Collaboration through virtual worlds in Australia and New Zealand higher education institutions

Abstract

The Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG) was formed in November 2009. It began as a small group of 10 academics from the DEHub Consortium of the University of New England, Charles Sturt University, University of Southern Queensland and University of Central Queensland. The first meeting was via teleconference and set out to establish aims, objectives and goals of the group. At the very first meeting, it was decided that to keep the group to only members of the DEHub consortium was very restrictive as there was expertise elsewhere that should have been part of the group. The first goals of the group were to seek members and collaborate on projects and academic papers. Before we could do this, we needed a cohesive definition of what a virtual world was as there appeared to be very diverse and conflicting views from the members of what this may entail, from online artwork presented through a website to Facebook to immersive 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life. Even though, at this stage, the group consisted of only members of four Australian universities, there was one member living in the United States of America who worked for one of the member institutions. We quickly established that teleconferences were not appropriate so the second meeting was held via Skype. There were approximately 15 members of the VWWG at this time. The meeting did not work very well with people not being able to connect or dropping off. Finally, it was decided that we should "walk the talk" and meet in a virtual world. From there on, February 2010, the group has met in Second Life at Australis 4 Learning - an island jointly owned by the University of New England, the lead project member of the DEHub, and two other members of the VWWG (see: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Australis%204%20Learning/134/136/22). It was also at this time that members of the virtual world community from other higher education institutions were invited to join.