Acknowledgements

These projects started at NDSU in 1996 and there is a dizzying swim of people who have contributed in various ways. This is an attempt at listing them. For anyone who is overlooked, please accept our apologies now, and be assured that if this book ever gets into a second printing, errors will be corrected.

Here goes.

A Little History

There was a group on the NDSU campus in the early 1990s devoted to spreading the word about this new technology: the world wide web. This group called itself the World Wide Web Instructional Committee (WWWIC), and they helped people learn about the web, create web pages for their classes, and so forth. This group was funded internally by NDSU, and was chaired by Dr. Paul Juell – and under his direction laid much of the groundwork for early adopters of web-based technologies in research and teaching at NDSU.

Starting in the Fall of 1996, after these other things were stabilized, WWWIC devoted itself to research questions involving instruction and learning on the web, which quickly came to focus on research on learning in immersive virtual environments.

On the front lines were the faculty who invested themselves in these projects, which were a departure from their research careers, and presented no little risk to their professional lives – but they saw the opportunities and jumped in. The first among equals is Dr. Donald P. Schwert, who came to a talk and saw the possibilities, leading to the idea and design of the Geology Explorer. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Phil McClean, who was by then the chairman of WWWIC, proposed the Virtual Cell idea, and this created the ‘critical mass’ that led to everything else. Dr. Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat and Dr. Alan R. White were quickly recruited to join the effort, and that formed the core of the group that persists to this day.

The Worldwide Web Instructional Committee has now parlayed these research ideas into a $4 Million battleship that employs 50+ faculty, staff, and students on a routine basis.

Subsequently, Dr. Jeffrey Clark joined the group, adding an anthropology dimension with the Virtual Archeologist project – and a suite of efforts that would make its own book – such is the scope of the Archeology Technology Lab (ATL). And, following that, Dr. Lisa Daniels in Teacher Education, and Dr. Jeff Terpstra in Statistics joined the group – which is where we are as of this writing.

Each and every one of the group has taken the step, reaching out to a new research paradigm in learning that draws on their expertise, and yet takes them out of their discipline and out onto the thin ice of inter-disciplinary research in learning.

If you’re young, you don’t see the risk – but if you’re old, you see what this means in professional terms – to take these steps back in 1996, well, that borders on courage.

Building this Book

First, the confession – we thought this book would be easy to write, because we had so many conference and journal papers to draw on. We thought it would be a snap – easy-peasy. But it turned out to be anything but that. In the end, everything was re-written, and nothing of those early papers has survived into this book.

If you are thinking about writing a book, and I don’t advise it, be prepared to re-write everything. It’s a stone-cold drag, but there it is – it needs to be done, and there do not appear to be any short cuts. Sadly.

Special Thanks

The bulk of the editing, revising, and rewriting assistance leading to the publication of this book was provided by Dayna Del Val and Justin Hawley, without whom this book might never have appeared. Earlier editorial assistance was provided by Matthew Higdem, and Audrey and Rita Slator.

There are a very few who provided seminal inspirations in the early days.

John Bauer was a source of ideas, and created a vision, besides which he provided the early contributions to programming and graphical user interface development on Planet Oit. Acey Olson developed the graphical backgrounds for the first version of Planet Oit, a vision which persists to this day. Additional thanks are due to Mark Tinguely, who saved our world when its universe imploded, and to Col. Dave for the name: Planet Oit.

Contributions to the Projects

Throughout the years a number of faculty, staff, and student employees have helped with the effort, sometimes for money, sometimes for credit, especially in the early years. What follows is an attempt to recognize them all.

Geology Explorer Planet Oit

Jon Abel, Kimberly Addicott. Bryan Bandli, John Bauer, Otto Borchert, Bob Cosmano, Brent Alan Ellingson, Chris Fish, Justin Hawley, Guy Hokanson, Tammy Kavli, Lucas Koehntop, Ned Krueger, Atif Majeed, Acey Olson, John Opgrande, Rebecca Potter, Dan Reetz, Carson Rittel, Jennifer Thorstad, Leah Tilly, Shannon Tomac, Daniel Turany, Dean Vestal, Karen Cassie Curtis Vorthmann, Jane Willenbring, Bradley Vender, James Walsh, Shanhong Wu.

(missing: Sarah, others?)

The Virtual Cell

Aaron Bergstrom, Rob Brantsig, Kellie Erickson, Jacob Halvorson, Christina Johnson, Mei Li, Kellie Martindale, Ganesh Padmanabhan, Roxanne Rogers, Mark Rose, Daniel Small, Bradley Vender, Hong Wu.

(missing: Eric, I think, who went off to work at Seacrest, others?)

ProgrammingLand MOOseum

Yue Cui and Martina Miteva.

Faye Erickson, who implemented the 'cons machine' and the 'cons checker'; Tom Lemke who implemented the 'recursive leprechaun'; Mahesh Sharma who implemented the 'ring toss game'; Bryan McGowan who designed the History Jukebox; and Justin Abel who implemented Curly the Tutor Robot.

Radha Balakrishnan, Murali Dhandapani, Uma Kedla, Satyanarayana Pasupuleti, Sisir Ray, and Hong Wu, for their contributions to the Educational Media Seminar.

DollarBay and JavaMOO

Harold “Cliff” Chaput, Bob Cosmano, Ben Dischinger, Brian Gietzen, Christopher Imdieke, Derrick Olson, Patrick Regan, Bradley Vender, James Walsh.

(missing: Carlson, his buddy, and those two guys who did the first casino and fortune machine. Others?)

Blackwood

Joe Duncan, Chad Eddy, Mohammed Elimarghary, Nathan Green, Justin Hawley, Jessica Mack, Doug Plante, Bradley Vender,

The Virtual Archeologist

Aaron Bergstrom, Wade Burns, Gary Clambey, Josh Dorothy, Shawn Fisher, Naia George, Richard Frovarp, Justin Hawley, Bill Jockheck, Christina Johnson, Eunice Johnston, Ryan Kravitz, James Landrum III, Francis Larson, Chris Lindgren, Steph Schrader, Doug Snider, Lai Ong Teo. Liess Vantine, Alan Woolworth.

(missing: others?)

Dedications

There are so many main authors on this book, we need to reserve a space for each of them to make their own dedication.

Brian M. Slator

There are only so many books in a career, and dedications need to be carefully chosen. For this, I can only go with my wife, Rita, and my children, Adam, Audrey, and Megan, who have endured this book writing process for far too long.

Richard T. Beckwith

Lisa Brandt

Harold Chaput

Jeffrey T. Clark

Lisa M. Daniels

Curt Hill

Phil McClean

John Opgrande

Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat

Donald P. Schwert

Bradley Vender

Alan R. White