University may be the time to reinvent yourself, but go to one with a campus in Second Life and you can have a total body refit. The internet-based 3D virtual world, where you choose your gender, age, colour and appearance and live out a parallel animated existence, is becoming the playground - and study space - of British universities.

Latest figures estimate that three-quarters of British higher education institutions are involved in Second Life in some way. Professor Austin Tate, in charge of Edinburgh University's Second Life campus, says the virtual world is becoming crowded. “Heriot Watt University is just next to us, a few squares south is Princeton and just across is MIT.”

Institutions have spent thousands of pounds setting up their campuses in Second Life. Oxford University has digital dreaming spires and Edinburgh's landmark, Arthur's Seat, looms over the Scottish university's virtual city campus.

Students can go to lectures, tutorials and seminars anywhere, from the garden to the beach, without leaving their rooms. Enthusiasts say this will revolutionise distance learning and help students with disabilities who may not be able to go to all lectures.

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Mark Childs, who is doing a PhD on the effects of using programs such as Second Life for learning at Warwick University, says the real advantage is that it is a 3D environment: “You can recreate scenes from ancient life - such as a theatre - and students can get an idea of what it might have been like to be there.”

Dr Karl Harrison, who designed the virtual buildings for Oxford University, believes Second Life enables science to be turned on its head. “The simulation side of things in Second Life allows you to do things that you couldn't do in the real world. In physics we can change the laws of motion and track the effects of that.”

Second Life students are taught by animated versions of their professors.Professor Philip Gibbard was the first Cambridge University professor to give a lecture in Second Life. He says the experience was a bit awkward: “I thought it was a very good idea in principle, but the downside is that you don't have any sense of an audience because it's virtual.”

Before your Second Life character, known as an avatar, can get to the lecture he or she has to learn to talk and fly, and before that you need a computer powerful enough for them to fly around in.

Professor Glynn Skerratt, who has been experimenting with using Second Life for teaching at Staffordshire University, believes refinements must be made. After a year, in which the main difficulty has been getting enough students to try out learning in Second Life, he is more sceptical about its pedagogical power than when he started. Avatars wandering in and out of lectures cause more disruption than the usual student stumbling in to a lecture half way through: “Unless you can put restrictions on who can move into a particular space, there will be a lot of people doing different things. When you're teaching and learning you need to focus and that's not always easy in Second Life.”

Childs is doubtful that students arriving at university will necessarily want to get involved. “People generally think that to live your life in Second Life is quite sad but, in fact, it's a creative place to be and breaks down some students' inhibitions.” The way forward, he believes, is for universities to find ways to use it to add value to education.

However, the number of tutors using the technology is still in the hundreds rather than the thousands and universities such as Oxford are a long way from holding entire courses in Second Life.

Chris Swaine, who is in charge of EducationUK Island a project examining the educational possibilities of Second Life, says there are plenty of universities in the parallel world but few are actually doing anything. “A lot recreate their university but don't know what to do then.”

Harrison, however, says that there is a future for virtual worlds as a way of interacting with students.

“It might not be Second Life but we will be using a virtual world based in our university,” he says.

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