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Professors Jeffrey Schneider and Silke von der Emde first began teaching with a MOO as a one-course experiment in Fall 1998. Since then, the two have developed an entire intermediate sequence that incorporates MOOs in concert with other powerful digital and computer technologies. The MOO has made it possible for the German Studies faculty to reimagine the intermediate curriculum as an intellectually rich and highly effective integration of language and cultural study along a liberal arts model. At one level, the sequence of courses offers students a graduated approach to reviewing grammar topics and building active and passive vocabulary. At another level, each course exposes students to different and salient issues in German culture from the last 100 years. The strong content focus not only offers meaningful topics for language practice, but enables students to develop their interpretive and critical thinking skills. Though the content and skills development of each course is unique, they share three general characteristics: First, each course builds on compelling and productive connections between the German cultural studies topics and issues that occur in online environments. This fascinating resonance situates students first as readers of authentic texts by German authors and then asks them to become writers (and readers) of their own authentic German-language texts in MOOssiggang. Such an approach offers students new critical insights into the relationship between language and culture. But it also implicitly involves them in debates about the vast cultural shift brought about by a new technological age by showing them, as hypertext author and theorist Michael Joyce insists, that they are engaged "within the historical scene and not confronting it, authoring the text of our future, projecting and not projected upon" (Joyce, "New Teaching: Toward a Pedagogy for a New Cosmology." Computers and Composition 9 [1992]: 7-16, 15.)Second, all courses also include a significant exchange component with other students at other colleges and universities, such as fellow language learners at Williams College or native speakers the University of Münster in Germany. Over the sequence of courses, these projects also become increasingly more sophisticated, asking students to sustain intellectual discussions, author rich texts, and analyze their own complex German-language products. Third, in addition to readings in German, students in each course also read several articles in second language acquisition research. The goal in assigning these texts is to give students the vocabulary to reflect critically and independently on their language learning and to involve them as collaborators with us in helping to set the direction of the course.
German
210 (3rd
semester) In this course students explore
issues of identity in contemporary Germany through literary and
cultural readings, through discussions and role plays in the MOO,
and by having students create and analyze their own MOO personas.
Topics include immigration and citizenship, re-unification, and
popular culture. This first phase also includes assignments that
ask students to define their learning goals, assess their progress,
build vocabulary, review basic grammar topics, and understand
the principles of collaborative learning. The course concludes
with a three-week unit in which students analyze the identities
of figures in MIT's hypervideo Berliner
Sehen program and then
develop a reading of that character in the MOO. German
211 (4th
semester) This course focuses on issues of
space in texts written by authors active in Weimar culture (1918-1933)--the
infamous "roaring twenties" made famous by works such
as Cabaret. Students discuss texts from a variety of different
media and genres that deal with the topic of space, and readings
are taken from "traditional" authors Franz Kafka and
Thomas Mann to feminists and revolutionaries such as Rosa Luxemburg
and Irmgard Keun. In addition to building and analyzing their
own rooms in the MOO and even producing their own digital film
about a German poem on space, students from Vassar collaborate
with students from Williams College on building a German-language
utopia in the MOO. German
230 (5th
semester) This course focuses on a comparative
analysis of different media in Germany and the U.S. It begins
with seven weeks devoted to three case studies of German media:
propaganda under the Nazis, rock music in East Germany in the
1960s, and the tabloid press in West Germany during the wave of
domestic terrorism in the 1970s. Readings include theoretical
essays and historical materials as well as primary texts culled
from newspapers, films, journals, radio programs, music albums,
and the Internet. During the second half of the course, Vassar
students work with native speakers from the Univeristy of Münster
to explore the role of media in the coverage of school violence
in both Germany and the U.S. Students also reflect on the role
media plays in shaping their cross-cultural interactions. In addition to the syllabi below, syllabi for the above courses can be solicited by sending an e-mail to Jeffrey Schneider or Silke von der Emde.
MOOssiggang pages are maintained by Jeffrey Schneider and Silke von der Emde -- (C) Copyright 2001 Comments to JeSchneider@vassar.edu or vonderemde@vassar.edu [Revised 14 January 2003] |
