In the winter of 1998, while a teaching assistant at the University of Georgia, I participated in the Georgia On-Line Teaching Iniative, teaching a section of freshman composition delivered almost entirely on-line. A key component of this course was Virtual Park Hall, a MOO (Multi-user domain, Object Oriented) designed to provide a virtual space of distance education. In this presentation, I will relate my experience of building and teaching in Virtual Park Hall. Based on my experiences and those of my colleagues, I will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of MOOs as pedagogical settings. I will conclude with some thoughts on the broader applicability of MOOs in non-distance education uses.
Before beginning, I should mention that my experience with MOOs prior to teaching this course was minimal. I volunteered for GOTI because I had theoretical interests in electronic media and had previously been involved with testing Daedalus and Norton Connect as composition tools. I was familiar with HTML and had designed web pages to support traditional classes. I had visited MOOs on a few occasions as a guest, but I had never done any building. In short, while I had some interest and some background in computer supported teaching, I, like most of my colleagues, was a complete newcomer when it came to teaching on-line.
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