Amy Bruckman (1997) has described a MOO from an educators perspective as:

This paper desrcribes the way I go about using a MOO in my own educational context. I hope some of the ideas and methods may be useful to other users of educational MOO's. AussieMOO is Australia's largest online text-based virtual reality conferencing and

virtual world building system for education (over 1000 participants). AussieMOO is

used across the curriculum for creative writing, world building, designing simulations and workgroup conferences. AussieMOO is hosted by the Farrer Centre for Conservation Farming at Charles Sturt University and has been developed by the Internet Special Projects Group (Geoff Fellows and Ken Eustace in the School of Information Studies).

It is important to start off by seeing your role as a facilitator/participant/tutor and that the group processes involved in a MOO lesson or conference will demand that you be prepared to share control with your students, and to flip between roles.

Some useful information and links to other educational MOO sites, serve to give a deeper understanding of the place of MOO's in education. I always say to my mix of postgraduate and undergraduate students that a MOO can only be experienced and not defined. This is because there are many users and many perspectives at work (AussieMOO has 1042 players at last count, but not all are active). A MOO can be used for synchronous discussion or conferencing, creative writing, virtual world building and even for teaching computing topics such as object-oriented programming, human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW).

MOO was once described as "the smart users version of groupware tools like Lotus NOTES". My latest definition is to describe AussieMOO as:

This contrasts with the notion of an e-mail discussion list as:

The AussieMOO Home page (http://farrer.riv.csu.edu.au/aussiemoo.html) provides links to other educational MOO's, as well as some "home grown" tutorials and articles involving MOO's in education - including the AussieMOO Case Study (in French) by a postgraduate student studying educational technology at the University of Geneva.

Even though the Java telnet class provides a way of connecting to a MOO through a WWW page and various WEBBED MOO systems exist (eg BioMOO and SenseMedia sites), I find it useful to use either MUDwin or MacMUSH as suitable client software, since the former systems do not readily include the ability to log the MOO session to a text file. This is important for constructing and reflecting upon the learning behaviours that have taken place. My other motive is that the computer literacy skills involved in downloading compressed ZIP files, uncompressing them and final installation of the client (configuration of the MOO host and port number), are important skills for all Internet users.

It is important to get some MOO experience before leading an online session. It is good to be at least a builder, programmer or a Wizard level above the students players. Not so much for the ego or power, but because by building your OWN virtual classroom environment, you are encouraging students to participate through a sense of belonging. The MOO Teacher's Tip Sheet from The Daedalus Group has some useful ideas. AussieMOO has some online tutorials that I developed to help get started. One is an introduction is for learning how to connect and learn the basic commands for conferencing with others and how to quit the system. Students are advised to obtain a MOO character via the system using the tutorial, the @request-character command or by asking a Wizard to help. The other practical exercise is titled " A Room with a View" and it is aimed at getting users to learn how to build their own characters MOO spaces with exit and entrance attributes.

I am sensitive to forcing students to accept more than their "threshold of pain" as far as the use of technology in their learning experiences. I use a system where "MOO Season" runs for three weeks overlapping an assignment submission and the revision period for an exam. Students do value the opportunity to talk with the teacher in real time, but many do not make it due to the pressures of time, lack of access to a computer and modem at that time or to a lack of confidence, or they just plain don't like the MOO thing.

All students are introduced to MOO at a compulsory course residential school. Even so, not all students attend, so the following self help method is used. I e-mail all students at least 3 weeks in advance, notifying them of the upcoming sessions. They are given instructions to:

1. Study the AussieMOO Home page and download MOO commands and other resources.

2. Learn how to download and install a MOO client.

3. Do the AussieMOO conferencing and Room Building practical exercises.

Establishing a time window for a session can be difficult at times. I run MOO sessions at the moment at 8:00pm THU AEST or GMT+10, and have had students connect from Alice Springs to New York for the same conference, in the past. At one stage some colleagues had to ring British Airways for a time check, as so many countries are switching to and from daylight saving - making it necessary to use a powerful computer to work out the time. You will have to negotiate with all participants in order to find a convenient time window.

One week before the first session, a reminder is sent with a reference to the conference agenda on a WWW page. Appendix A contains an example of an agenda. The Conference Location Guide states in each agenda notice that as the discussion progresses and new topics arise, some members of the group may prefer to form a smaller group in another room. My experience has shown that when the group size goes beyond five (5), then the thread of the conversation can be hard to follow.

MOO is good for unstructured problem solving in groups, but early feedback from participants showed a demand for a simple set of rules, shown below in section 8.

1.Keep all rules to a minimum number.

2.Each week the conference begins in the main venue.

3.Members agree by consensus to "teleport" to another place.

4.Each group needs a "scribe" to capture the dialogue as text file log.

5.All log files are sent to the facilitator for wider distribution to all members

Main Venue

Infostud Seminar Room (#461)

Venue A

Computer Lab1 (#3153)

Venue B

Hopper' s Office (#1019)

Venue C

Library Grounds (#3252)

I try to limit each session to about 50 minutes, with no more than 3 topics on the agenda. The first session should include a MOO Tour. This is a fun way for users to find their way around, learn how to communicate, teleport and use the @map feature on AussieMOO. It is also important to learn the proper MOO etiquette. If players wander about on the MOO, it is polite to "page" before joining other groups.

It can be difficult at times to follow the thread of a conversation, particularly if several discussion are underway. I usually allow 5-10 minutes of "chat" as part of a settling down period as members connect to the MOO. Sometimes I have to use the @who and page commands to round some lost members. If anyone gets lost, they should just type @join Hopper to catch up - similar to those stragglers on a school excursion.

In order to assemble the group and to focus upon the agenda, I ask for "roll call". This usually takes the format of Name, Location and Town. eg Hopper, at home in Wagga Wagga. It is sometimes useful to take a back seat for a while during the session to encourage some peer-to-peer interaction where students can learn from each other. Look at how Dugong_Guest helps Guest et al in the extract from an actual MOO session, depicted in Appendix B.

Closing off a session can be hard. I formally close the conference agenda and always give notice before I leave. Members are told that they are free to stay on and continue the dialogue and to organise their own MOO meetings.

Educators are embracing new teaching pedagogy related to:

• interactive processes,

• flexible participation,

• student control of learning,

• communication in real time,

• criterion-referenced learning,

• electronic publishing;

• fascination by users with text-based systems;

• building and maintaining knowledge for the organisation.

Some of the common MOO developments for teaching and research are listed below, from the TecfaMOO site (Schneider, 1995) in figure 5:

• Virtual Meeting spaces for researchers (desktop conferencing)

• Tutorial support for classroom teaching

• Tutorial support for distance teaching

• Environments for Just-in-time Open Learning

• Learning by doing educational environments

• Spacial organisation of information retrieval;

• Dynamics of interactions in a virtual space;

• Social and Political issues in virtual worlds.

Synchronous group decision support tools like AussieMOO demand a base level of computer competency to understand and navigate the system seamlessly. This will require a training component for teachers and their students. Here is my list of MOO activities that can be used across the high school curriculum. It is part of a MOO curriculum design I am creating for use of AussieMOO by HSC students in NSW, but can be applied to other years. Maybe you can help with the design and building of the Library or the CyberCafe. Social interaction among students and teachers is a part of all education settings - real or virtual. The CyberCafe is a place for teachers and/or students to chat and relax with friends, using rules and "netiquette" that are accepted by all users.

This is the main meeting place before members "teleport" off to a workspace or room, along with others in their group or subject. Each room has a lecture pad for storing notes from teachers.

Connected to each HSC conference centre is the Creative Writing Lab where students can collaborate on projects across the Internet that require a group to gather data, to document their dialogue or to produce an essay, report, recital or presentation eg a student creates a Poetry Anthology stored as text OR Drama workshops with performances in the AussieMOO Theatre.

Simulations and model building can motivate the learning process by allowing for the individual expression of ideas by students . Students can easily learn to program a MOO (not just Computing Studies students). AussieMOO has several virtual world environments such as the Virtual Classroom (TAFE Lab), Experimental Farm and Vineyard, the Outback and an excellent simulation of the Warner Bros lot. Some ideas for the virtual worlds that HSC students can build include the following curriculum activities:

Agriculture: Nutrient Cycles

History: Ancient Worlds eg Greece, Famous Events.

Geography: Famous Volcanic Eruptions, Coastal Landforms

Biology: Inside the Plant or Animal Cell, Great Barrier Reef Community

Chemistry: Atomic Structure, Electrochemical Cell

Art: "Words are the way we paint reality" ASCII Art Room

Languages: Culture and learning by dialogue eg ESL, French, Spanish,

German, Italian, Japanese

Computing Studies: Object-oriented programming, Data communications

English: Creative writing and objects eg Fiction (Tolkien), Poetry, Drama

Design and Technology Simulations, Object Modelling

It is important to cater for various hardware/software access for all users:

• Text mode using MOO client software

• Java Telnet access for conferencing via a Java enabled WWW browser

• 3D multimedia view of MOO space through a Java/VRML enabled WWW or VRML browser - the EdMOO-VR Project.

The next stage in the HSC AussieMOO project is collaboration between Cherrybrook High School, the School of Information Studies (Internet Special Projects Group and the Centre for Teacher Libranianship), Dr Mike Eisenberg of Syracuse University and Dr Joy McGregor of the Women's University of Texas and Leslie McLennan of the information systems division of Toshiba (Australia). Following the model of NASA's AstroVR Virtual Reality system for Astronomers, we are looking to extend their ideas for educators.

As part of the HSC Online site, AussieMOO could be accessed in traditional text mode

and by using a VRML enabled WWW browser.This requires the development of a VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) and Java 3D multimedia user interface for AussieMOO.

http://silo.riv.csu.edu.au/agenda2.html

The agenda for this week's MOO Conference in the AussieMOO Virtual Classroom includes:

1. Assignment 3 Discussion

2. MOO Tour and Group Discussion Topic: forming study groups

3. MOO conference ideas and General Discussion:

"The impact of this technology upon dialogue"

AussieMOO's Conference Location Guide

As the discussion progresses and new topics arise, some members of the group may prefer to form a smaller group in another room. My experience has shown that when the group size goes beyond five (5), then the thread of the conversation can be hard to follow. The following table has been made as a result of last weeks "minutes" where there was a general call towards some more structure.

Conference Rules

1.Keep all rules to a minimum number.

2.Each week the conference begins in the main venue.

3.Members agree by consensus to "teleport" to another place

4.Each group needs a "scribe" to capture the dialogue as text file log.

5.All log files are sent to the facilitator for distribution to all

members.

Main Venue

Infostud Seminar Room (#461)

Venue A

Computer Lab1 (#3153)

Venue B

Hopper' s Office (#1019)

Venue C

Library Grounds (#3252)

Next Session's Main Topic - There is NO educational value of MOO!

(Coming soon at a MOO near you....)

Author: Ken Eustace

Please send e-mail to Hopper (aka Ken) if you have any suggestions for the future development of the AussieMOO Conference Agenda.

(c) 1997 Last modified:Wednesday, 12-May-96 12:16:20 EST keustace@csu.edu.au

Guest says, "anyone Know about postscript files"

Dugong_Guest says, "I think you've stumped everyone!""

Wallaby_Guest says, "I'm trying to find my notes...""

BlueTongue_Guest says, "postscript is a page description language used by printers"

TreeFrog_Guest teleports in.

Wallaby_Guest says, "Postscript also takes huge amounts of memory>""

Dugong_Guest says, "Postscript is a page description language used to describe the appearance of text and graphics on printed or displayed pages - - it is a full programming language rather than a series of commands/sequences.""

Guest says, "Thanks dugong"

Wallaby_Guest says, "You haven't missed much Froggy.""

You exclaim, "Well done to Dugong!"

© AussieMOO and ISPG - Hopper aka Ken Eustace 1997.