MU* assignments provide useful ways of studying
artifacts and facilitating roleplaying.
This assignment and others like it showed the literary study possibilities
afforded by the MU*space. Students reacted positively on the whole about the
artifacts (they authored their additions to our continuing text) and very
positively about roleplaying.
The Rhetoric of Epic Narratives used the Realms extensively. Students met in the Realms, explored the spaces and had discussions about how societies reflect themselves in their literature. Sometimes, students performed close readings in order to discuss issues in character-roleplaying sessions.
One of the more interesting roleplaying events occurred during Henry V. We met on the Fields of Agincourt, in the Medieval Section of the Realms. Read the original assignment or examine the roleplaying from that afternoon. Lastly, feel free to examine all the roleplaying and interchanges (online discussions) from the entire semester.Another type of assignment was the creating of artifacts. The artifacts were to be keyed to a specific text and period. The goal was to use the cultural knowledge gained to accurately represent the form and function of an object of the time and leave an object that another student could examine and learn from as well. Strangely enough, most of the students, despite my great desire to see Achilles' shield, created artifacts for Medieval or Renaissance England.
The artifact assignment was part of a larger project which examined cultural/social phenomena concurrent with the text. This project was done by breaking into topic groups: music, art, texts, politics, society, etc. From students' groups, they could create some artifact that was in our texts or from the period generally. To see the objects, telnet to AcademICK and feel free to login as a yourself or a character and find them.Scattered throughout AcademICK are student projects from other courses. If you go to the Student Projects Exhibit, there are many Rhetoric and Composition projects, including the 'Jeopardy Set' which asks questions of players, the 'Free Speech Village' where students created an entire town which was divided over censorship issues, and the starship Enterprise of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", where students examine the arguments surrounding Data's existence and sentience based on the episode "The Measure of A Man". Each instructor created the spaces and uses them each semester to examine persona, to do rhetorical analysis, to discuss ethos, logos, and pathos.
In our experimental MUSH, TICK (Temporary ICK), several graduate students are working on research experiments on novel or dramatic representation in non-linear spaces.