Quick Index
- Contents
- Articles about BPC Software Systems
- Articles about Governance Function Business Methods
- Articles about General Management Methods
- Articles about Virtual Worlds
- About The RiskWiki
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Introduction to the RiskWiki
This wiki is sponsored by Bishop Phillips Consulting (http://www.bishopphillips.com/) for the education, use and enjoyment of our clients, educators, the public and professionals involved in management consulting and risk advisory, compliance, internal audit, insurance claims management, safety, governance and risk analysis industries. It provides reference articles on management, risk and risk related functions including: Risk Management, Internal Audit, Governance, Compliance, and Process Reengineering, etc.
The RiskWiki is based on the articles, methods, manuals and papers of primarily three firms: Bishop Phillips Consulting P/L, Stanton Consulting Partners and Bishop Finance P/L. These firms are contributing a large body of work amassed over many years experience with hundreds of clients. The project to convert and upload much of our BPC software help & manuals, extended body of consulting, risk and internal audit methods and models, and education and research materials is a large and time consuming project so the RiskWiki content changes frequently and will do so for the foreseeable future.
With the exception of all software documentation, and those additional documents marked otherwise, all written material on this site may be used freely by readers for any purpose including reproduction, subject only to the retention of moral rights by the authors. Some articles may include images for which additional permission may be reuired prior to reproduction. Software documentation may be duplicated in hard-copy for internal use by registered users of the systems with current maintenance agreements. Other uses of software systems documentation will be considered on written request.
Things to See in The RiskWiki
BPC RiskManager
- Are you looking for BPC RiskManager Documentation or to learn more about the software?
Bishop Phillips supplies the BPC RiskManagement suite of governance software that provides a complete governance solution across risk management, controls management, compliance management, insurance management, claims management, incident & hazard management, audit risk management, governance document management and survey generation and management. The system can be installed in configurations ranging from single-user to very large scale enterprise configurations.
The system is particularly suited to managing and reporting on the risk and compliance management tasks of government agencies, whole of government, special project, not-for-profits, insurance providers, service industries, utilities, and tertiary education sectors. You will find an extensive body of information covering technical, administration and user level tasks here.
If you have questions they may be answered in our frequently asked questions.
| Frequently asked Questions About BPC RiskManger
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| Featured Article...
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CHAPTER 2: Virtual Worlds - Concepts, History, and Use in Education (Literature Review)
2.1 Introduction
Gartner (2007) predicts that as many as 80% of active internet users will have a ‘Second Life’ in a virtual world by the end of 2011. Depending on your definition of ‘virtual world’ this may seem a little ambitious. Certainly, the extent to which virtual worlds are seen to include massively multi-user online environments supporting collaborative exchange of information in shared virtual space, the prediction might prove reasonably safe. To the extent that this definition is constrained to massively multi-player online games then prediction may prove a little “braver”.
Today’s virtual worlds represent the convergence of multiple technology streams, with the latest examples of the genre representing the merger of internet, telecommunications, instant messaging, virtual reality, 2D & 3D graphics, a variety of 3D modelling technologies, spatial sound, distributed databases, spatial indexing, mapping, streaming data transmission, physics, scripting languages, object-oriented software, agent theory, artificial intelligence, networking, economic modelling, online trading systems, game theory and many, many more technologies.
While the developers of many virtual worlds are content within the game space, some virtual world developers, such as Linden Research (developers of Second Life) have ambitions to be the web platform of the future (Bulkley, 2007). To this end a number of the commercial developers of virtual worlds have joined forces with a number of major corporate consumers, systems integrators and US government bodies to explore common standards for inter-operability of virtual world platforms which is a necessary first step in moving the technologies from the isolated proprietary place they now inhabit to a world-wide shared web platform (Terdiman, 2007).
This chapter explores virtual worlds, reviews the literature considering alternative definitions, characteristics, history, key architectural features, research outcomes and applications in education. The chapter concludes with an examination of traditional education taxonomy and relates that to the virtual world context as a basis for structuring an approach to exploring education affordances offered by two approaches to education in virtual worlds.
2.2 Virtual Worlds
2.2.1 What is a Virtual World?
2.2.1.1 In Search of a Definition
“Virtual worlds are places where the imaginary meets the real”. (Bartle, 2003, p. 1)
Virtual, as defined in the Oxford Dictionary (1989) with respect to the computing context is: “… not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so from the point of view of the program or the user….” and defined in the virtual reality context to be “… a notional image or environment generated by computer software, with which a user can interact realistically as by using a helmet containing a screen, gloves fitted with sensors, etc.” (1997).
The term world is defined in the Oxford Dictionary (1989) as “the ‘realm’ within which one moves or lives”.
In simple terms, therefore, a ‘virtual world’ can be defined as a generated computer software realm in which a user moves, exists or lives in a manner that appears to be real to the user.
A common definition for the term ‘virtual world’ is passionately debated in the literature (see Combs, 2004; Jennings, 2007; Reynolds, 2008; Wilson, 2007). It is a term that is used to describe many types of software environments from a simple MUD (Multi User Dungeons, also referred to as Multi User Dimensions or Domains) (Bartle, 2003; Keegan, 1997; Slator et al., 2007) to a sophisticated fully immersive 3D virtual reality environment used in gaming, physical training simulators or social interaction spaces (MetaMersion; Patel, Bailenson, Jung, Diankov, & Bajcsy, ..→ Read More..
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BPC SurveyManager
- Are you looking for BPC SurveyManager Documentation or to learn more about the software?
Bundled with the BPC RiskManager suite and also supplied in both hosted and installed forms, the BPC SurveyManager software solution is an outstandingly versatile interactive web page generation engine using a survey model as the design and data storage paradigm. While being outstanding at survey creation and management the software is powerful enough to build build conventional data-input web pages. The full technical and SM language programming documentation is available from here.
Research into Virtual Worlds in Business & Education
- Are you looking for our virtual Learning research papers?
Through our Virtual Worlds research group - "Waisman Learning Systems", we do extensive work in the development of virtual learning and business spaces in SecondLife, and undertake considerable formal research into the application of Virtual Worlds to learning. You will find technical and text book material in our Virtual World Learning Systems pages. There is an extensive overview of the literature, and history of virtual worlds, a very large bibliography, details of our in-world networked lecture theatre control systems and lecture delivery systems, and a complete documentation of an extensive academic study undertaken by our WLS team into the effectiveness at achieving learning outcomes of different approaches in delivering course material in 3D virtual worlds.
You will find an extensive reading list and bibliography of works covering virtual worlds and virtual reality concepts, history, ideas, related technologies, and application in learning as well as relevant papers on learning taxonomies and teaching concepts relevant to virtual world learning systems here.
Internal Audit and Management Science
- Are you heading up an Internal Audit Team or learning internal audit methods?
If yes, you will find complete enterprise level internal audit methods and manuals on this site cross linked to our other management papers. The internal audit manuals cover everything from managing the audit team through planning the audit program to the detail of designing the audit, conducting interviews and undertaking the controls analysis; to reporting the results. Everything you are likely to need to manage and train an internal audit team is here.
- Are you a manager, management consultant or student of Management Science?
You will find articles covering topics of general management and process management methods in the RiskWiki including the detailed theory and practice of plannning, process re-engineering, control theory and our proven theories in stakeholder network organisation modelling. The work here is generally unique to this site. All methods have been used extensively and effectively in practice. Start here with process engineering.
- Are you managing a merger or an acquisition?
Take a look here first and learn about the risks in mergers and acquisitions and successful strategies for managing them from our team who have been through it successfully from both sides or the equation multiple times.
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