The Encke Virtual University Collaboration brought educators from around the world to an island in Second Life to listen to some presentations from experts in the field, embark on a series of field trips but most importantly to collaborate in teams around a number of topics including bots, communities of practice and gamification. Like the comet Encke, the Encke Virtual University Collaboration had a long tail, with a number of workshops and events, and collaborations developing over the following months.

1. Background
The Encke Virtual University Collaboration brought educators from
around the world to an island in Second Life to listen to some
presentations from experts in the field, embark on a series of field
trips but most importantly to collaborate in teams around a number
of topics including bots, communities of practice and gamification.
Like the comet Encke, the Encke Virtual University Collaboration
had a long tail, with a number of workshops and events, and
collaborations developing over the following months.
About Encke
Encke was a first of a kind event, an in-world mixture of
conference, workshop and collaboration, to discuss, design, build,
operate and evaluate various virtual teaching and learning spaces
for the university environment of the twenty first century!
This unique event began with an intensive two day in-world meeting
on USQ’s island in Second Life that consisted of a series of plenary
talks, small group discussions and report back sessions, workshops,
tutorials, demonstrations and tours.
Standard workshops and tutorials often last a few hours or a day
and while they often demonstrate and talk about skills they don’t
usually allow from much practice, testing or feedback on new ideas.
We intended this new style of collaborative event to take the best of
these traditional formats and add in the time and the facilities for
extended collaboration which saw ideas put into practice and some
preliminary evaluations undertaken.
Speakers
The first two-day event featured lots of great speakers and followed
the more traditional conference format.
Anna Peachey (Open University) talked about the “Challenges and
Opportunities for University Teaching in Second Life”.
Stephen Bronack (Clemson University) discussed with the group:
“Learning: a social, group based process.”
Amanda Hassett (Top Dingo – SL Designers and Builders)
discussed with the group ”Building in Second Life”. It was an
opportunity to find out what you needed to make your dreams a
reality. Top Dingo transformed our island using the ideas generated
at this event.
Michael Callaghan and Kerri McCusker (University of Ulster)
discussed “Practical experiences in designing and building
educational sims” Michael and Kerri have done some great work in
this area!
We held this Collaboration in Second Life but it’s not the only virtual
world available to educators. Our special guest, Kyle Gomboy of
ReactionGrid discussed other possibilities including Unity 3D and
Jibe.
Encke Virtual University Collaboration: Bringing Educators
Together in Second Life
Helen Farley – Australian Digital Futures Institute, University of Southern Queensland
Allan Ellis – Cluster for Higher Education Policy and Practice, Southern Cross University
Amanda Hassett – Top Dingo
Noel Jacobson
Collaboration
Time was set aside at the conference for groups to come together
to discuss areas of particular interest. Resources such as break out
rooms, Google Docs and so on were assembled to help the groups
collaborate and communicate. Groups were set up around:
• Bots
• Communities of Practice
• Gamification
Participants came from all around the world including Australia,
New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong and the US. A Wikipsaces site was
established to complement the Encke website
(http://www.usq.edu.au/adfi/projects/encke) and to facilitate
conversations.
Workshops and Tours
Just as the Encke Comet had a long tail so did the Encke Virtual
University Collaboration. A number of workshops and tours were
held in the weeks and months following the two-day event.
• Tours of educational builds in Second Life
• Building workshops
• Scripting workshops
• Social events including a Christmas party!
And into the future?
The Encke Virtual University Collaboration arose out of discussions
held by the Australia and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working
Group.
It was originally intended that participants could come together and
voice their learnings in an edited book. However, it was not to be
for a number of reasons. Many of the attendees were at quite
different places in their thinking about using virtual worlds for
teaching and learning. They had very different needs in terms of
spaces, building, philosophies and pedagogies.
Would we do it again? Absolutely! Watch this space!
For more information
Contact Helen Farley: helen.farley@usq.edu.au