TecfaMOO Projects

[Sorry this page hasn't been properly updated since last year. It will happen sometimes. / DKS 4/98.]

Table of Contents

We started the TecfaMOO around November 1994. At that time it wasn't a real project, but something like "let's have MOO and see what we can do". A few ideas have come up since then, i.e. see the short information on TecfaMOO (including a list research questions). Some of those ideas have turned into more serious projects or at least "usages".

1. Spreading the News ....

(Documentation, Teaching, and Technology Transfer)

Documentation on MOOs and MOOing

Documentation on MOOs and MOOing is sometimes hard find and certain things are missing. Therefore we decided to spend some effort on that.

The evolving TecfaMOO book - part I This is an unfinished attempt to build a conceptual MOO resource book.
The evolving TecfaMOO book - part II This is an ongoing attempt to build a MOO builder's and programmer's manual.
Also, we decided to created educational MUD/text-base VR resource pages and host other information useful for the community. See the MOO Comunity page for details.

MOO Education at TECFA

Our Diploma Students are introduced to text-based VR (MOOs) in 2 courses: Staf14 (Introduction to CMC and information systems) and staf-18 (introduction to virtual environments) See the MOO Education at Tecfa page for details.
Since Fall 96, introduction to programming is taught with the MOO (see Staf14 and the tutorial section in the TecfaMOO Manuel
TecfaMOO Student Projects: Some student work is associated with bigger research projects (e.g. bootnap). Also some are using the MOO for a master thesis or a practical work requirement (stage). [information on those will appear sometimes]
Documentation developed for our courses may be of use to others: See the Builder's and Programmer's Informationpage.

Technology Transfert: Increase the popularity of MOOs

E.g. "Easy" publications and conferences, as well as organization of workshops, mentening the MOO in publications about distance edcuations, ... Blurbs on MOOs can be found in:

The WWW in Education talk(Slides for FLISH95).
See also: the MOO workshop at FLISH 95
The World-Wide Web in Education

2. MOO Workshops and Tutorials

Virtual Environments and the WWW. A full-day workshop at the Fifth International World Wide Web Conference, May 6-10, 1996 - Paris, our contribution was "Virtual Environments for Education, Research and Life", position paper presented by Daniel Schneider and Richard Godard.
WOO Workshop Proposal for the 4th WWW conference in Boston. Got lost in the mail :)
Woo Tutorial Proposal for the same event (got refused for the following reason: "We received many more tutorial proposals than we had slots available, so we had to select a small subset")

3. Research Projects involving TecfaMOO

The MOO as medium for experimentation on collaboration
- See the BOOTNAP: Social Grounding in Computer Supported Collaborative Problem Solving home page for overall information on the project.
- In our MOO, see the Mystery House (#1711) which is an experimental setup. If you're willing, please participate in an experiment rather than just looking at things. Contact: David Traum or Pierre Dillenbourg. Thanx :)
- A EuroAI&Education conference papger, "Grounding in Multi-modal Task-Oriented Collaboration is available. (Postscript A4 version, 170K - same gzipped, 47K).
- [To insert: Dillenbourg and Baker paper on Negotiation spaces in Human-Computer Collaborative Learning]. Right now, only a RTF version is available or a rtf-to-frame-to-ps version. HTML and a better fm.ps will follow sometimes.
- SEE ALSO: our Distributed Cognitive Systems and Pierre Dillenbourg's list of publications.
MOO Agents
- P. Dillenbourg1, P. Jermann1, D. Schneider1, D. Traum2, C. Buiu, The design of MOO agents: Implications from a study on multi-modal collaborative problem solving, Proceedings 8th World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, Kobe, Japan.
- Implicit coordination in distributed systems (Index Page)
Social Influence in a collaborative work (PS file, not very nice looking). HTML version might appear sometimes.
MOOs as collaboration tool for research:
- The VDML/MOO report. This project had both a pratical (see next section) and a more theoretical side.
The MOO as medium for various research: Currently a number of MA thesis projects have been completed, e.g. in social psychology or cognitive science [more needed here!].
In planning stage: Educational Learning Environments over the MOO and the WOO.

4. MOO as CMC Tool for teaching and cooperation

TecfaMOO is increasingly used as non-intrusive CMC tool for internal communication
Since our postgraduate "STAF"diploma in educational technology is organized as "semi-distance curriculum", the MOO is being also increasingly used to communicate with our students at remote sites.
We are hosting virtual sessions of researchers (e.g. people from the ESF/LHM programme). See the The VDML/MOO report for more details or "Virtual Environments for Education, Research and Life" a position paper.
The international Pangea project brings together kids from 3 continents. A short text in french is available as well as un "rapport de stage.

Some of these uses of TecfaMOO might be turned into research projects.

For more information about educational and research MOOs: start from TECFA's WWW page on educational MUDs.

UP to the TecfaMOO project page

D.K.S.