtual learning environments, I think many will prefer to learn in-world.