Around the world, universities–and even the U.S. Department of State–are turning to online virtual worlds to create cultural exchanges, the Christian Science Monitor reports. In these immersive, 3-D environments, users from around the globe can collaborate in ways that were previously impossible. When a group at Ohio University in Athens created a video tour of the school’s virtual Second Life campus, Christopher Keesey expected that it would be, by and large, for the OU community. Yet while browsing YouTube, he found a copy of that same video tour translated into what he thinks was a Nordic language, possibly Danish.
"We didn’t know the person. The person, as far as we know, wasn’t even here, they were in Europe," recounts Keesey, project manager of Ohio University Without Boundaries. Now the OU virtual campus receives visitors from around the world who regularly interact with student avatars on the virtual campus commons. "If you learn about a culture … and your behavior changes in Second Life while you’re interacting with another culture, when you leave the virtual world these processes stay with you," says Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab in Palo Alto, Calif. Although virtual-reality advocates say this digital realm is no match for real-life experiences, most argue that in the absence of traveling overseas, it is one of the best available means of cultural exchange…

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