David Barndollar, Assistant Director of the CWRL, uses the CWRL's CheshireMOOn in a uniquely creative way in his Poesis: The Making of Literature, an English department class on poetry and criticism. Barndollar requires students to research and interpret section of T.S. Eliot's notoriously allusive, challenging The Waste Land. They then have to construct MOO spaces that enact their interpretations. This assignment is difficult for some students and requires plenty of MOO training and support from Barndollar, but the results are impressive. Student projects are still available on CheshireMOOn. Enter the MOO and type "walk to poesis," which will get you to Barndollar's Waste Land hub.
To prepare his classes for this assignment, Barndollar has them start using the MOO frequently for class discussions from the beginning of the semester. This allows them to become familiar with the environment. He also give them some free time in class to ask him questions and do a little unstructured exploring. Barndollar's assignment sheet provides links to various MOO tutorials, and he provides his own Guide to MOOing.
Barndollar warns, "The hardest thing is explaining to students what the MOO is and how to conceptualize the annotation assignment. I try to draw analogies for them to printed annotated editions of the poem, and then try to get them to explore the possibilities that the medium of the MOO offers." Grading the projects is not as tricky as one might imagine. "One thing I'll do to make the process of grading easier this semester is to have students provide me a transcript of their own movements through their spaces so that I can see what the experience is supposed to look like before trying to figure it out for myself."
Some students do find the learning curve a bit steep, but most enjoy the project and learn a great deal about the poem through this exercise. Once they get up to speed on the MOO commands and have time to research and analyze their section of The Waste Land, students often produce remarkably creative, insightful projects. "The best ones," notes Barndollar, "managed to give the flavor of the poem's setting and tone while making best use of the MOO's features to instantiate elements in the poem worthy of explanation. The Tarot card sections, for instance, lend themselves well to this kind of thing since the poem contains concrete objects and characters that can all take descriptions. Other sections, such as the journey to Emmaus, also work well since the MOO's spatial orientation makes the transformation into hypertext particularly fruitful. But even fairly static sections of the poem (the burnished throne on Canto 2, for example) have been done well by students who have paid attention to detail, both in the poem and in the MOO."
Instructors who want to try this assignment should be prepared to sell it, since few students have any experience with this kind of work. Providing plenty of support and enthusiasm and giving students models of the kinds of things that are possible in a MOO are important. Says Barndollar, "Students will respond by coming up with some pretty innovative things corresponding with their own research and learning."
View Assignment Sheet Three: Creating The Waste Land in CheshireMOOn