But does it work?

I often get questions from people asking me if virtual worlds work as a tool for learning. I go through my usual 1 minute elevator speech about motivation, engagement, participant self-reporting about the experience and what they learned, the quality of the debrief discussion and how the objectives of the learning event were met. But, at the end of the day, I have to admit I don't have hard data.
This post from a SLED member is interesting in that it gives some comparison information and the observation that the learners don't even think they are learning. It got me thinking, isn't the that way it should be? Common sense says to me that a virtual world that has the possibility of giving us results like this informal observation will generate a good return on a small investment of innovation money. Over the years, I've been involved in projects that wasted more and delivered less.

"From: educators-bounces@lists.secondlife.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 7:35 AM
To: SL Educators (The SLED List)
Subject: Re: [SLED] Students Prefer Real Classroom to Virtual World

Just a small observation from the world of K-12. I have 22 9th graders on VW right now a couple of times a week. They insist they are not learning science - they are playing a game. Yet, their test scores on the content worked with in Instructional Muse are 10 to 20 points higher than their test scores on material worked on in class alone. I'm finding their perception of what learning is to be really interesting. The two students who opted out of the VW experience - test scores have not changed. I have two students who have gone from F to B. I have no students who are doing worse.

Not scientific, but it makes me think. Thanks! Beth"