GRADING
This course is worth 9 hours of graded credit, so it can have a significant impact on your GPA. During spring quarter I expect you to do course work amounting to about 4 credit hours worth of effort. The remainder of the credit hours will be earned during the summer and into the first part of fall quarter. Please note that your due dates do not all coincide with the German due dates. Your background paper is due to me earlier so that we can be sure it is in good shape before you send it.

If you applied for and have been admitted to this class, OIE will have enrolled you for 9 hours of International Studies 697 in spring quarter. When grades are assigned this will change to 9 hours of CRP 697. Jane Palmer is our OIE representative and her contact information is:

tel: (614) 292-6101
e-mail: palmer.241@osu.edu
fax: (614) 292-4725
http://www.oie.ohio-state.edu

Participation in the summer portion of the course (including the trip to Dresden) is contingent upon successful participation in the Spring Quarter course. Successful participation means that you have adequately completed all aspects of your background paper by the specified due dates, have participated actively in class (including attending all class meetings) and have completed any other assignments given during spring quarter in an acceptable manner. It also requires that you work well with your assigned team.

In addition, any behavior before, during, or after the actual travel to Germany that infringes on the ability of other students to profit from the course and/or the trips will not be tolerated and will be reflected in your grades. You will be guests in another country and should comport yourselves so that you will be considered good representatives of OSU and your own home country. You will also be sharing accommodations and should behave in a way that allows your roommate a reasonable amount of comfort in the lodging. I reserve the right to assign a lower grade (possibly as low as failing) to any student who behaves irresponsibly.

If a student withdraws from the program or does not successfully complete the Spring Quarter course requirements and is therefore ineligible to continue, the student will be held responsible for any non-recoverable costs. We have worked closely with our German colleagues to arrange the itinerary and logistics of the trip. These items require us to make deposits and other financial commitments. If you withdraw at any time after your acceptance and before departure to Germany, you will be held responsible for any costs that have been incurred on your behalf. Any nonrecoverable program costs must be assumed by you and will be placed on your OSU statement of account from Fees and Deposits as an OIE Study Abroad Program Fee.

Work turned in late will lose one letter grade per day (10%) on the final product of which it is a part.

You must have an e-mail address with a reasonable amount of storage and you must keep the storage clear and check your mail often. We will communicate through e-mail and I will send out some fairly good sized files containing readings.

Everyone will be assigned an incomplete in this class until after October 1 (the due date for the final group projects)

Each class member will be part of a cross-national team for a group project. The number of members in the groups depends on the size of the two classes, but there will be at least one student from each University in each group. Our class size indicates that we will have two or three OSU students in each group.

During the first ten weeks (before we travel to Germany) students will read extensively, work with their groups to write background papers, begin personal journals and undertake a variety of small assignments. Some of those assignments will require that the American students get information from their German colleagues and vice versa. Others will be items to discuss in your journals. Still others will involve collecting information or materials for the class or for the summer visits. Each student will be assigned to take notes on and write up some of the events we attend in Germany and those assignments will need to be divided among the class. I'm sure there will be miscellaneous other tasks as well. The background papers must be ready by the end of spring quarter so that your colleagues can read them before coming to the US (they will send you papers for the same purpose).

During the two excursions (in Dresden and in Columbus) there will be small group field projects culminating, in each case, with a poster and presentation to a workshop to which outsiders will also be invited. The products will be combined with the background papers and additional work for final group projects.

We expect to have each cross-national group focus on one of the six topics described above. All of these topics will need to be more narrowly defined, but the list gives you some idea of what each group will consider. In addition to the background papers we will need to define field projects for each topic. We have suggested case studies for each topic, but we are open to other suggestions.

Background paper
During the ten-week seminar you will write a group background paper on your topic as it applies to the U.S. and your German colleagues will write one on Germany. The due date for your first draft is: May 11, 2001. I will return them to you by May 18 and you will rewrite them by June 1. The draft papers must be presented in hard copy. I will check the June 1 draft to make sure that it is acceptable. When it is approved, you will e-mail the final rewritten versions to your colleagues in Germany no later than June 8 and you will e-mail a copy to me at that time as well.

Posters and presentations
During the two weeks we are in Dresden and the two weeks the German students are in Columbus you will work in your small groups to study a specific example of the issue about which you wrote background papers. The outcome of this study will be two posters and oral presentations, one presented at the end of the two weeks in Dresden on the German case study and one presented at the end of the two weeks in Columbus on the Columbus case study. These case studies will be combined with the two background papers to form parts of the final group paper. The final group paper will also include additional material beyond what is found in the background papers and case studies.

Group Project
The final group project will use the background papers and the field projects but will be a more comprehensive document that incorporates work from both Germany and the US. It should be well focused and include material from the other assignments, but it should also include a comparative section and conclusions that pull everything together.

Participation/Contribution
This is a difficult area to define, but it is crucial to the whole class' experience. I expect this class to be a major focus of your effort for spring and summer. That means, among other things, being prepared, attending class (and other activities that we schedule), participating constructively in class discussions, volunteering for tasks that will need to be done during the quarter, being flexible, participating actively on the trip, being a positive influence on the group, helping out wherever help is needed, and so on. The jobs that need done during the quarter will cover a range of skills and will also range from small to large, so there should be plenty for everyone to volunteer for. Keep track of your contributions --- whatever they are, e.g. taking care of updating the class website during the whole course, using your personal contacts to help another group with their project, bringing a little humor to a tense situation or whatever. I will ask for your personal list of what you consider your contributions to have been at the end of the course.

Some examples of the kinds of tasks we'll need to get done over the course of the seminar include:

• Continuing upgrades and maintenance on the web site
• Scanning photos and maps and putting them up on the web site
• Writing a brief biography of yourself and adding a picture so we can put those on the web site
• Creating a new display for the case at the top of the steps
• Sorting and cataloguing materials (you may get to help pack things for the KSA move too)
• Helping with logistics for the Dresden students' visit to Columbus in the fall
• Keeping especially good notes about what does and doesn't work as far as course logistics, the technology, the approach --- these will go in your journal (see below)
• Volunteering for small errands, short reports, additional information gathering or other tasks
• Each student will be assigned to take notes on and write up a summary of some part of the events in Dresden. We'll need someone to act as an editor to pull all of these together and add photos.
  
  We'll put everyone's photos from the trip together and create a CD to give the German students, so this will be another task.

Keep track of what contributions you have made (I may not realize all the things you've done or forget in the rush of other things going on) and include the list as a separate item with your journal when you turn it in.

Individual Journals
Everyone in class will keep a journal. The document may include text, photos, drawings, and materials you pick up on trips and so on. I suggest that you keep the journal very honestly and completely for yourself, and then edit it (or cover up pages --- I won't read anything you cover) if you feel the need for more privacy before you hand it in. At different times in the quarter I will give you lists of questions I'd like you to think about and answer in your journal --- this may be especially useful for the video conferencing events. The journals should include spring quarter, the trip to Germany, our preparations for the German visit to Columbus and the two weeks of the German visit to the US.

I am trying to do several things with this assignment:

1. Help you create a record of your experiences in class and on the trips so you can remember all the parts. Finding time to write may be difficult during the time in Dresden, but you should make every effort anyway --- maybe a small tape recorder would help. These are the things you will most want to remember. If you do the journal well, you will be grateful many times in the future. If you do not, you can expect to forget most of what happens.
2. Increase the amount of information I glean from the class --- every one of you will learn things that I don't during the term and this will give me a chance to pick up on those things too.
3. Improve the class the next time it is offered. Keep a record of things that worked or didn't work, ideas you have to improve things, readings, web sites or videos you come across, etc.
4. Do some research on the value of video conferencing and electronic communications in distance learning efforts. That's why I will give you questions to answer about those experiences.

The journals will be due August 30, 2004.

This year we have the additional challenge that the Knowlton School will be moving to its new building during the summer. If everything goes smoothly we will be in the new building by the time the German class arrives here. That would mean the computer labs are all set up and ready to go, there is finished gallery space ready for us to use, our Dresden materials will be unpacked and set up in our new space, my office will be unpacked and the Dresden class materials available, etc. I don't think we'll be that lucky, so we will need to be prepared with fall-back plans and a lot of flexibility.