Editor

Online virtual world environments have generated a public-private space that is being used for education across many sectors. Evidence is slowly accumulating that supports the idea that these spaces may be used as effective virtual learning environments because they comprise an interesting ecology of embodied interaction (Jarmon, 1996) – albeit virtual. Three critical elements for engagement in learning in the digital age are interactivity, connectivity, and access (Dresang & McClelland, 1999), and these are three key elements of the online virtual world environment of Second Life (SL). Research has suggested that such a learning environment can enhance student engagement through a sense of shared experiences, offers opportunities for collaboration, and provides access to information about the virtual environment and user-created content (FitzGerald, 2007). Users of SL are represented through their virtual avatars, and research on pedagogical agents has found that the presence of avatars can increase engagement and learning beyond computer-mediated communication without such agents (Atkinson et al., 2005). Learners can now inhabit a broader landscape, and we are previewing the emergence of homo virtualis. Research on shared virtual environments (SVEs) and on collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) is particularly relevant to our concerns because this research examines participants ’ sense of presence, co-presence, and place-presence. Three-dimensional virtual worlds such as SL provide bot