"[4] Josh Quittner continues, "McWhorter figured that Diversity University would be a way to attract educators and students to computing as a communications medium.
"[4] The overarching idea was a virtual, online university space, allowing teachers and students to interact in real time.
[1] Diversity University did not charge any hosting fees to faculty members and other educators who brought classes onto the MOO.
Because the text-based interface required minimal computing resources for people to access the MOO, Diversity University espoused an egalitarian mission, which they articulated on their website: "The mission of Diversity University is to develop, support and maintain creative and innovative environments and tools for teaching, learning and research through the Internet and other distributed computing systems, and to guide and educate people in the use of these and other tools, to foster collaboration in a synergistic climate, and to explore and utilize applications of emerging technology to these ends in a manner friendly to people who are disabled, geographically isolated or technologically limited".
Because the MOO environment was text-based, it offered students practice in articulating ideas in writing, which was reinforced in an inter-class LISTSERV.
[10] Educators in other fields brought students to Diversity University, taking advantage of the close fit between Constructivist teaching methods and the MOO environment.
For example, Professor Tom Danford of West Virginia Northern Community College taught a microbiology course in the MOO.
As Dick Banks explains, "The constructivist assignments [in Professor Danford's microbiology course] include a student microscope slide set, an instructional object of some sort, and participation in a group project.
In an announcement for one of those workshops, Danforth explained the purpose of the group and the significance of Diversity University as a platform for such collaborations: The Librarian's On-Line Support Team (L.O.S.T.)
The group provides space for librarians, many of whom are being thrust into cyberspace with minimal training and support, to get both formal and informal instruction and mentoring.
The group is currently based at the virtual campus of Diversity University, a cyberspace location that offers both real-time and delayed interaction via computer and currently supports over 4,000 educators and students world-wide.
and its programs can be found at: https://web.archive.org/web/20080511023627/http://admin.gnacademy.org:8001/~lost/[17]LOST epitomized Diversity University's ability to foster collaboration among educators, which was one of McWhorter's original purposes in creating the environment.
[21] The online teaching tools did help faculty members conduct their classes in the decentralized and potentially chaotic MOO world, and they reveal as well the power and flexibility of the object-oriented programming environment.
Faculty members did not need to possess programming skills to create objects in the MOO world that performed significant functions.