TecfaMOO Projects

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".

Spreading the News ....

(Documentation, Teaching, and Technology Transfert)

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 MOO resource book.
Also, we decided to created educational MUD/text-base VR resource pages and host other information useful for the community. See: for details.

MOO Education at TECFA

Our Diploma Students are introduced to text-based VR (MOOs) in 2 courses: Staf14 (Systèmes d'Information et Communication Médiatisés par Ordinateur) and Staf2x (Atelier de programmation). See the MOO Education at Tecfa page for details.
TecfaMOO Student Projects (Staf-14 1994/95) In the future some student work may be associated with bigger research projects. Also some may evolve into master thesis or practical work requirement (stage).
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.

The VDML/MOO report

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

Workshops and Tutorials:

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")

"Real" Research Projects involving TecfaMOO

BOOTNAP: Social Grounding in Computer Supported Collaborative Problem Solving. See the Mystery train (#1647) which is an experimental setup. A draft paper, "Grounding in Multi-modal Task-Oriented Collaboration is available.
In planning stage: Educational Learning Environments over the MOO and the WOO.

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.
The international Pangea project brings together kids from 3 continents

Some of these uses of TecfaMOO might be turned into research projects. (remember that Tecfa is a unit in educational technology, so we might do some self-observation too).

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.