It was a bright, cloudless day when I arrived at Joe Sanchez’s research lab. Palm trees rose above the empty field, and a Viking ship floated just off the coast. Sanchez is an assistant instructor and doctoral candidate at UT Austin, and we’d arranged to meet there, though at first there was no sign of him. In fact, I was nearly convinced it was the wrong place–no way a Texas university would hold classes on a tropical island. Then, a tall figure in a long black coat appeared from nowhere and introduced himself.

It might seem odd to see Viking ships anchored beside palm trees, or people appearing from thin air, but we were meeting inside the four-year-old virtual world of Second Life (SL), where even stranger sights are common. Accessing the online virtual world through the free SL program, millions of people lead recreational fantasy lives as shape-shifting avatars–their physical representations in the program–teleporting from place to place.

Because avatars also do more mundane things like meeting people, buying cars and building houses, the virtual platform opens up new possibilities for academic research and even class discussion. You’re as likely to find a college course in SL as a flying squirrel-person with wings and yellow sneakers. There are plenty of both.

According to Claudia L’Amoreaux at Linden Lab, the San Francisco company that created it, at least 300 universities around the world teach courses or conduct research in SL. In Texas alone, academics at some schools are finding SL can help teach complicated concepts with 3-D models, build collaborative networks for projects and explore the possibilities of virtual worlds.

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