Diversity University - Sample Educational Projects

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 University) 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 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.

A team run by Marcus Speh ran a course on "Object-oriented programming using C++". This course had about 80 registrants and ran over about 8 weeks. Its value was recognised by a "Best of the Web" award in WWW1 in 1994

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.