A MOO-ROOM OF ONE'S OWN
MOOniversity:
A Student's Guide to Online Learning Environments
by Jan Rune Holmevik and Cynthia
Haynes
Allyn and Bacon 2000
ISBN 0205271146
$28.00 (paper) 170 pp.
Review by Katherine
V. Wills
The University of Louisville
Iterations
with Victor Vitanza on MOO Theory (tell
me more)
Writing
and Technology Series Editor
MOOniversity: A Student's Guide to Online Learning Environments assists facilitators and students in the access, use, and creation of MOOs (multi-user domains, object-oriented). Primarily written for undergraduates and graduate students in writing courses that use MOOs, MOOniversity benefits anyone who wants to know how to use MOOs. MOOs are computer programs that act as powerful teaching tools and alternative modes of communication. They connect multiple users via the Internet to a textual world of rooms and objects in real time with real people for real world purposes. In addition to providing a current and complete guide to the teaching and exploration of MOOspace, the authors lace the text with MOO theory. MOOniversity invites facilitators and users to take charge of their MOO experience.
Specifically, readers are instructed in what to expect in a welcome screen, how to register as a guest, look around, write commands, create objects, make exits, design rooms, manage MOOmail, and interact with MOOcolleagues. For the practical facilitator, each chapter includes a rationale, exercises, class discussion prompts, and a notes section. The Table of Contents informs users of MOOniversity's scope. For students or self guided users, MOOniversity offers step-by-step instructions from basic MOO etiquette to writing programs. More important, all this information is contextualized with the understanding that MOOs are, well, the "R" word: revolutionary.
Underpinning the many practical details of MOOniversity is an implicit and inveterate belief that MOOs are educational and social tools that encourage writing, learning about writing, and writing in non-traditional environments. Holmevik and Haynes wrote MOOniversity not only as a text for users and instructors, but also as way to reconfigure the borders of learning/teaching/play/self. The text guides users towards agency in the creation of a MOO-room of one's own. To see the variety of purposes and educational benefits of MOOs, readers can visit four MOOspace gateways. MOOs explode temporal, spatial, and linguistic boundaries while building virtual communities and increasing self-confidence in writing. MOOs are popular with writing instructors in the application of text-based synchronous learning. The humanities, especially rhetoric and composition, lead the collaborative application of MOOs. Important topics in MOO rhetoric include the following:
- creating community
- facilitating writing
- taking agency
- "co-laboring"
- forging a new understanding of communication
that MOOniversity invites you to think about:
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users can communicate or create in MOOspace:
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these tools:
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Facilitators, teachers, and users of MOOs who wish to expand the envelope of what constitutes writing and community will find MOOniversity an accessible and fun tool as text, or text as tool. The potential for communication is limited only by the imagination of the user.
MOOniversity, an educational tool and user's manual, is the first text published in the Writing and Technology Series by Allyn and Bacon, which focuses on hypertext writing instruction, electronic journals, cultural studies, new technologies, MOOs, and assessment of print vs. electronic culture. The theoretical implications of MOOtheory are discussed in the interview with the Series Editor in Iterations with Victor Vitanza on MOO Theory.
For more information on MOOs, check out these previous
Kairos
articles:
Kairos
1.2: InterMOO with MIT's MUD Wizard Amy Bruckman
Kairos
3.1: Joel English on MOOS
| Review Response |