The 20th Annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference will take place from March 11–13, 2027. This international gathering of professionals and students is unique: it is completely virtual, free to attend, and hosted across multiple platforms including Second Life® and live-streamed on YouTube.

This year, our theme is simple, powerful, and deeply necessary: Together

There is a distinct kind of magic that occurs when educators gather in shared digital spaces. For two decades, our community has proven that distance is an illusion when minds and hearts align. We have watched technologies emerge, peak, and evolve, yet the soul of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) Conference has remained unchanged: our unshakeable commitment to human connection.

As we stand on the precipice of our 20th annual educational conference, we face our most formidable and fascinating landscape yet. The rise of Generative AI has brought a flurry of excitement, but it has also brought a quiet anxiety—a fear that automated efficiency might somehow dilute the irreplaceable warmth of human mentorship.

We do not have to navigate the AI revolution in isolation, nor do we have to accept the idea that technology will replace the teacher. When we look closely at what truly matters in education, we realize that AI cannot take what we do not give away.

The future belongs to educators who use immersive spaces to keep learning deeply human.

How can we use AI together without losing what matters in education?

Our upcoming Call for Proposals will challenge our global grassroots community to confront the realities of this new era. We invite proposals that explore human agency; AI literacy and ethics; equity and accessibility; academic integrity and assessment; and the role of empowered educators in an AI-augmented world.

We cannot guide students without supporting those who teach them. We need sustainable approaches to faculty development and professional readiness so that educators can lead with confidence and graduates can enter the workforce prepared to work both with AI and with one another.

No single institution, framework, or brilliant mind has all the answers.

But twenty years of VWBPE history have taught us that what is impossible for one can be achieved by many. We have braved limited budgets, technological shifts, and global disruptions by relying on our collective wisdom. We will overcome this challenge exactly as we have all the others: by logging in, stepping up, and working as one.

Keep an eye out for the official VWBPE 2027 Call for Proposals, opening soon on the VWBPE Conference page. Start gathering your data, testing your virtual spaces, and shaping your stories. We need your voice, your research, and your heart.

Let’s step into the next two decades the only way we know how – together.