Second Life Survey

The Friday, October 5, 2007 issues of the Chronicle's "The Wired Campus" included details of the Second Life Educators survey conducted by the New Media Consortium. Their findings show that educators are divided on the future of SL for educational purposes. The survey results and the appendix are freely available at:

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2007-sl-survey-summary.pdf

and

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2007-sl-survey-summary-appendix.pdf

Some of the interesting nuggets from the respondents include:

*80% of the respondents were between the ages of 36-55+
*43% took a class held in SL
*91% have engaged in random wandering; 77% have used SL to meet new people
*46% have designed their avatar to resemble themselves
*45% indicate that rich interactions, meeting new people, expanding networks, and generosity of community have been their most positive experiences; 36% say that their most negative experiences are due to technical issues/using SL
*SL characteristics that ranked high were engaging, interactive, social, and global; ease of use and realistic were lower in comparison
*46% consider SL to have great potential and is a taste of the 3D future