Students learn in virtual reality environment

Students in English 88 can't stop talking about the MOO -- PennMOO that is. And last night, Provost Stanley Chodorow got a first-hand taste of the MOO. What is all of this moo-ing about? The MOO -- Multiple User Dungeon Object Oriented -- is defined by its advisor Susan Garfinkel as an on-line virtual environment which is a supplement to regular classroom sessions. She added that it is a descendent of the on-line Dungeons and Dragons game. "But the dungeons and the dragons are both gone now," she said. This semester, English Department Chairperson and English Professor Alan Filreis is integrating this innovative system into the curriculum of his Modern American Poetry course, English 88. Garfinkel said that when a user enters to PennMOO, he will find himself in a space called "PennCentral." There will be a description and a map, just like in an adventure game. From there, the user can move from "room to room." English 88 has a cluster of rooms at PennMOO within the Classroom Center, Garfinkel added. Although PennMOO was created nearly a year and a half ago, this is the first large class to be put on it, he said. Filreis said his 80 students are required to spend a certain amount of time each week using the MOO. Each student is assigned a character for the program. Filreis added that he, his teaching assistants and Garfinkel all have virtual office hours on the MOO. He added that students can use the MOO for many purposes. They can construct poems, there is a bulletin board and there is an internal mail system. There is also a scrabble game and a virtual coke machine within these "rooms," he said. Students can put virtual quarters into this machine and get virtual drinks, which they can pass around to each other. There is also a Classroom 88 and a Cafe 88 and small conference rooms attached to the cafe which are named for famous modern poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg. Students can use these locations to meet and have informal discussions about class material, Filreis said. And College junior Jon Slotkin, a student in English 88, said he thinks the MOO is great. "Sure, the MOO was intimidating at first, but once I got over any technophobia, I was surprised to find that such a seemingly impersonal experience as a computer was as intimate learning experience," he said. And last night, Chodorow got a sense of the MOO when he went on it for an hour to talk with the students. He spoke with the students on the subject of "grades and their relation to education." "It was good to be able to talk to students about a general subject like that," he said. But he added that it is tiring to be on the MOO. "I suppose that if you're a professional pianist, your fingers are in terrific shape, but an ordinary person finds his fingers beginning to wilt after 45-50 minutes," he said.