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03/24/2020 | Pressemitteilung

Stadtmuseum Kassel: Discover history with your smartphone

With the newly developed smartphone project by students of the University of Kassel, visitors of the Kassel City Museum go on a historical exploration tour in a linguistically "barrier-free" way.

Image: Jana Sieber.
Testing in the Kassel City Museum: B1 learners in front of the model of the destroyed city of Kassel.

The written information about exhibits in museums can be difficult to understand for people learning German as a foreign language. They still lack the complex understanding of the language and come to the museum with a different prior knowledge of history. To ensure that they, too, find comprehensible access to the content, students at the University of Kassel have developed a mobile exploration tour for the Stadtmuseum Kassel as part of Tanja Fohr's service-learning seminar "Project Regional Studies".

At the Stadtmuseum Kassel, visitors experience German history using Kassel as an example. With the smartphone app "Actionbound", small groups can playfully go on a discovery tour in the city museum. Features such as a quiz, tasks, the uploading of written, video or audio files and information in easy-to-understand language add variety and fun to the experience of visiting the museum. In the process, the group collects points. The app is especially aimed at people learning German as a second language (DaZ). It makes it easier for them to arrive in Kassel, not only linguistically, but also through cultural integration.

This new service has already been tested, evaluated and revised by 26 DaZ learners from the Department of Languages at the University of Kassel. Their conclusion is consistently positive: Through the app, they not only learned something about the history of Kassel, but also new words in this context.

Currently, the Stadtmuseum Kassel is closed due to restrictions caused by the Corona virus. Interested visitors can nevertheless discover the possibilities of the app via a QR code and take a virtual look inside the museum.

Background

The seminar "Project Regional Studies" was funded by the Qualitätspakt Lehre. Through a cooperation with Jürgen Fischer from the Kassel History Society and the Kassel City Museum, it was possible to consider both the background to the city's history and the didactic aspects of history during the planning.

For all those who want to learn more about the history of Kassel, it is possible to use the following QR code with the free "Actionbound" app. The duration for a test run from home is between 10 and 15 minutes. Playing on site with a group of three to four people takes between 60 and 70 minutes. Additional QR codes for up to four groups can be made available at the Kassel City Museum upon request (mail to: tfohr@uni-kassel.de).

To the QR code

Further information: https://en.actionbound.com/bound/erkundungstadtmuseumkasselv1

Contact

Tanja Fohr
Department of German as a Foreign and Second Language
Tel.: 0561 804-3305
E-mail: tfohr@uni-kassel.de
http://www.uni-kassel.de/go/tanjafohr/