Changing their password, setting their gender and writing a description offer a good introduction to the command-line interface used for building. Getting students to use the programming capabilities of their MOO character is quite easy. Simply walk them through several rooms and show them what is possible by looking at and reading the various objects in the rooms, or try typing key words for bots. We recommend that you and students begin with objects they can write on. First have some shareable notes made to show students how they work.
Students name the object, provide a description and then add text if they choose.
Other students can then look at the note and add their own comments to the viewable comments of others. Next, show them bots . Even though MOO wizards don't love bots, students do. Show the students how bots work, how the keys stimulate the simple responses that appear to be dialog by people. You will need to be prepared to address some social issues that bots can raise, like the way bots become the students' alter egos, not crashing the MOO, not making bots that are annoying or impossible to shut up, and so on.