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It has received around 340,000 euros in funding through the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education’s ‘Freiraum’ project.
The following text has been machine translated from the German and has undergone no postediting.
How about if children in big cities could stroll through a forest in a virtual world, identifying different tree species and observing forest animals while listening to birdsong and the rustling of leaves? Or wouldn’t high school graduates be able to learn much more effectively about ancient Rome or the works of art in the Louvre if they could walk through three-dimensional virtual spaces? ‘There are already many ideas for school lessons, but so far they have often failed to be implemented because teacher training students are not taught the necessary skills,’ says Kristin Altmeyer, a doctoral student at the Chair of Empirical Educational Research, who, together with Luisa Lauer, a doctor of science education, has secured funding for the new ‘XRISE’ project.
An interdisciplinary seminar series is now planned, consisting of three consecutive events. It aims to bring together teacher training students preparing for different school levels and subject combinations with psychology students, participants in the Master’s programme in Educational Technology, and students from other courses such as Media Informatics. In addition, external IT service providers will be brought in to programme individual applications. ‘We want to work with students to develop ideas for virtual teaching content that can be used in the classroom on tablets or with the help of VR glasses,’ explains Luisa Lauer. However, the aim is not to leave it at the idea stage; instead, the students will work together to acquire the knowledge needed to develop an application. Ideally, this will be used in the student laboratories at Saar University or in school lessons. ‘For science lessons, for example, there is a lack of experiments that are too complex or too dangerous to carry out in the chemistry lab. Teacher training students can use their didactic expertise to design the individual steps and learning units. But then they need support from IT experts for the technological implementation,’ says the didactics expert.
New concepts also need to be developed for history lessons and language learning, for example, which are not intended to replace school trips or student exchanges, but can enable a broad group of students to have similar experiences. ‘For example, someone who is sent on a virtual adventure trip through London and has to ask passers-by for directions or find a specific painting in an art museum learns about other languages and cultures in a playful way,’ explains Luisa Lauer, who also wants to use chatbots such as ChatGPT for such applications.
In addition to the school sector, continuing professional development and other learning contexts are also being considered. The focus is not only on the learning effects of XR, but also on the question of which technologies are actually accepted and used in practice. The courses in the context of XRISE will follow the so-called translanguaging approach, which means that German and English will be used flexibly. ‘Participants are allowed and encouraged to use all their linguistic resources to understand, reflect on and work through the content,’ emphasises Kristin Altmeyer.
Preliminary work for didactic projects using AR technologies such as smart glasses and tablets has already been carried out at Saarland University in the GeAR project, which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This involved experiments by schoolchildren in science and physics lessons, in which, for example, additional information such as measurements or graphics were displayed for electrical circuits. The new XR learning environments currently being developed in the XRISE project will be scientifically evaluated before being rolled out more widely.
XRISE stands for ‘EXtending Reality in Interdisciplinary CourSEs’ and was selected for funding this year as one of 153 projects nationwide. Previously, around 6,000 project ideas were submitted to the Freiraum initiative, of which 500 were selected by lottery and reviewed in more detail. With around €340,000 for a two-year period, the two young scientists will not only purchase hardware for new technologies, but also promote interdisciplinary exchange at conferences. ‘Students will also be allowed to travel to conferences to present their ideas and applications,’ says Kristin Altmeyer.
Further information:
Funded Freiraum projects by the Foundation for Innovation in University Teaching
Course offering in the 2025/26 winter semester: ‘Learning in Extended Reality (XR)’ (LSF link)
Answering questions:
Chair of Empirical Educational Research
Kristin Altmeyer
Tel. 0681 302-2588
Email: kristin.altmeyer(at)uni-saarland.de
Chair of Didactics in General Studies
Dr Luisa Lauer
Tel: 0681 302-71397
Email: luisa.lauer(at)uni-saarland.de
