[1] In this report I have, amongst other things for the purposes of simplification and, hopefully, clarity, decided to use the more generic descriptive term "Distributed Multi-participant Co-operative Environment" (DMCE) rather than the more specific (or perhaps "less generic" is a better phrase to use here) descriptive terms Multi-user Dimension/ Dialog/ Dimension (MUD) or Multi-user dialogue/dimension, Object-Oriented (MOO) which were used in the first report in this series (Coppock 1996)

[2]See Malinowski's appendix "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages", in Ogden & Richards 1946

[3]Most of the background information in the section above has been fetched and adapted from a publication made in January 1997 by NTNU: "Self-Evaluation Report, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)". CRE Institutional Evaluation Programme, Quality Management and Strategic Leadership. Trondheim, January 1997. This report is available (in English only) via World Wide Web at: http://www.ntnu.no/ntnu/info/report/

[4]Taken and adapted from "Strategic Foundation for the Norwegian University of Science and Technology", adopted by the University Board, December 20 1996. Published by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

[5]"Strategic Foundation for the Norwegian University of Science and Technology", pp. 6-7.

[6]"Strategic Foundation for the Norwegian University of Science and Technology", pp. 8-9.

[7] See "Innstilling fra Styringsgruppen for NTNUs satsing på elektronisk informasjon" [Recommendations of the Governing Body for the NTNU electronic information initiative], at http://www.ntnu.no/webrapport/

[8] This course is offered one semester a year by the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

[9]Appendix@@

[10] The guidelines were taken from a brochure published by the Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH) entitled "Forskningsetiske retningslinjer for samfunnsvitenskap, jus og humaniora" [Ethical Guidelines for Research in the Social Sciences, the Law and the Humanities], Forskningsparken 1995.

[11] All the student participants in the group were asked if it would be possible for me to refer to them by their actual first names in this publication, and all gave permission for this.

[12] A proxy character is a character in a DMCE which will communicate in a given situation in proxy for a person who is logged in with another character and whose main character is in another part of the environment to the proxy. Hence Anatoli might have been in the space he had created named "Russia", while his proxy character was in another space. Someone who logged in and entered the same space as the proxy character would then be able to have a conversation with Anatoli in "Russia" via the proxy.

[13] In e-mail discussion groups, such as those one finds on more "closed", discipline-specific, interdisciplinary or more general interst discussion groups such as KANT-L, SEMIOS-L or HUMANIST-L, or more "open" discussion environmants such as USENET groups like no.culture,

[14] Forms are special object-related World Wide Web pages which allow participants to upload text-data to the virtual environment. If one for instance wants to change one's own personal description in the MOO environment, one fills out a form related to one's personal character, and then "submits" the form data by means of a "submit" button on the form. This updates the character file. When other participants access the character description by means of the "look" or "examine" verbs, they will see the updated description. Similar updates can be made to objects and rooms that one has created. It is also possible to edit verbs in the same way. Some objects can have URL's (User Related Links) to other World Wide Web pages, or to images stored on other servers around the world, added to them. This means that an object such as a book can incorporate links to articles or other kinds of texts which may be read by other participants with a browser from the Web Gateway interface.

[15] Diversity University may be reached by telnetting to moo.du.org:8888 (or alternatively 128.18.101.106:8888). Using a simple Telnet application (e.g. NCSA Telnet) is probably the simplest way of all to log in, but it is generally recommended by routined DMCE participants that one uses a more specialised application (e.g MUDDweller for Macintosh or MUTT for Windows), since these provide a separate window at the bottom of the screen for composing one's own messages before they are sent. Such applications are easily obtainable via the Internet, since they are non-commercial sharware. The following Web sites which offer more information on such applications and where to find them:

TECFA Educational VR page at http://tecfa.unige.ch/edu-comp/WWW-VL/eduVR-page.html

Chaco MUD Resource Page at http://www.chaco.com/worlds/

[16] GUI is an acronym for Graphical User Interface (this present author's comment, PJC).

[17] The most plausible explanation as to why Sigrun made this repetition at the beginning of the session was that she had noticed that the Norwegian character `å' had disappeared from her utterance the first time it was sent, and she had not yet realised that this was not due to typing errors on her side, but rather that the particular DMC system we were using does not accept the three specifically Norwegian characters `æ', `ø' and `å'. When communicating in DMCE's of this kind in Norwegian it is therefore necessary to substitute these with `ae', `oe' and `aa', respectively. She then presumably tried to rewrite the utterance correctly, but nonetheless without making this substitution. The net result being, then, that the same "typing" errors just occurred once more in the utterance on the second occasion it was sent

[18] In accordance with the working agreement made with with the students in the Fall 1995 group, I have retained the psuedonym "Karen" that I used in the last report from this project to denote this particular student.

[19] "Tom" is a pseudonym.

[20] It is considered normal practice in DMCE's like Diversity University to request permission to join any groups that you might notice who are logged in at the same time, but with whom you are not already acquainted. This is done by use of the @knock <person name> command.

[21] The "to" command functions in the following way. Say that I ("patcop") want to address the remark "I agree with what you just said about X" to a person whose character is named "elena", I would write the following command:

to elena I agree with what you just said about X

which would generate a message readable by all present of the form:

patcop [to elena]: I agree with what you just said about X

The "say" command would, on the other hand, in order to acheive the same effect, require the manual insertion of the addressee's name in the message body, as in:

say "I agree with what you just said about X, elena

which would generate the message:

patcop says "I agree with what you just said about X, elena"