SOME INSTRUCTIONAL USES OF MOO TECHNOLOGY

A "moo" is a "place" in cyberspace. Players connected from anywhere on the Internet can meet and engage in real-time "talk" (text only). They can move from "room" to "room" on the moo, carrying other objects around with them and engaging in virtual dancing, fist fights, or whatever is allowed in a particular room or on a particular moo. The moo software is neutral. It can be used for role-playing games, for chat rooms with scenery, or for educational purposes. One does not have to be a skilled programmer to use the moo in one's teaching:

Virtual Office Hours

One can build oneself an "office" on the moo, where one can hold office hourse for students who have trouble reaching one during one's usual office hours. This seems especially appropriate for those teaching distance education courses and for those who teach an evening class and would like to be available to students on other evenings by dialing in from home.

Mailing Lists and Journals

Moos have been used a good bit for teaching composition and for other writing assignments. Creating a new mailing list for one's own course is as easy as typing @create $mail-recipient named Theory. One can have papers posted on the moo with comments by other students. One can restrict the right to read and write such comments. One can also arrange it so that comments are anonymous except to yourself. Students can access such pages from web browsers, and MooWP is integrated with the web in other ways as well.

Role-Playing

Because participants on a moo can be partially anonymous (except to you) or even totally anonymous, role-playing exercises can be conducted on sensitive topics with less of the anxiety they sometimes provoke.

Building

Students, too, can "build" new rooms and objects on the moo. Groups of students can be assigned to build simulations as a cooperative exercise. They do not have to become skilled programmers to do this. For most students, learning to use telnet to access the moo is more difficult that learning to use the moo's own commands.

On-Line Drill and Testing

A traditional use of computers in instruction is drill, where there are facts and terms that must be learned. For a fairly complex random generator of multiple-choice quizzes, you might want to look at the one on MooWP or consult the web page on it at http://it.uwp.edu/moo/quizzes.html.

Distance Education

Using various combinations of the above, some people have taught entire distance education courses "on" a moo.

Where to Look to Learn More

The UW-Parkside moo, MooWP, will be somewhat quicker to use because it is on our own network, and one can see how to move around a moo by visiting it. Click here to visit it now by telnet. More detailed instructions on signing in are available, along with a multi-page guide to navigating the moo environment. The largest educational moo is Diversity U., currently at Stanford Research Institute. Its address is 128.18.101.106 8888 and that needs to be typed very exactly.

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Copyright 1996, University of Wisconsin-Parkside. All rights reserved. Questions, suggestions should be directed to secfac@cs.uwp.edu--or just click here. Last updated December 9, 1996. This page's URL is http://it.uwp.edu/moo/instruction.html