For a whole semester, numerous teaching staff learned more about Open Educational Resources (OER), gamification, the relevance of media education in teaching and of course storytelling. In parallel to the theoretical content, the students implemented a practical task in small groups. The aim was to develop interactive media products with a focus on democracy, interculturality or the environment. These are designed for school lessons and are intended to be used as an innovative way of learning and teaching. Many great results of these student achievements will soon be made available here on edutales.eu.

Creative media products as part of the “Media Education” seminar

The students definitely didn’t get bored last semester. But the work has more than paid off, because the results that were presented at the end of the seminar are really impressive. Whether a trip to the Weimar Republic with alternative endings and the opportunity to “manipulate” German history, a media product in which you can critically reflect on yourself and your own environmental behavior or the chance to act as mayor and make influential decisions to be able to – practically anything is possible with the media products of the students.

The students worked with open source programs such as Twine and H5P, each of which can be used to tell interactive stories. While the Twine tool focuses more on text-based adventures, where you can set nodes and incorporate alternative courses of action and endings accordingly, H5P offers the possibility of integrating additional audio and video sequences, setting hotspots, developing quizzes, etc. and Enhance the interactive experience even further in this way. There are no limits for your creativity.

When will the materials be ready for use?

The media products of the students will be checked again in the next few weeks and adapted with regard to the OER concept. The materials will then be published here on the website. The release date is expected to be December 2021. So it’s worth checking out edutales.eu every now and then.