Educational Opportunities for Clinical Counseling Simulations in Second Life

Traditionally, human services counseling (HSC) training programs have relied upon face-to-face interactions, including such methods as simulated counseling sessions and live supervision, to teach interpersonal and clinical skills. Concerns about the ability of online media to facilitate the interpersonal interaction needed to teach discipline-specific skills has delayed adoption of online learning for these programs (Jaffee 1998; Patrick 2004). In fact, some HSC programs have resisted online education because of the perceived inability of the medium to provide the same quality of instruction as the face-to-face environment (Granello 2000; Greenidge and Daire 2005; Lambert 1988; Walker 2009a).