Using MOOs [Need to spell out acronym in title?] to Develop Online Learning Communities

Claudine Keenan, In a chapter in Technology Tools on Today's Campuses, the precursor of The Technology Source, Claudia Keenan demonstrates argues that MOOs [spell out acronym in first reference] provide educators with an inexpensive space for online collaboration (/projects/monograph/CD). Students can use a MOO to discuss class projects with one another, to chat with students and teachers at other schools, and to access specialists who happen to be logged on to a MOO. Truly, We [to whom does "we" refer?  Educators?] are only beginning to realize the potential of MOOs, and we [who?] are thrilled by the new opportunities for collaboration that MOOs present allow (at a price most universities can easily support afford).

At the University of South Florida (USF), for example, we [teachers? students? teachers and students?] have used MOOs to interview authors of course texts, to facilitate the co-authoring of assignments, to respond online to course reading, to collaborate on lesson plans, and to reconstruct in a textual space central course concepts (http://www.lib.usf.edu/~ifrank/jax98.html). Charla Bauer, one of the instructors in our learning community program, has used MOOs to facilitate pedagogical discussions among college students and elementary school students (http://chuma.usf.edu/~cbauer/objective.htm). [should be html at the end of this address? Between rather than "among"? Yes if college students is considered one GROUP and elementary students another.]

I want to invite readers of The Technology Source to experience the value of MOOs by joining us [who?] on Wednesday, February 3, 1999, at 4:00 p.m. EST for a general discussion about our upcoming national conference: Creating and Sustaining Learning Communities (http://www.usf.edu/~lc/conf). We will focus Our discussion will focus on the topics listed in the conference agenda and on ways of establishing fertile online learning communities via chat rooms, Web forums, and listserves. to create fertile learning communities During our MOO, we will explore how we [meaning educators?] can facilitate the development of online learning communities.

For instructions for on entering and using our MOO space, see http://www.cas.usf.edu/~moxley/lc. If February 3 is inconvenient, check our Web site for additional upcoming MOOs which we expect plan to sponsor as the time for before our national conference in Tampa this coming March. draws near We hope that you'll join us so that we can explore together not only how to establish more effective communities--communities that help us make connections with one another--not only on our campuses, but also online. and across space borders [I made some changes in the placement of clauses here -- does this still convey what you wanted to say?]

By the way, The Horizon Web site is a co-sponsor of the conference and will publish the presentations by conference keynote speakers [can there be more than one "keynote" speaker?], workshop leaders, and some 80 [spell out?] presenters at http://horizon.edu/conferences/lc.

Joseph Moxley
Professional Title?
Moxley@chuma1.cas.usf.edu