ABSTRACT
Since their inception, social media technologies have been reinventing the communal and cultural traditions of our society. They have repeatedly shown their ability to uproot deeply seeded customs and replace them with new methods of interaction. Businesses and corporate institutions are quickly turning to virtual learning in order to train new staff and educate corporate elites. Individuals adopted ‘digital personas’ which serve as an online representation of their physical being. Accordingly, educational methodologies are drastically affected by the rapid growth of social media technologies. Leading this andragogical revolution is Second Life, “an online, three dimensional virtual environment in which users take on the form of avatars, a representation of themselves, and then interact with other users in the synthetic environment” (Inman, Wright, & Hartman, 2010, p. 45). Within this simulated environment, users are able to actively collaborate and interact with surrounding objects, people, and the environment. If harnessed correctly, Second Life has the potential to house complex virtual educational institutions whereby users are able to dynamically engage with academic material, interact with peers, and ultimately complete university credits, all over an online virtual platform. Thus, the realm of Second Life is an extraordinary example of how andragogical strategies can be shifted to develop new educational practices in terms of an immersive online world. This approach to social media in education is one that will change the face of pedagogy and andragogy in the future.
