Over 80% of UK universities and at least 300 universities around the world teach courses or conduct research in SL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Second_Life).

After doing some research on the World Wide Web, on the SL website, Wikipedia, and a few other blogs and websites, I’m ready to leave the comfort of Holyrood Park, and do some exploration. And being a complete SL newbie, I’m not too concerned with finding a location in a subject/issue/discipline that is necessarily part of my repertoire of interests! I want to find a place that can show me what SL can do, and also what its benefits can be.  

I stumbled around a few interesting and some not so interesting locations (Mostly from http://secondlife.com/destinations/learning), and finally found a place that grabbed my attention. Address:  http://secondlife.com/destination/virtual-medical-doctor

The Virtual Medical Doctor (VMD) is a SL space released by MadPea Productions. It takes you to a time in the future when “Surgery is so minimally invasive that all you have to do is take a pill”. The aim is to learn about the human body, its vital organs, and how various diseases can be cured.

(Warburton, 2009) talks about how a SL experience can facilitate innovation in pedagogy, through: Extended and rich interactions, Visualization and contextualization, Exposure to authentic content and culture, identity play, simulation, Immersion, community presence, and content production. Of these activities, I would say that the VMD fits nicely into the Visualization and Contextualization, and Simulation categories.  

The first thing I noticed when teleporting here was that there is no stumbling about aimlessly as is the case in many SL locations. For someone who isn’t very familiar with SL, this was a welcome because I am still very much in SL learning mode, and therefore happy to find structure and direction in the learning activities where possible.

When you teleport to the VMD, you will be greeted by Poseidon!  The environment has a futuristic and very “Let's get to work” kind of feel to it.

Poseidon assumes nothing about your level of SL expertise. After Touching Poseidon, he will provide you with 4 different options:

If you’re completely new to Second Life, then the Basic Tutorial is the place to start, and after you’re confident in your ability to do a few simple things like walk around, sit on chairs, and interact with objects and characters by “Touching” them, you should be ready to begin with the VMD Tutorial.

Medical education happens on the training level where you learn about the vital human organs (Heart, Lungs, Stomach, etc.), and about medical problems that can occur in these organs.

Next comes the hard part; learning about drugs. I did try my best to understand as much as possible, but I'm not a medical person and found this section somewhat difficult!

Despite the fact that I gave up the drug section fairly quickly, I can see how interesting this kind of environment can be for medical/pharmaceutical students, looking for creative ways to help with their learning.

So after studying and learning at your own pace, and when you're somewhat confident that you've digested enough information about drugs and the body, you can move into a section filled with patients, and where you will find a number of quizzes to test your knowledge.
 

The real fun starts next. It's time to teleport to the hospital on Tupol Island. At the hospital you’ll board one of the 3 different Cheirons.

 Each Cheiron is designed to deal with a different set of medical problems. These are futuristic vehicles, which you enter, and in which you are miniaturized before you begin your journey of exploration inside the human body!  

There are scenarios and challenges, which you’re presented with while inside the body, and where you have to treat different ailments.

In the following scenario I’m faced with an ulcer inside the stomach, which I have to treat before I can progress.

And after completing my first mission I realized that in the same way I was happy to get a sticker for doing my homework when I was at primary school, I’m still very happy to get a reward after doing my homework and completing a mission in Second Life.

Overall, I found this experience a fun example of how virtual environments such as Second Life, can be used to enhance the learning experience in a very practical field such as medicine. The quizzes, the Cherions and the miniaturization process give students the ability to look at the body and its medical problems, through a different set of tools. And although there is no substitute for real practical experience with real patients, I certainly enjoyed the VMD, and I think that games such as these can make learning some very tough subjects allot more enjoyable.  

I explored this SL location on my own, but there is room in the Cheiron for a second passenger! which I can imagine would make this experience even more fun.
The VMD was only released on the 15/January/2011 so it will be interesting to find out a year from now how popular this programme is going to be.  Here's the official trailer for this SL location: