VWBPE 2021: RECONNAISSANCE

Presentation Submission Guidelines

The presentation tracks are for those who support education or research, but who are not academics or directly connected to schools or educational organizations. These may include non-profit organizations, developers or designers, tool providers, and other individuals who offer training and support for educators, but who are not educators themselves.

Additionally, these tracks are also for research and best practices application within educational settings that use virtual worlds, both traditional and corporate, who wish to share findings and implications for innovative practice.

VWBPE 2021: RECONNAISSANCE Presentation Tracks

VWBPE presentations should fit one of the Digital/Virtual Tracks. Proposals will be accepted based on their level of innovation, novelty and originality, revolutionary ideas, and the degree to which they break boundaries and shatter old paradigms.

Analytic Thinking and Complex Problem Solving: Proposals to this track should engage participants with innovative examples, projects, or best practices on how analytic thinking is applied and used for solving meaningful, real life problems with applications to society, practice, creation ,and learning, including the development of proof of concept or experimentation.
Creativity and Innovation in Design, Practice, and Learning: Proposals to this track should engage participants with innovative examples, projects, or best practices of creative and innovative work, by featuring ways to demonstrate originality, artistic and practical expression in practice, creation, or learning.
Essential Accessibility in Digital and Virtual Spaces: Proposals to this track should engage participants with innovative examples, projects, or best practices on using technology to make practice, creation, or learning accessible to multiple populations with varied abilities and engagement styles.
Collaboration and Distance Connections: Proposals to this track should engage participants with innovative examples, projects, or best practices on how virtual and digital technologies make connections and collaborations possible across distances in unexpected ways in practice, creation, or learning.
Multimedia Communication and Multifaceted Interactions: Proposals to this track should engage participants with innovative examples, projects, or best practices on the use of multimedia communications made possible through multiple technologies, insofar as interactions are redefined and go beyond text and spoken word in practice, creation, or learning.
Ethics, Responsibility, and Tolerance: Proposals to this track should engage participants with innovative examples, projects, or best practices on how to engage digitally in responsible ways, demonstrate tolerance of differences and multiple viewpoints, and/or models ethical behavior in practice, creation, or learning.
VWBPE Redux: Proposals to this track should engage participants with previously presented subjects from past VWBPE conferences with updated content. Redux sessions will be generally be 30 minutes long, unless submitted as a Micro Burst Cluster (15 minutes).

VWBPE 2021: RECONNAISSANCE Presentation Formats

The main VWBPE conference program will include four formats scheduled during any of the conference dates. Please review the descriptions before you make your choice.

Spotlight Presentations (1 hour): Proposals using this format are like traditional lectures with slides of information on ideas, projects or research in any of the tracks listed previously.
Presenters will be issued presentation tools and trained on their use, including the SpeakEasy for making content accessible.
Hands on Technology Workshops (90 minutes): Workshops should be hands on and allow participants to interact with the environment or the technology featured through multiple digital skills. Participants should not be passive listeners but be able to do what is demonstrated in the environment. Those who propose workshops will be able to build and/or set up their interactive area five hours before the session is to be scheduled. Prim counts are limited.
Compass Points Roundtable Discussions (1 hour): Roundtable discussions are not lecture presentations, nor are they hands on engagement. Presentation materials are kept to a minimum, and the focus is on the topic under discussion, which will be addressed from four compass point questions: What is exciting? What is worrisome? What is the current stance or opinion? What else do we need to know? A roundtable discussion should include at least 3, and no more than 5, discussants, with some audience discussion possible, as appropriate.
Micro Burst Clusters Presentations (15 minutes): Proposals using this format will be ‘clustered’ together by topic / track. Presentations are to be 15 minutes, with 5 minutes for questions / discussion. A session moderator will guide the discussion between presentations. Clusters may be 60 – 90 minutes in total, depending upon the topic submissions. Accept the challenge of sharing a quick burst of ideas.
Presenters will be issued presentation tools and trained on their use, including the SpeakEasy for making content accessible.

Other Submission Details

These items will also be asked of you when you submit your presentation proposal.

About the Presentation

Presentation Title
The title cannot be longer than 50 characters.

Presentation Summary
A brief description of the presentation. 500 characters maximum.

Objectives
List 1 or 2 objectives which indicate what participants will gain from the session in learning, skills, application, or engagement. Each objective should be one concise sentence, which begins as follows: “Participants will be able to….” 100 characters maximum.

Stellar Theme Suitability
Describe how the proposed presentation fits the Stellar conference theme. [500 character limit]

Keywords
Please list 1-4 keywords that apply to the presentation. They may include tags for topics, technologies used, digital skills applied, etc. 50 characters maximum.

Track Suitability
Explain the suitability of the presentation to the selected track, how it is exemplified in the session, and how the community of practice supports educators and education in general. [500 character limit]

Option to Submit a Paper
Presenters in either the Spotlight or Micro Burst Presentation formats have the option to submit a paper for peer review and publication in the conference proceedings in the Journal of Virtual Studies. Papers will be submitted and reviewed through the JoVS. Details for paper submissions can be found in the VWBPE 2020 Paper Submission Guidelines.

Conference Hunt Game
Prepare a question and answer from the presentation topic that can be used in VWBPE’s Conference Hunt, a game that incorporates hunting for clues and information from the program.

About Presenters

Presenter Names
If the proposal is for a presentation in either the Spotlight or Micro Burst Presentation format, and a paper will be submitted, the real names of all presenters (lead presenter and up to 2 co-presenters) will be required if the submission is accepted for publication in the Journal of Virtual Studies.

Time Zone
Our conference schedule uses the timezone of our virtual venue, Second Life, which is US Pacific Time (UTC -7). Because of our global audience, we make every effort to schedule each presentation at a time that is friendly to the desired particular timezone, though generally, our daily conference runs from 6:00 am to 8 pm PT.

The presenter submitting the proposal (lead presenter) should select the time zone that best suits the presenter and any co-presenters.

Community Represented
This is only asked of the lead presenter/discussant.
Communities include:

Educators and Trainers
vLanguage Member
Artists, Designers and Builders
Advocacy and NonProfit
Support and Help Communities
Entertainers and Performers
Coders, Scripters and System/IT Analysts
Business and Entrepreneurs
Other (please specify)