Rockcliffe Knowledge Vision
Rockcliffe’s continuing education vision is to enable life-long, transformative learning.
The driving objectives behind our services are three-fold:
- to prepare education professionals to keep pace with changing technology as a tool in curriculum development,
- to encourage scholastic discovery using proven investigative techniques, and
- to engage communities of practice in creative problem solving.
What separates Rockcliffe’s approach to learning is a focus on the social context of what is knowable and how it is applied effectively within a “just-in-time” framework. This approach is designed for providing improved quality of outcomes while reducing the level of effort required to make informed decisions.
Who We Are
For almost 9 years now Rockcliffe University Consortium has been a supporter of digital education, media, arts, and sciences using virtual technologies. While the majority of our assets center around the Second Life platform we are also involved in other technologies for content delivery including OpenSimulator, Unity, Moodle, WebEx, Livestream, MediaWiki, WordPress, and multiple social media platforms.
Rockcliffe is committed to the concept of open source and open access. We receive over 70,000+ visits per year in Second Life alone, plus 10,000+library visits per month on our website, from people interested in online education, game development, research, and virtual collaboration. Our expertise has been recognized through contracted engagements and consultation with universities, colleges, government agencies, non-profit, and for-profit organizations.
What We Do
Every year since 2009, Rockcliffe has been the principal coordinator of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference. This annual, peer reviewed, event brings together over 2200 educators, designers, tool developers, and artists from around the world to discuss current technology trends in education regardless of the platform. The conference proceedings are published as an open source journal for others to reference in addition to providing collections of other reference material to assist educators and researchers find current information sources on virtual collaborative environments.
Rockcliffe is involved with numerous 501c3 organizations that have their own special mandate. As part of our mission we try to help people, regardless of ability or status, to augment their marketable skills by providing opportunities that prospective employers will find valuable. Whether someone is deaf, blind, a quadriplegic, or has other health concerns, Rockcliffe tries to help people find a balanced approach to skill development that meets their needs and requirements.
Rockcliffe is also involved in directed research on new techniques and methodologies related to knowledge emergence and its application in the presence of technology. The results of these research efforts have been published in various peer-reviewed publications.
While most of Rockcliffe’s products and services are freely available, the service itself does not come cheap. Rockcliffe leverages open access services wherever it is reasonable prudent to do so. As a result our annual budget is approximately $25,000 which is mostly covered by the financial contribution from Rockcliffe’s founders, some general donations, the sale of voluntary carbon offsets, and the occasional consultation contract with universities on joint projects.
How We are Organized
Rockcliffe is a registered non-profit C-Corp in the United states; however, we are not a 501(c)3. Structurally, we are organized along the lines of a B-Corp. The organization is made up completely of volunteers. The entire organization is a collection of global SOHO locations tied together through a common technical infrastructure that serves as a proxy for a brick and mortar location. While the majority of our volunteers are from the United States, Rockcliffe also have volunteers based in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.
No one at Rockcliffe takes a salary or is remunerated through dividends or other means. A small stipend, with a fixed maximum cap per year, is paid to specific key volunteers to help offset personal expenses that would otherwise be considered a normal cost of doing business if everyone was co-located.
Most funds received by Rockcliffe are reinvested back into technical infrastructure, educational programs, research, administrative costs (such as tax preparation), association fees, and licensing. Some funds are set aside for voluntary carbon offsets which are used to make Rockcliffe’s operations carbon neutral. Additional funds are set aside for Rockcliffe to contribute to other charitable causes, including Relay for Life, and helps to support other volunteer and community led organizations in the fields of accessibility, education, healthcare, and digital arts.
As a registered member of the Carbon Trade Exchange, Rockcliffe is committed to being a carbon neutral organization by investing in renewable energy and forestry projects, CO2 reduction, ecological preservation, and sustainable technologies.