[1] Figures from The Internet Timeline.
[3] A reasonably fresh overview of recent research into the use of distributed networks, hypermedia and multimedia technology in distance education, information dissemination and research can be found in the proceedings of "Teleteaching '93", an international conference on distance education held in Trondheim in 1993 (Davis & Samways (ed.), 1993). Research into how digital video telephone systems mediate the flow of sign language communication between deaf people may be found in Coppock, Greftegreff & Schröder 1992, Coppock & Greftegreff 1993; Coppock 1993(a) and 1993(b). Other related publications are Coppock (in press); 1993(c); 1994 . See also "Telematics in Education" (Veen & al. (eds.) 1994.
[4] Philippe van Nedervelde was at the original time of writing (Fall 1994) president of EVRS: The European Virtual Reality Society.
[5] For a discussion of the question of how authority of the textual genre of the reference work is culturally instantiated and construed, see Coppock (in press].
[6] Laura Castor, Sissel Lie, Marte Halse and Finn Bostad are all colleagues in the interdisciplinary writing research project team at the University of Trondheim led by Lars Evensen and Jon Smidt of which I am also a member. Other members are of this team are Synnøve Matre (childrens' positioning and meaning making strategies in play and writing), Kjell Lars Berge (whose work is often mentioned above), Torlaug Løkensgard Hoel (response groups in the writing classroom). Inge Moslett (writing curriculum design) and Rutt Trøite Lorentzen (writing in pre-school environments).
[7] The MOO software takes care of in a "semi-intelligent" fashion the fact that text fragments that end with a question mark are presented as questions for others who are virtually `present' simultaneously in the virtual environment.
[8] All MOO's are based on some kind of relational database system.
[9] See section@@ for a more detailed description of MediaMOO
[10] See also Coppock 1994 (p. 11) for a brief discussion of this issue in relation to various types of communication strategies used by Norwegian deaf people when communicating with public text-telephone (TTY) systems.
[11] At this point I would like to thank "Sally" (this is a pseudonym), one of my students in the hypermedia in the humanities course described at the end of this report for expressly drawing my attention to theme rheme relations i MOO-texts in our class discussions, and for commenting on it more in detail from a slightly different point of view than mine in her examination paper (see section @@ for more discussion of this)
[12] See Appendix II for some more of this discussion.
[13] To visit MediaMOO telnet to purple-crayon.media.mit.edu 8888 and log in as guest.
[14] To visit LambdaMOO telnet to lambda.parc.xerox.com 8888 and log in as guest
[15] LambdaCore was also the basis for the MOO for Macintosh server that I used to develop the embryonic virtual environment mentioned earlier. Core bases like LambdaCore offer a "built in" set, or "library" of basic communication and building functions, and it is then up to the community of participants who use it to find out how best to use and modify these functions, and how to develop new ones. Developing new functions from the "bottom up" requires skills in low-order programming languages like C++.
[16] To visit BayMOO telnet to BayMOO.sfsu.edu 8888 and log in as guest
[17] c.f. Information published via World Wide Web on the Educational VR (MUD) page at TECFA (see below)
[18] "Verbs" in a MOO are procedures connected with either objects or participant commands. The player "Demonseed" in the sequence above is using a verb named "summon the Metal Militia" which calls up a sequence of text-events that can be directed against other players. This particular usage of verbs is a "game" carry-over from MUDD environments, but can also be used to create presentations of text-sequences about a certain theme or topic in more "serious" environments. Connected to an object with a name like "Sue the librarian", an interactive "robot" can be made to give information to a visitor about what is available in a given room for example.
[19] To visit Collegetown MOO telnet to galaxy.bvu.edu 7777 and log in as guest. The Collegetown World Wide Web information page is here
[20] To visit TECFA-MOO telnet to tecfamoo.unige.ch 7777 and log in as guest. TECFA is developing a World Wide Web Gateway here
[21] To visit Athena telnet to athena.edu 8888 and log on as guest. World Wide Web information page is here
[22] To visit Diversity University MOO telnet to moo.du.org 8888 and log in as guest. Diversity University's World Wide Web Gateway is here
[23] Forms are special object-related World Wide Web pages which allow participants to upload text-data to the virtual environment. If one for instance wants to change one's own personal description in the MOO environment, one fills out a form related to one's personal character, and then "submits" the form data by means of a "submit" button on the form. This updates the character file. When other participants access the character description by means of the "look" or "examine" verbs, they will see the updated description. Similar updates can be made to objects and rooms that one has created. It is also possible to edit verbs in the same way. Some objects can have URL's (User Related Links) to other World Wide Web pages, or to images stored on other servers around the world, added to them. This means that an object such as a book can incorporate links to articles or other kinds of texts which may be read by other participants with a browser from the Web Gateway interface.
[24] It is possible to record conversations on tables by placing recording devices on top of them ; recording devices set up like this will record everything in the rest of the room, as well as what is happening at that particular table.
[25] A room that is `in session' restricts talking of people within it. Users of the room can determine which means of expression (i.e. verbs) are allowed to be used. If a person tries to use a verb that is not an allowed means of expression, the @hush message of the classroom is displayed to her/him and the output of the given verb to the rest of the room suppressed. If the person that sent the text to be displayed in the classroom is not even in the room, s/he gets shushed with the @hush_intruder message. The output of `say', `emote' and `to' of participants can be localized to the tables they sit at so it will not be seen beyond. The normal legal means of expression include `emote' and exclude `say', which means emotes will be seen in the entire classroom, whereas text for `say' will only be displayed to people sitting with the person talking. Even noisy sitting down and standing up can be stifled, eventhough those verbs (`stand' and `sit') are unstifled as a default.
[26] The "emote" verb allows participants to send non-verbal functions into the virtual environment. If for example I wish to smile at someone named Marte, I would write "emote smiles to Marte". The other people in the room would then see the message "Patrick smiles at Marte"
[27] The to <person> function works in this way: if I wish to directly address a comment made by a person named Lars during an open conversation with several persons present, I write: "to Lars I agree with what you said about MOO's being good for brainstorming and discussions. This results in everyone seeing the message: Patrick [to Lars] "I aree with what you said about MOO's being good for brainstorming and discussions"
[28] I also considered using CMe-CU to have a video link too, but decided against this for at least three reasons: one because I did not at the time have the necessary capacity on the portable computer i would be using in Italy (a Mac Powerbook with a 9600 baud modem), and secondly because the quality of the video links via CMe-CU is still rather poor. The third reason was that the student lab that we had available at our humantities faculty did not have cameras installed on the computers that the students would be using. In any case, I anticipated (rightly as it turned out) that we would have enough to do to manage to coordinate use of three separate mediums (MOO, WWW and e-mail) in connection with our classes.
[29] All names are fictive for purposes of maintaining personal anonymity for the students.
[30] The blackboard is an object in the MOO environment where messages may be written and left for others to read. It may be cleaned and changed like a normal blackboard in a conventional classroom.
[31] The big sign verb (syntax: bigsign "<message>") produces a message of the format:
|
<person> holds up a BIG SIGN |
<message> |
which can be seen by everyone in the room.
[32] CINECA stands for Centro di Calculo Elettronico dell'Italia Nord Orientale. CINECA is located at Casaleccio outside Bologna and is the coordinating center for all university and public computing resources in Northern Italy.
[33] There is one distinct advantage of working with text-based virtual environments and that is that they do not require the use of expensive work stations in order to take part in discussions with colleagues and others all over the world in real time. When they over time become integrated in the World Wide Web this will however require more network transfer capacity for end users than I had on this occasion, but since I worked together with my students mostly in the text based environment on this occasion I was able to manage quite well with only a 9.600 baud connection, which today is considered more or less the minimum necessary for accessing and using Internet services via a modem.
[34] A Web Slate is a generic device available in the MOO environment which allows links to World Wide Web pages to be accessed from inside the MOO. When one "picks" a link (represented as a finite number) on the Web Slate, the link is activated and the text (but not images) from the corresponding World Wide Web page is downloaded so that those present can read what is there. Participants can choose whether or not they will look at the Web Slate at any given time by use of "watch" or "ignore" verbs.
[35] Every participant will experience the interactions in the virtual environment in a slightly different way, depending on how often they choose to use the built-in "help" functions in the MOO, or generic verbs such as "look" to look at the description of the room they are in at the time, and @who, which allows participants to see who is logged into the MOO at any given time. Also whispering ("whisper "text" to <person>) and paging (page <person> "text") between participants will not appear for everybody in the virtual environment, but only to those who whisper, and those who are whispered to. Private conversations between participants are thus possible without the teacher or the rest of the group being able to see what is said. These functions, when used responsibly by all parts involved, can be of great help in a MOO class, since students can discuss among themselves or ask each other about things that they do not at that stage want to share with the teacher, or to raise in class. Students can also whisper to the teacher, and he or she answer by whispering back while the rest of the class is discussing something else, or vice-versa.
[36] Of course a 3 week period is far too short to expect any major restructurings of participant and group textual and interactional norm systems (cf. my discussion of this in relation to methodology previously). All the same, it is in fact possible to see some tendencies to changes of norms at the micro-level over time in the logs from the MOO sessions. This way of working is one possible way of increasing participants (and my own) sensitvity to spotting such changes, which may have important cumulative effects in the longer term.
[37] The term enunciation is used here as a more general term than that of the utterance, which is the material instantiation of meaning through for instance written text. The enuciation is here understood as the act of creating meaning through an intentional shift from the system of language as internalised by the various actors in a situation over time, and through past experiences, to some form of material process whereby utterances become instantiated or materialised as text.
[38] As elsewhere in this report, I have substituted fictive (except for my own) proper names for the `personae' we all had in at Diversity University. The personae were six letter names given to the students when they got their e-mail accounts at the beginning of the semester. Normally they consist of the three first letters of the first name, and the three first letters of the second name. My Diversity University character is for example patcop. In the context above I have also substituted a fictive personae (aligol) for `Alison'.
[39] Textual norms (see Berge 1990, 1993b, 1993c, 1994a, 1994b) are either directives for how messages must be constructed in order to obtain a cultural status of text, or qualifications of what it is that gives a message cultural status or not in a culture. Textual norms, independently of type, can either refer to knowledge of how messages that the sender wishes to be perceived as texts are created (production norms), or to knowledge which a receiver uses in order to categorise a message as a text or not (reception norms). My own study is concerned with both these kinds of norms.
[40] By oca is meant participants' praxis-based day-to-day understandings, general presuppositions and meanings. In relation to Berge's study the examiner oca is a set of attitudes or expectations with respect to what kind of task examiners believe examination candidates perform when they write examination essays, which forms of writing they believe they are being evaluated by the various tasks given in the examination, which types of candidates it is that write the different kinds of essays etc. Norm systems are developed on the basis of the expectations that the examiners as participants in the social field over time have developed about what examination candidates normally can achieve, which ambitions candidates normally have etc.