This unit is intended to address the VA Standards of Learning for World History II Standards 6 and 7.  Students are required to explore the similarities and differences between the various Asian land empires and African societies of the 1500s-1800s, with a particular focus on geographic, political, cultural, and economic interactions with each other and the rest of the world. Through the unit, students practice information literacy skills as they research and become experts in one Asian or African empire, work with a group to develop a virtual museum exhibit on it, and explore the virtual museum exhibits created by the other groups to learn about all of the empires and synthesize the unit content.  The unit, which is separated into 6 modules,  was designed for use in a virtual learning environment with both synchronous and asynchronous components.  It could easily be converted to a fully face-to-face unit, but it would be challenging to convert it to a fully asynchronous online unit because of the group work activities involved.