Those of us who design, develop and deliver learning experiences in virtual worlds have spent the last couple of years learning, experimenting and researching the myriad of possibilities for delivering learning using virtual world applications. All the while we were positive that we were on the fringe of a technology that could deliver better results. Still, we all bit our lips when the questions were asked about assessment results and answered with the same general stock response, "Well, the technology is so new that there simply has not been any published results yet."

Several months ago I witnessed and played a role in a simulation of the US/Canadian border delivered in Second Life for Canadian Border Services Agency. The simulation was created by The Virtual World Design Centre at Loyalist College headed by my friend Ken Hudson.

It was very exiting to then see the results of that simulated training experience. When compared against other delivery methods, the Second Life simulation delivered this year improved test scores by a whopping 28%! Wow!

Read more about the simulation and the results here:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/09/simulating-succ.html