[Air-l] Seminal papers in online interaction research

[David Wiley]

Everyone,

Please excuse a little context setting before I get to my question 
below. =)  I'm teaching an introductory "culture of interaction on the 
net" course in the fall. I'm trying to build the course around a few 
seminal readings for each technology family, followed by several hours 
of student interaction with real people in the environments. I've broken 
out my topics areas like so -

_Asynch Environments_
Listservs
Newsgroups
Web-boards
Fan fiction groups
Blogs

_Synch Environments_
MUD/MOO
IRC
IM
MMPORG

Basically students would spend 3 hours reading about each topic and 6 
hours out actually interacting in the environments, with the exception 
of blogs (which they will be using all semester to publish weekly 
reflection pieces) and the massively multiplayer games, which we will 
spend two weeks on. In their reflective pieces students will be applying 
what they've learned to the field of Instructional Technology, and 
looking for ways to improve online education -- not by using the 
technologies -- but by leveraging what they learn about the cultures of 
use of the technologies.

SO, I'm writing to ask list members for pointers to seminal articles 
about each of the above technology families. Maybe some of you have 
taught similar classes, or have written these papers yourselves? As a 
carrot back to group members (if needed), the course materials I'm 
developing will be open sourced (Creative Commons) and available for use 
later this summer. For this reason, papers available online would be 
preferred if available.

Looking forward to hearing what you have to say about the design of the 
course or readings I should use. Please reply directly if you don't feel 
this would be of interest to other list members,

D