2 MOOs are text-based virtual communities of the Internet for real-time (synchronous) communication and role playing by people in different parts of the world. The acronym stands for Multi-user domain, Object Oriented.
3 The questions were developed based on a prior open-ended discussion with a smaller group of ESL students regarding what they found motivating and demotivating about working with computers.
4 The original wording of reverse coded questions is included in the survey in the appendix. Elsewhere in this paper, reverse coded questions are reported in reversed form.
5 Students also had been asked about their experience using the World Wide Web and MOOs, but since the majority of students had little or no experience in these areas, these aspects were not investigated further.
6 This in itself does not necessarily prove a positive attitude, since it could be the case that students would tend to answer positively on any questions put before them. It does however coincide with much anecdotal evidence that students find working with computers motivating.
7 Due to the large number of subjects, numerous other statistically significant correlations were found between personal characteristics and individual questions. However, as explained by Hatch and Lazarton (1990. p. 441-442), correlations which are statistically significant still might not be of much import if they account for very little variance. In this study, correlations between personal aspects and individual questions at below the .30 level (thus accounting for less than 9% of the variance) are not discussed.
8 One important gender-related issue is unequal access to computers at home. As seen in table 4, this study confirms Tella's findings (1992) that more males than females have access to computers at home. Providing computer access and training at school can thus help overcome this inequality.
