Joanna Wolfe, Assistant Director of the CWRL, has used MOOs to teach writing in two lower-division courses. The first was a special topics rhetoric course she designed called "The Rhetoric of Cyborgs," which she offered in the fall of 1998 and spring of 1999. The second was "Computers and Writing," a class about the ways in which computer technology is affecting rhetoric, which she taught in the fall of 1999. In both of these classes, Wolfe led off the semester by having her students jump right into MOOing. They were not sent off to a madcap gaming environment to fend for themselves, however. Wolfe made use of the CWRL's own CheshireMOOn[LINK here to MOO client], an educational MOO with an Alice in Wonderland theme.
In their first assignment, students were asked to use MOO resources and attributes -- things like place descriptions, puppets, objects and object descriptions, and room sequence -- to make a causal argument about the effects of technology on their lives. Wolfe explains, "I wanted to do something different. Something that would bring up discussions of subjectivity and identity -- two things I wanted them to think about before we went into a later discussion of the 'Rape in Cyberspace' issue. I wanted the students to realize that arguments don't just come in essay form. They can work in other ways." She asked students to turn in an argument analysis with their work. Each project was also reviewed by peers before final versions were submitted to Wolfe.
The students' efforts are still a part of CheshireMOOn. There are many interesting and innovative project to observe, including an examination of the effect of the phonograph on gender roles and an argument about the detrimental effect of the telephone on manners. To view the work, enter CheshireMOOn and type "walk to hall of student projects."
Reactions to the assignment by students were positive. "In fact, a couple of students each semester said this was their favorite assignment," notes Wolfe. She credits the success of the assignment to several factors: First, recognizing that this is a new technology for most students and that arguing through a MOO is a completely unfamiliar task for most people, she attached less weight to the grade on this assignment that on other more conventional writing assignments. "This really lowered the pressure on students," claims Wolfe. "And it's only fair, since in some ways the task is simpler. They don't have to think as much about organization or rebuttals." Second, Wolfe theorizes, students like MOO assignments because they can take many different approaches to the same problem, and are free to use their creativity in ways that conventional paper writing does not allow. Third, students who came into the class with no technical background liked the challenge the assignment offered. They were forced to start working with their computers in new ways, and took pride in the fact that they were programming (building in a MOO is very basic object-oriented programming).
There were some pitfalls, however. Wolfe notes that her "Computers and English" class drew many technically oriented students who were so thrilled to be working on the MOO that they tended to lose track of the rhetoric requirements of the assignment. She also points out that procrastinators are especially likely to get burned by this assignment. Getting up to speed on a MOO takes time. She also admitted that a small number of students really did not like the nontraditional approach to argumentation, and resisted the project. Wolfe's suggestions for overcome these difficulties include scheduling plenty of class time for MOO tutorials and project work. She also suggests requiring library research, to improve the quality of the arguments.