As a long time Second Life user (until 2018) I have chosen to Investigate the Terra Incognito project of the University of Southern Queensland (Australia).

I found researching the Terra Incognito project to be quite challenging as there as so many references returned by general internet searches. I tried to structure my research in such a way that I would informally find out as much as possible about the life of the project before filtering out unreliable or out of date material.

The Terra Incognito project is described by Seely Brown and Adler (2008) as “a classroom in Second Life which also provides (virtual) break out areas for group work away from the main classroom”.

I set out to discover the location of the project in Second Life itself.  A Google Scholar search led to Mitrovic et al. (2009) providing the Second Life address (SLURL) for the Terra Incognito project. I attempted to visit this location in the Second Life client, but it was no longer available.  

I then attempted a google search of the SLURL for the project site. In these results I found a Second Life Educators mailing list where Dean (2014) states that the Terra Incognito project would be closing down in January 2014. In other words, it appears the project is no longer running.

Google also returns a result from the Wikieducator site (2013) which describes the project as “a research project developed by Lindy McKeown Orwin PhD in 2007”. I would not describe this as a reliable source of information as Wiki sites tend to be editable by anyone with suitable permission.  The article has not been updated since 2013 (according to the page history) and the web links provided do not work. However, having the name of the creator of the project mentioned it was possible to do further research.

I found the author’s website McKeown (2018) via Google search. I was unable to find any specific reference to the Terra Incognito project on her own website. However, it does list the University of Southern Queensland on the client page working on “Digital Strategy: Second Life” in 2007-8.

The project is referenced in several e-books, websites and papers.  I have noted some PROMPT criteria with these references where it was possible for me to view the material.

• Handbook of Research on Practices and Outcomes in E-Learning: Issues and Trends Yang (2010)
  Unfortunately this eBook is only available to purchase for around £180 so I am unable to comment further.
• Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life (2009)
  This is the most detailed result. Chapter 6 of this book is written by Lindy McKeown (PhD candidate and creator of the Terra Incognita project) describing “how to use a virtual world as a location for Action Learners.”. This is clearly a trustworthy and relevant source. However, the age of the material is an issue.
• Thesis: E-commerce in immersive virtual worlds: case: Second Life. Rannikko-Korhonen (2013)
  The Terra Incognita project is listed at the end of this thesis but no other information is provided.

There do not appear to be any more recent articles citing the project than 2013.   

Although the original project does not seem to have been adopted by other users, there have been many instances of Higher Education establishments using Second Life to provide virtual extensions to their ‘First Life’ offerings. 

The Second Life website (2019) lists 17 in-world universities in the education category at this time. Although this is not a large number of Universities it does suggest that the platform is still useful for engaging with learners.

---

Educause (2008). Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0. Available at https://er.educause.edu/articles/2008/1/minds-on-fire-open-education-the-long-tail-and-learning-20 (accessed 1st February 2020).

Mitrovic, A., Milosevic, D. and Bozovic, M., 2009. Learning possibilities using Sloodle environment. In 4th International Conference on Information Technology (ICIT 2009), Al-Zaytoonah University, Amman, Jordan.

Dean, P (2014) Terra incognita will go offline tomorrow, 9th Jan , Available at: http://sled.577505.n2.nabble.com/Terra-incognita-will-go-offline-tomorrow-9th-Jan-td7582536.html (Accessed: 2nd February 2020).

Seely Brown, J (2013) List of Websites sited in the Minds on Fire Article, Available at: https://wikieducator.org/Minds_On_Fire (Accessed: 1st February 2020).

Lindy McKeown Orwin (2018) Lindy Orwin, Available at: http://www.lindyorwin.com (Accessed: 1st February 2020).

Yang, H.H. and Yuen, S.C.Y., (2010). Handbook of Research on Practices and Outcomes in E-learning: Issues and Trends. Information Science Reference.

Molka-Danielsen, J. and Deutschmann, M. eds., (2009). Learning and teaching in the virtual world of Second Life. Tapir Academic Press.

Second Life (2019) Universities, Available at: https://secondlife.com/destinations/learning/universities/1 (Accessed: 1st February 2020).

Kim, B.K. and Baek, Y., 2010. Exploring ideas and possibilities of Second Life as an Advanced E-learning Environment. In Handbook of research on practices and outcomes in e-learning: Issues and trends (pp. 165-181). IGI Global.

Rannikko-Korhonen, K., 2013. E-commerce in immersive virtual worlds: case: Second Life.