Diversity University
Encyclopedia
Diversity University was the first MOO
dedicated specifically for educational use. Like other MUD
s, it was an online realm that allowed people to interact in real time by connecting to a central server, assuming a virtual identity within that realm, "teleporting" (in other words, transporting your character) or "walking" to virtual rooms, and holding text-based conversations with everyone else who had entered the same virtual room. The MOO server kept track of which characters were in each virtual "room," so that the comments of each character would be sent back to the computers of every other person whose character was "in" the same virtual "room." What distinguished Diversity University from other MOOs was its central structuring metaphor as a virtual university campus, as well as its pioneering use for actual online classes.
, although it moved to two other server environments during its life, since it often struggled for financial support and institutional backing. Its final homes were Marshall University
and the University of Wisconsin - Parkside.
Diversity University did not charge any hosting fees to faculty members and other educators who brought classes onto the MOO. Because the text-based interface required minimal computing resources for people to access the MOO, Diversity University espoused an egalitarian mission, which they articulated on their Web site: "The mission of Diversity University is to develop, support and maintain creative and innovative environments and tools for teaching, learning and research through the Internet and other distributed computing systems, and to guide and educate people in the use of these and other tools, to foster collaboration in a synergistic climate, and to explore and utilize applications of emerging technology to these ends in a manner friendly to people who are disabled, geographically isolated or technologically limited".
Guests who connected to Diversity University landed in a "room" in the "Student Union," in a kind of orientation space, while registered characters would land in whatever "room" was their virtual home in that environment. Once in a room, characters could use various commands to navigate around the virtual space. For example, they could type "out" to exit from the room to an adjoining room or hallway, and they could also use the cardinal directions (n, s, e, w) to "move" in those directions from room to room, building to street, street to connected street, and also into other virtual buildings on the campus. When creating "rooms," therefore, people who had building rights on the MOO were encouraged to use the appropriate version of the command (@dig) so that they would create not a free-floating, unconnected room, but a room that was joined to another room (or hallway), in the appropriate virtual building, allowing users to "walk" around the MOO. A variety of other commands, ranging from basic to advanced, were also supported.
Because the overarching structure was metaphorical, characters and guests on the MOO had the "magical" ability to "teleport" (or jump) from a room in one virtual building to another room "somewhere else" by using commands such as @go (to go to a room by its object number or name) and @join (to join another character in a room). Rooms could be open or locked, to allow (or prevent) people from joining other characters in that virtual space. Programmers on the MOO could also create "virtual objects" that had the ability to move characters from room to room, such as virtual cars, a magical tour globe that provided you with a guided tour of English-related rooms in the environment (programmed by one of Diversity University's "wizards," Ulf Kastner), and a Points of Interest Board that served as a kind of portal to every site listed on the board, among others. Many of these features have been incorporated into newer, three-dimensional versions of Multi-User Virtual Environments
, such as Second Life
.
) and Cynthia Wambeam (working as a composition instructor at the University of Wyoming
) paired their English composition classes and held inter-class discussions of shared readings within Diversity University. Because the MOO environment was text-based, it offered students practice in articulating ideas in writing, which was reinforced in an inter-class LISTSERV
. Harris and Wambeam discussed their experience and its effect on student writing skills in an article in Computers and Composition.
Because the MOO created a virtual reality by describing its environment, it provided an excellent space for reenactments of literary texts, in which visitors can be "immersed" in the world of the novel or fictional work. One such project was a recreation of Dante's Inferno (the first book of Dante's Divine Comedy), also by students in courses taught by Leslie Harris. Students recreated some of the circles of Hell within the MOO, populated with virtual robots that could interact with one another and with visitors to the site. Since the rooms were interconnected, visitors could go down from level to level, experiencing parts of Dante and Virgil's journey. The fifth circle of hell was depicted virtually by students in Professor Harris' course.
Two similar projects on Diversity University were an interactive version of The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot
, with rooms in the MOO world reflecting sections of Eliot's poem, and a "MOO Bedford" created by R. J. LaRoe that allowed visitors to the MOO to explore the world of Moby-Dick
. Various English-related educational projects existed on the MOO.
Educators in other fields brought students to Diversity University, taking advantage of the close fit between Constructivist teaching methods
and the MOO environment. For example, Professor Tom Danford of West Virginia Northern Community College
taught a microbiology course within the MOO environment. As Dick Banks explains, "The constructivist assignments [in Professor Danford's microbiology course] include a student microscope slide
set, an instructional object of some sort, and participation in a group project. The group projects are separate rooms, each devoted to a specific disease or pathogen. Students were divided into three member groups and the disease/organism was assigned in the beginning of the semester. At the end of the term, each group will present its room and contents to the class." When you visit a room in a MOO, you see its description as you enter the room, and you can also create virtual objects in a room that themselves can be described. In a room that is supposed to represent a bacterium or other pathogen, students need to describe the features of the room in very specific detail, so that the room is scientifically accurate. The students are thus learning in a creative way the structure of the organism they are studying, while indirectly teaching that structure to anyone who visits the room and more directly to their fellow students in the course.
Another notable project on DU was the Librarians' Online Support Team (LOST), led by Isabel Danforth, which held professional development workshops within the MOO environment for librarians who were trying to understand the growing significance of the Internet to librarianship. In an announcement for one of those workshops, Danforth explained the purpose of the group and the significance of Diversity University as a platform for such collaborations:
LOST epitomized Diversity University's ability to foster collaboration among educators, which was one of Jeanne McWhorter's original purposes in creating the environment. Other initiatives included an online biology conference held simultaneously on Diversity University MOO and BioMOO, and a bilignual recreation of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez within the MOO environment, demonstrating the usefulness of the environment for foreign language education. Realizing the special importance of the immersive experience of visiting a MOO, foreign-language educators created other MOO spaces entirely in those target languages.
, Multi-User Virtual Environments
, and other programs for online conferencing
, some of those tools were subject to the criticisms leveled by Tari Fanderclai, who asserted that faculty using new pedagogical environments like a MOO should adapt their teaching techniquest to take advantage of the special possibilities of the MOO, rather than trying to make a MOO more like a traditional classroom.
The online teaching tools did help faculty members conduct their classes within the decentralized and potentially chaotic MOO world, and they reveal as well the power and flexibility of the Object-oriented programming
environment. Faculty members did not need to possess programming skills to create objects within the MOO world that performed significant functions. If they wanted an object on which they could write notes, comparable to a course blackboard, they could create an object of that class, which would inherit all the features of the parent object. If they wanted a Generic Recording Device to record the student discussions that went on in the room, they could issue a relatively simple command (for example, @create #2978 named MyRecorder), which would create for them an object with those desired features. Faculty pioneers using the MOO could create lists of MOO help sheets — for example, MOO Help and Policy Texts, and the Composition in Cyberspace Project — making it easier for other faculty to use the environment. That cooperative spirit of users helping one another out — the recognition that "everyone was once a newbie [that is, a new user of the technology]" — informed Diversity University MOO. Its shared, collaborative, highly social environment made it an early example (along with other MOOs) of a Social network service
, with a kind of network effect
that resembled later Web 2.0
environments.
MOO
A MOO is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users are connected at the same time.The term MOO is used in two distinct, but related, senses...
dedicated specifically for educational use. Like other MUD
MUD
A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...
s, it was an online realm that allowed people to interact in real time by connecting to a central server, assuming a virtual identity within that realm, "teleporting" (in other words, transporting your character) or "walking" to virtual rooms, and holding text-based conversations with everyone else who had entered the same virtual room. The MOO server kept track of which characters were in each virtual "room," so that the comments of each character would be sent back to the computers of every other person whose character was "in" the same virtual "room." What distinguished Diversity University from other MOOs was its central structuring metaphor as a virtual university campus, as well as its pioneering use for actual online classes.
History and Purpose of Diversity University
Diversity University was created in summer 1993 by its founder (and original "arch-wizard"), Jeanne McWhorter, then a sociology graduate student at the University of Houston. In an interview with a reporter, she described her initial purpose in creating the online educational environment: "It all began when I got interested in getting social workers online. . . . Social workers all tend to be computerphobes - part of it is that we have it in our mind that computers dehumanize. I think computers do anything but - I think people are much more open and willing to talk about themselves when they're online." Quittner continues, "McWhorter figured that Diversity University would be a way to attract educators and students to computing as a communications medium." The overarching idea was a virtual, online university space, allowing teachers and students to interact in real time. Diversity University was originally hosted on a server at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical UniversityEmbry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is a private university in the US specializing in aviation and aerospace engineering. It teaches the science, practice, and business of aviation and aerospace. Called "The Harvard of the Sky" by Time Magazine in 1979, Embry-Riddle has a history dating back to...
, although it moved to two other server environments during its life, since it often struggled for financial support and institutional backing. Its final homes were Marshall University
Marshall University
Marshall University is a coeducational public research university in Huntington, West Virginia, United States founded in 1837, and named after John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States....
and the University of Wisconsin - Parkside.
Diversity University did not charge any hosting fees to faculty members and other educators who brought classes onto the MOO. Because the text-based interface required minimal computing resources for people to access the MOO, Diversity University espoused an egalitarian mission, which they articulated on their Web site: "The mission of Diversity University is to develop, support and maintain creative and innovative environments and tools for teaching, learning and research through the Internet and other distributed computing systems, and to guide and educate people in the use of these and other tools, to foster collaboration in a synergistic climate, and to explore and utilize applications of emerging technology to these ends in a manner friendly to people who are disabled, geographically isolated or technologically limited".
Structure of Diversity University
Although MOOs are virtual spaces - basically computer objects in a database - they are usually organized around a central spacial metaphor. For Diversity University, that metaphor was a physical university campus, with buildings that represented the various subject fields of the participants on DU, along with other types of buildings that you might find on a typical university campus. In his master's thesis on "Design in Virtual Environments Using Architectural Metaphor," Dace A. Campbell used Diversity University's campus as an example of virtual architecture; one can still see DU's "campus" structure as Figure 1.3 in that thesis.Guests who connected to Diversity University landed in a "room" in the "Student Union," in a kind of orientation space, while registered characters would land in whatever "room" was their virtual home in that environment. Once in a room, characters could use various commands to navigate around the virtual space. For example, they could type "out" to exit from the room to an adjoining room or hallway, and they could also use the cardinal directions (n, s, e, w) to "move" in those directions from room to room, building to street, street to connected street, and also into other virtual buildings on the campus. When creating "rooms," therefore, people who had building rights on the MOO were encouraged to use the appropriate version of the command (@dig) so that they would create not a free-floating, unconnected room, but a room that was joined to another room (or hallway), in the appropriate virtual building, allowing users to "walk" around the MOO. A variety of other commands, ranging from basic to advanced, were also supported.
Because the overarching structure was metaphorical, characters and guests on the MOO had the "magical" ability to "teleport" (or jump) from a room in one virtual building to another room "somewhere else" by using commands such as @go (to go to a room by its object number or name) and @join (to join another character in a room). Rooms could be open or locked, to allow (or prevent) people from joining other characters in that virtual space. Programmers on the MOO could also create "virtual objects" that had the ability to move characters from room to room, such as virtual cars, a magical tour globe that provided you with a guided tour of English-related rooms in the environment (programmed by one of Diversity University's "wizards," Ulf Kastner), and a Points of Interest Board that served as a kind of portal to every site listed on the board, among others. Many of these features have been incorporated into newer, three-dimensional versions of Multi-User Virtual Environments
MUVE
MUVE refers to online, multi-user virtual environments, sometimes called virtual worlds. While this term has been used previously to refer to a generational change in MUDs, MOOs, and MMORPGs, it is most widely used to describe MMOGs that are not necessarily game-specific. The term was first used...
, such as Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
.
Sample Educational Projects
Josh Quittner's March 1994 article about Diversity University described one of the first uses of DU as a space to hold actual university classes. In Spring 1994, Leslie Harris (then an assistant professor at Susquehanna UniversitySusquehanna University
Susquehanna University is a liberal arts college in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, United States, north of the state capital, Harrisburg.-Academics:...
) and Cynthia Wambeam (working as a composition instructor at the University of Wyoming
University of Wyoming
The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...
) paired their English composition classes and held inter-class discussions of shared readings within Diversity University. Because the MOO environment was text-based, it offered students practice in articulating ideas in writing, which was reinforced in an inter-class LISTSERV
LISTSERV
LISTSERV was the first electronic mailing list software application, consisting of a set of email addresses for a group in which the sender can send one email and it will reach a variety of people...
. Harris and Wambeam discussed their experience and its effect on student writing skills in an article in Computers and Composition.
Because the MOO created a virtual reality by describing its environment, it provided an excellent space for reenactments of literary texts, in which visitors can be "immersed" in the world of the novel or fictional work. One such project was a recreation of Dante's Inferno (the first book of Dante's Divine Comedy), also by students in courses taught by Leslie Harris. Students recreated some of the circles of Hell within the MOO, populated with virtual robots that could interact with one another and with visitors to the site. Since the rooms were interconnected, visitors could go down from level to level, experiencing parts of Dante and Virgil's journey. The fifth circle of hell was depicted virtually by students in Professor Harris' course.
Two similar projects on Diversity University were an interactive version of The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, with rooms in the MOO world reflecting sections of Eliot's poem, and a "MOO Bedford" created by R. J. LaRoe that allowed visitors to the MOO to explore the world of Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
. Various English-related educational projects existed on the MOO.
Educators in other fields brought students to Diversity University, taking advantage of the close fit between Constructivist teaching methods
Constructivist teaching methods
Constructivist teaching is based on constructivist learning theory. This theoretical framework holds that learning always builds upon knowledge that a student already knows; this prior knowledge is called a schema...
and the MOO environment. For example, Professor Tom Danford of West Virginia Northern Community College
West Virginia Northern Community College
West Virginia Northern Community College is a public, multi-campus community college with the main campus located in downtown Wheeling, West Virginia, United States...
taught a microbiology course within the MOO environment. As Dick Banks explains, "The constructivist assignments [in Professor Danford's microbiology course] include a student microscope slide
Microscope slide
A microscope slide is a thin flat piece of glass, typically 75 by 25 mm and about 1 mm thick, used to hold objects for examination under a microscope. Typically the object is placed or secured on the slide, and then both are inserted together in the microscope for viewing...
set, an instructional object of some sort, and participation in a group project. The group projects are separate rooms, each devoted to a specific disease or pathogen. Students were divided into three member groups and the disease/organism was assigned in the beginning of the semester. At the end of the term, each group will present its room and contents to the class." When you visit a room in a MOO, you see its description as you enter the room, and you can also create virtual objects in a room that themselves can be described. In a room that is supposed to represent a bacterium or other pathogen, students need to describe the features of the room in very specific detail, so that the room is scientifically accurate. The students are thus learning in a creative way the structure of the organism they are studying, while indirectly teaching that structure to anyone who visits the room and more directly to their fellow students in the course.
Another notable project on DU was the Librarians' Online Support Team (LOST), led by Isabel Danforth, which held professional development workshops within the MOO environment for librarians who were trying to understand the growing significance of the Internet to librarianship. In an announcement for one of those workshops, Danforth explained the purpose of the group and the significance of Diversity University as a platform for such collaborations:
The Librarian's On-Line Support Team (L.O.S.T.) is an organization that
is coordinated by a steering committee consisting of academic, research,
public, and K- 12 librarians from wide-spread locations. The group provides
space for librarians, many of whom are being thrust into cyberspace with
minimal training and support, to get both formal and informal instruction
and mentoring. Librarians with various levels of background can meet to
share ideas and experiences informally. The group is currently based at
the virtual campus of Diversity University, a cyberspace location that
offers both real-time and delayed interaction via computer and currently
supports over 4,000 educators and students world-wide. Information about
L.O.S.T. and its programs can be found at:
http://admin.gnacademy.org:8001/~lost
LOST epitomized Diversity University's ability to foster collaboration among educators, which was one of Jeanne McWhorter's original purposes in creating the environment. Other initiatives included an online biology conference held simultaneously on Diversity University MOO and BioMOO, and a bilignual recreation of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez within the MOO environment, demonstrating the usefulness of the environment for foreign language education. Realizing the special importance of the immersive experience of visiting a MOO, foreign-language educators created other MOO spaces entirely in those target languages.
Educational Tools in the MOO
Because faculty members at universities were holding class sessions on DU MOO, the MOO wizards developed objects that provided some typical classroom capabilities. For example, faculty members on the MOO could use a "Generic Slide Projector" to "project" a series of text "slides" to everyone in the room, which allowed faculty members to give "pre-recorded" instructions to students, without having to type those instructions on the spot. An object called a $note (basically, a kind of text file) could be created to work like a blackboard. When students entered a room (for example, a separate room for small-group discussions), students could "read" the blackboard, which would give them questions to discuss or instructions on what to do during the class time. If faculty members wanted to record the discussions that took place in a room, they could use a "Generic Recording Device" to create a transcript of the session, for later review. Although similar tools have now been incorporated into Learning Management SystemsLearning management system
A learning management system is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content...
, Multi-User Virtual Environments
MUVE
MUVE refers to online, multi-user virtual environments, sometimes called virtual worlds. While this term has been used previously to refer to a generational change in MUDs, MOOs, and MMORPGs, it is most widely used to describe MMOGs that are not necessarily game-specific. The term was first used...
, and other programs for online conferencing
Web conferencing
Web conferencing refers to a service that allows conferencing events to be shared with remote locations. Most vendors also provide either a recorded copy of an event, or a means for a subscriber to record an event. The service allows information to be shared simultaneously, across geographically...
, some of those tools were subject to the criticisms leveled by Tari Fanderclai, who asserted that faculty using new pedagogical environments like a MOO should adapt their teaching techniquest to take advantage of the special possibilities of the MOO, rather than trying to make a MOO more like a traditional classroom.
The online teaching tools did help faculty members conduct their classes within the decentralized and potentially chaotic MOO world, and they reveal as well the power and flexibility of the Object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...
environment. Faculty members did not need to possess programming skills to create objects within the MOO world that performed significant functions. If they wanted an object on which they could write notes, comparable to a course blackboard, they could create an object of that class, which would inherit all the features of the parent object. If they wanted a Generic Recording Device to record the student discussions that went on in the room, they could issue a relatively simple command (for example, @create #2978 named MyRecorder), which would create for them an object with those desired features. Faculty pioneers using the MOO could create lists of MOO help sheets — for example, MOO Help and Policy Texts, and the Composition in Cyberspace Project — making it easier for other faculty to use the environment. That cooperative spirit of users helping one another out — the recognition that "everyone was once a newbie [that is, a new user of the technology]" — informed Diversity University MOO. Its shared, collaborative, highly social environment made it an early example (along with other MOOs) of a Social network service
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...
, with a kind of network effect
Network effect
In economics and business, a network effect is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. When network effect is present, the value of a product or service is dependent on the number of others using it.The classic example is the telephone...
that resembled later Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
environments.
Closing
Diversity University shut down in 2006. Its domain name,du.org, was allowed to expire on October 26, 2006.