Diversity University

Diversity University was the first MOO dedicated specifically for education. Like other MUDs, it was an online realm that allowed people to interact in real time by connecting to a central server, assuming a virtual identity within that realm, "teleporting" (in other words, transporting your character) or "walking" to virtual rooms, and holding text-based conversations with others who had entered the same virtual room. The MOO server kept track of which characters were in each virtual "room," so that the comments of each character would be sent back to the computers of every other person whose character was "in" the same virtual "room." What distinguished Diversity University from other MOOs was its central structuring metaphor as a virtual university campus, as well as its pioneering use for actual online classes.

History and purpose

Diversity University was created in summer 1993 by its founder (and original "arch-wizard"), Jeanne McWhorter, then a sociology graduate student at the University of Houston. In an interview with a reporter, she described her initial purpose in creating the online educational environment: "It all began when I got interested in getting social workers online. ... Social workers all tend to be computerphobes — part of it is that we have it in our mind that computers dehumanize. I think computers do anything but — I think people are much more open and willing to talk about themselves when they're online." Josh Quittner continues, "McWhorter figured that Diversity University would be a way to attract educators and students to computing as a communications medium."