The move to virtual education?

During a recent visit to Grand Canyon University (http://www.gcu.edu/), which has gone from 0 to 10,000+ students in their on-line university in three years, I was struck by their emphasis on "virtual communities" as one of their main selling points. That caused me to wonder once again why Christians haven't done more with the development of virtual worlds and virtual technologies.

It's not that Christians typically reject new technology, just witness the use of radio by John Brown, Sr., the founder of the institution that I work at. But when I hear about virtual technologies, it's for things like Case Western's Second Life admissions office (http://admission.case.edu/secondlife.asp), Virtual University (http://www.virtual-u.org/), Virtual Rome (http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/), or experiments in virtual economies and related educational endeavors (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i44/44a02501.htm?=attw). Almost never do I hear about people at Christian institutions or Christian organizations attempting something innovative and new along these lines except for Grand Canyon, an organization on the periphery of "our" world. Why?

Glenn Sanders (Glenn.Sanders@okbu.edu), a historian from Oklahoma Baptist, and I had a good chat about this problem during the recent CCCU Department Chair conference, and since he's chairing the Faith & History discussion of innovative pedagogy, something may actually come of that discussion, but it's still a puzzle. Maybe we just don't have the resources to accomplish something big like the efforts I mentioned earlier, and so we don't even try. But I sure hope it isn't because we're not creative enough or visionary enough to make this kind of effort. It's sorely needed.