We have been tracking the growing number of educational facilities setting up presences in SL. Many have been active in setting up and conducting both courses and specific lectures in-world.

A recent email list posting amongst SL educators raised the issue of a student declining participation in the SL portion of coursework due to “personal beliefs”. The ongoing thread has covered a number of possible scenarios and reasons behind such a refusal and this may be a good thing given recent postings here about under-age content and use of “mature” areas when setting up a presence as an education provider.

Given the emergence of SL as an exciting and different medium for the delivery of courses and syllabus content the issue of not being penalised for refusing to participate in in-world coursework is a new and never before encountered tension that educators may have to deal with in a formal policy manner.

It has been discussed amongst educators that both strict Islamic and conservative Christian students object to graphic representations of the human body. As one educator stated, “In this case, SL would certainly be a religious problem.”

For SL based course-work it may mean requirign strict body and clothing forms for students when participating and locked areas for course particpants only.

A wander through either the Australian or Foreign Universities currently engaged in SL has shown most people in casual dress. But if a student were to choose the form of a furry or other such form, would it distract from the lecture, offend other students or in some way draw a code of conduct indiscretion under SL or the University’s guidelines?

Then again, maybe the term “hippy” may need to be rephrased to encompass fippies (furry), aippy (age-play form) or mippy (monster style students).