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 University, 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".
Read more about this topic: Diversity University
Famous quotes containing the words history, purpose, diversity and/or university:
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“I have never doubted your courage and devotion to the cause. But you have just lost a Division, and prima facie the fault is upon you; and while that remains unchanged, for me to put you in command again, is to justly subject me to the charge of having put you there on purpose to have you lose another.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“... city areas with flourishing diversity sprout strange and unpredictable uses and peculiar scenes. But this is not a drawback of diversity. This is the point ... of it.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)