1. Discover German

The online German courses at University of Florida began in 1998 as an effort to develop an elementary curriculum which would take full advantage of the cultural materials now accessible via the World Wide Web. College students would not only learn grammar and communicative skills; they would experience and learn from the kind of "culture shock" that formerly was available only by travelling to Germany, but which the internet can now provide. The goal was to have a new text"book" which would be entirely hypertext.
The team consisted of four people. The primary author and developer was Professor Franz Futterknecht (Ph.D., Universität Mannheim). Working with him on the texts and exercises were Professor Will Hasty (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) and Lecturer Christina Overstreet, U.F. Ph.D. candidate, who eventually were the first to use the new curriculum in classes, in Fall term 2001. Providing technical and editorial support was Judy Shoaf (Ph.D., Cornell University), director of the Language Learning Center.

2. WebCT German Curriculum

The Discover German curriculum produced students who were comfortable with using an online textbook and also eager to use and improve their language skills.  Eventually the two-semester elementary course was complemented by a third, intermediate-level semester, a course emphasizing listening and conversational skills, and a reading course. Professor Hasty developed specialized courses in medieval literature, both in German and in translation. Graduate students were trained by the team and created modules to complement text-based courses at UF. Visit the UF Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies WebCT courses.

3. Institute for Online Study of German Language and Culture

The next step was to adapt the classroom-based curriculum to distance education. This was motivated by requests from other institutions for a distance German course and also by needs of  UF colleges for modules more tailored to their graduate students' needs. Because of the high culture content and extensive explanations already in the Discover German course, it seemed like a good candidate for adults planning to work or study abroad. Adapting the course to distance education required "automating" many of the exercises so that the student could get detailed immediate feedback; adding audio and visual elements that would compensate for the lack of constant instructor presence; determining  a balance between real-time and deferred communication with the instructor.