Collaborative Spaces and Education
MU*space and Literary Pursuits

Scholarly pursuits are not lost in MU*space. In TICK, a few students are working on discussing even further uses of MU* to virtually represent dramatic structures, discuss form and genre, creative writing issues, reader as author, textual transmission and representation, textual stability, and how instructors mediate between space and student.

Milton's Comus presents a challenge on most of these fronts. As story that is also a performed production with changing participation by audience and professional performer seemed ideal to talk about the blurring borders between audience,text, and author, cultural/social acquisition, production and play.

This project is proving to be a challenge..despite the slippery nature of space, I still feel compelled to make editorial decisions following very traditional guidelines. However, since all of the text of Comus will not exist per se, there must be some way to transfer all of the text virtually still...whether that be by creating atmosphere, character dialogue, messages, whatever, and to have a consistent method of representing that 'virtual' text, according to some scholarly principles. In addition, how much should an instructor provide to the 'text' for the student's ease also comes into play. The levels of interface between the text and the student shrinks in MU* but also seems to grow. At one level, the student is surrounded by the text, but many hands and technological steps mediate that relationship still.

Comus can be found in TICK and is still under construction. Please send me comments at the MU* message forum under "Interact", that is associated with this site. Additionally, "Hypertext Hotel", a creation of Michele Maynard based on a Stephen Crane short story, is also in ICK.

Opening Teaching Theory The Web MU*S Conversation

Daniel Anderson
Joi Lynne Chevalier
2/26/97