Texas State Technical College is poised to add another dimension to online education.

The school, with campuses in Waco, Marshall, Harlingen and West Texas, will offer a certificate – and perhaps later a degree – that is obtained in an online virtual world, known as Second Life.

Second Life was created five years ago by California's Linden Lab, originally as a place for social networking. In the Second Life virtual world, people design their own characters who move through the world, interacting with characters designed by other Second Life members.

Texas State Technical College has purchased three "islands" in Second Life, which the college has used in the past year for photography and digital media classes. Students can enroll in these Internet courses, create their own characters, then interact with other students and professors much as they would in a face-to-face classroom.

Except their classroom could be in the Bahamas, virtually.

The school will offer a digital media certificate using Second Life this fall, with an eye toward offering an associate degree beginning in the spring.

More than 300 universities, including Harvard and Duke, use Second Life as an educational tool, says Claudia L'Amoreaux of Linden Lab. The program Campus: Second Life was added to the site in 2004 specifically for use in college-level coursework.

This mode of education is "a gateway, a picture, a window, however you want to phrase it, into what the next generation of the Internet is," says Chris Gibson, Texas State Technical College associate vice president of educational technology.

"A student can walk in, and if you're teaching an art history class, we can send a student to an area where somebody has created a 3-D replica of Van Gogh's paintings, and the student can actually walk into the painting and sit down," he said. "It's kind of like an aquarium. Instead of standing outside, looking into the aquarium, we're taking the student and putting them in the aquarium."

Mr. Gibson and TSTC Web design instructor Bob Simonette say that offering courses through Second Life has many advantages.

For one, Mr. Gibson says, students who tend to be inhibited in a normal classroom might be more willing to interact with their teachers and classmates, who can't see them. Rather, the other students see the character designed by the student.

Second Life also lets students have private conversations with teachers, out of earshot of their classmates. Mr. Gibson also says the online aspect gives students and teachers access to experts who otherwise would be out of their reach.

"We had a professional photographer who was out in Las Vegas who came and sat in and mentored" a Second Life photography class, he says. "Every time the class met, she showed up for class. She was there to help reinforce the faculty member, and it really added a lot of credibility to what they were learning."

The Second Life classes include computer applications, professional development, graphic design, digital imaging, digital publishing, computer illustration, photography and design communication.

Regular classroom instruction will continue as before.

"What we're doing is adding something that we see as the future," Mr. Simonette said. "But why wait for the future when we have the people and the want-to to make it happen now?"

Sandy Bennett, manager of online teaching and learning services at Baylor University in Waco, said though she doesn't know of any current Second Life offerings at Baylor, the business school has purchased an island that it plans to use this fall.

Ms. Bennett says the uses of Second Life are astounding.

"Vassar College [in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.] actually did a re-creation of the Sistine Chapel on their island," she says. "You can actually go up and look at the Sistine Chapel. It's pretty awesome, really. We're not going to be able to send all our students to Italy to see that, but here they can walk up and see all the paintings."

Mr. Gibson acknowledges that some might be intimidated by the concept of going to school in virtual reality, thinking Second Life is just a plaything for young gamers. But he says the majority of Second Life users are older than 35.

Additionally, many of the students enrolling in the Second Life courses have gaming experience, which shortens their learning curve. Others take longer to learn to navigate through the virtual world, but Mr. Gibson said the school is patient with students who need to become familiar with Second Life's features.

"There is a learning curve to it. But the first time you drove a car, we didn't throw you into a NASCAR race."