Amy Bruckman...V i r t u a l P r o f e s s i o n a l C o m m u n i t y... Doors2
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I n t r o d u c t i o n
MediaMOO is a text-based, networked, virtual reality environment designed to enhance professional community among media researchers. This paper analyzes experience with the system to date and highlights the value of Constructionist principles to virtual reality design.
V i r t u a l P r o f e s s i o n a l C o m m u n i t y
Once or twice a year, we stand with name badges, sipping coffee in a corridor, exchange ideas over expense-accounted lunches and maybe attend a few talks. Friendships are made and projects hatched. Then it's back home to file for expenses, perhaps write a trip report and get back to `real work' and relative isolation. MediaMOO is a text-based, networked, virtual reality environment designed to extend the type of casual collaboration which occurs at conferences to a daily activity. (1) Visitors to a conference share not just a set of interests, but also a place and a set of activities. Interaction is generated as much by the latter two as the former:
Person A: Can you tell me how to get to Ballroom A?
Person B: I'm headed that way now. It's up this way.
Person A: Thanks!
Person B: I see you're at Company X.
Person C: Is this seat taken?
Person D: No, it isn't.
Person C: I'm surprised the room is so packed.
Person D: Well, Y is a really good speaker...
A text-based, virtual environment can provide both a shared place (the virtual world), and a shared set of activities (exploring and extending the virtual world). Like at a coffee break at a conference, there is a social convention that it is appropriate to strike up a conversation with strangers simply based on their name tags. On MediaMOO, you can read descriptions of people's research interests as well as their names, and this can form a basis for striking up a substantive conversation. However, name tags alone are not enough. The best sorts of interactions occur when people participate in a shared activity and not just a shared context. On MediaMOO, this takes the form of constructing and interacting with the virtual world. The Constructionist theory of education emphasizes the value of constructing personally meaningful artifacts [Papert 80]. This theory has guided design decisions made in MediaMOO. For example, in most MUDs, the privilege to extend the virtual world is restricted to a small number of users. Everyone in MediaMOO is automatically a programmer with full privileges to create new objects and places in the virtual world. This paper has two main goals. First, it documents experience with the MediaMOO project to date and evaluates its success as a virtual professional community. Second, it explores the application of Constructionist principles to virtual reality design.
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