When Worlds Combine

Though educators may choose to use Second Life as a platform for their teaching, the site has always been primarily envisioned by its creators (known as the Lindens) as a social space, an area where individuals can commingle and goof around. Linden Lab has placed few restrictions on that socialization, noting merely six major issues in their community standards that can result in suspension or banning: intolerance, harassment, assault, disclosure, indecency, and disturbing the peace (“Second Life Community Standards”). And despite the presence of community standards, Linden Lab executives rely more often on a series of warnings rather than outright banishment or suspension. Even after banishment, however, highly problematic users—called “griefers”—can reappear under new names.

Because Second Life has few rules and regulations regarding appropriate behavior, dress, and speech, a growing number of educators who have begun teaching in this online space have seen a striking disconnect between the members of spaces related to educational institutions and “everyone else” in Second Life. As Jeffrey Cole, director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future, notes, “The difference in culture between the structured world of the university and the ‘anything goes’ … frontier of [Second Life] could not be more different” (cited in Bugeja, 2008a, p. 27). Indeed, a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, “Second thoughts about Second Life,” questions whether instructors can or should be held accountable for what happens in Second Life (and, by extension, other similar virtual worlds) when students are brought there for educational purposes.

At the same time, these classrooms exist alongside the “other world” of Second Life, those users who simply play for enjoyment. While everyone in Second Life has an avatar, a virtual representation of their self, these different avatars sometimes appear in stark relief to each other. Avatars run the gamut from humanoid to bestial to otherworldly; a relatively normal-looking human character might stand alongside the avatar of a giant fish with sharp, menacing teeth, a flying spaghetti monster, or a Chocobo from the Final Fantasy video games. Indeed, the creation of a user avatar is often a complex procress fraught with rhetorical power, which makes discussion of player avatars in the composition classroom especially fruitful.

A motley group of avatars in Second Life. Image courtesy of Pathfinder Linden on Flickr.

Terry Beaubois, the director of Montana State University’s Creative Research Lab and an educational user of Second Life, admires those who can gracefully teach a class while a squirrel crashes a spaceship into their classroom or while a 6-foot fox harasses the teacher with questions not about the class (cited in Bugeja, 2008a, p. 25). As these examples show, these two worlds within Second Life are in a state of constant co-existence, a sometimes tense relationship with few legal boundaries to guide interactions and establish boundaries.