In each course, students spend several weeks completing collaborative projects in the MOO. Each of these projects is integrated into the course content and most involve collaboration with students or native speakers at another college or university.

In the third-semester course, which focuses on identity, students create and analyze their own virtual identity. In recent years, this exercise has included a brief exchange with language learners at Williams College. The course concludes with a three-week unit in which Vassar students analyze the identities of figures in MIT's hypervideo Berliner Sehen program and then develop a reading of that character in the MOO.

At the fourth-semester, students explore conceptions of space in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. As part of the course, they build their own MOO rooms and analyze them with students from Williams College. In the final weeks of the course, students at Vassar work in small groups with students at Williams College to build and analyze their own German-language utopias, which grow out of a unit on the German Bauhaus and its critics.

Nearly every year since 1998, students studying German at Vassar have collaborated with native speakers at the University of Münster to complete comparative projects about some aspect of German and American culture. In previous years, these projects have included comparisons of national stereotypes, university systems and popular culture. Starting in the last couple of years, this exchange takes place in the fifth-semester course, where students analyze the role of media in various aspects of school violence in Germany and the U.S. In all projects, groups of students engage in authentic communication in the target language to negotiate over the topic, decide on the materials they want to use, divide up the work and develop an online presentation. In addition to producing virtual notes, on-line lectures, MOO skits and web sites, some groups also create virtual spaces, such as a MOO museum devoted to immigration from Germany to the U.S.

Selected Student Projects:

Vassar Students' Berliner Sehen Projects (Fall 2001 and Fall 2002)	Utopia Projects between Vassar Students and Williams Students (Spring 2001 and Spring 2002)
Berliner sehen Rooms	Utopien 2003
	Utopien 2002
Identity Analysis between Students at Vassar College and Williams College (Fall 2002)
Analyses of Vassar Student Identities	Group Research Projects between Students at Vassar College and Williams College (Spring 2001)
Analyses of Williams Student Identities	Forschungszentrum
	General Information about the Projects
Selected Cross-Cultural Group Projects between students at Vassar College and the University of Münster	(Fall 1998 and Fall 1999)
Univeristy Systems and School Systems	Immigration museum
Racisms	Music Culture and Perceptions

[Updated: 14 April 2003]