Creating a Virtual Academic Community:

Scholarship and Community in
Wide Area Multiple-User Synchronous
Discussions

an excerpt from a chapter in Computer Networking and 
Scholarly Communication in the Twenty-First-Century University, published by 
SUNY Press, a volume in the SUNY series in Computer-Mediated Communication, 
Teresa M. Harrison and Timothy Stephen, editors
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Endnotes

  1. This article was conceived on the net (on IRC), created on the net (initially on IRC and e-mail, later on Media Moo), and discussed and revised on the net (on MediaMoo and e-mail). It serves as an example of the evolving scholarship and academic community available on the Internet.
  2. From the play I Think We're all Bozos on This Bus, The Firesign Theatre.
  3. Forum is a freeware program developed by Robert Boston, Iowa State University. InterChange is part of the Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment, a commercial package produced by the Daedalus Group of Austin, Texas (InterChange is a registered trademark of the Daedalus Group) .
  4. Electropolis can be obtained from Comserve or FTP. See References for address and directory information.
  5. Aspects is a program published by Group Logic Inc. that allows real-time, collaborative editing of a single text by a number of co-editors.

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Biographical Information

Michael Day (mday@silver.sdsmt.edu) is an assistant professor of English at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He teaches technical communications using the Internet and has created sylistic revision software for writing classrooms. He also teaches Computers in Society and is Associate Chair of the NCTE Assembly on Computers in English.

[Update: Michael is now at Northern Illinois University. His email address is mday@niu.edu.]

Eric Crump (wleric@showme.missouri.edu) is the Assistant Director of the Writing Center at the University of Missouri. He is working to develop electronic learning environments for students and to explore new possibilities for academic publishing on the Net.

[Update: Eric is now at the National Council of Teachers of English and is Chief Instigator of Interversity. His email addresses are ecrump@ncte.org and eric@interversity.com.]

Rebecca Rickly (becky.rickly@umich.edu) is a member of the English Composition Board at the University of Michigan. She teaches practica, peer tutoring, and special topics classes using both the LAN and the Internet, and has co-designed an "interclass" for peer tutors on the net.

[Update: Becky is now at Texas Tech University. Her email address is rebecca.rickly@ttu.edu.]

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