The Guardian’s Mortarboard blog wonders if the solution to belt-tightening in the business of academic conferences might well be Second Life.

Much has been made of the cost savings using Second Life to replace face-to-face meetings, and Mortarboard wonders, “Could Second Life be the answer, providing the sort of interaction essential to scholarship and research?”

The blog cites the fact that there are already 5,000 educators using SL. Its author, Donald MacLeod, recently attended a conference in-world and he’s still unsure whether the use of SL in education is a fad or not. After recognizing the technological distractions, MacLeod went on to praise the quality of the content and the speakers at the conference, writing:

The speakers seemed to have got past the “wow, isn’t this weird and amazing” stage and were beginning to think about how to use the virtual world as a worthwhile educational tool.

I guess it’s the Mortarboard’s take on Onboarding.