Teaching and learning spaces of the future: immersive methods in GFL lessons

Auditions for apartment shares have become the norm, especially in cities like Munich with a limited supply of affordable student accommodation. Such auditions can be a challenge for native speakers. How much more daunting, then, must they be for people from abroad who do not yet have a good command of German, or are just beginning to learn the language? Almut Ketzer-Nöltge, Professor of German as a Foreign Language (GFL) at LMU since the fall of last year, is trying to find suitably modern solutions to this contemporary problem.

Language is more than words and sentences

“I simulated apartment auditions with my students in Leipzig using immersive 360-degree video technology. The method has a quite different learning effect than conventional language learning methods, because the learners can see, for example, when people refer to certain objects in the room or how they interact with each other.”

This is important, emphasizes Ketzer-Nöltge, because language has got a lot to do with immersing oneself, experiencing, and interacting in the specific situation and environment, as well as body language.

The principle is not complicated: The auditions are recorded on a 360-degree camera and made available to the learners via their smartphone. The learners wedge their devices into a piece of cardboard, say, allowing them to take part virtually in a certain language situation. This gives them the feeling of being right there in person. “Smartphones are so powerful today that this is a relatively cost-effective method compared to virtual reality (VR),” explains Ketzer-Nöltge.

Linguistic and psychological aspects

Ketzer-Nöltge is fascinated by the linguistic and cognitive levels of language and learning environments. After her GFL studies at Leipzig University, she completed a doctorate in psychology in Erfurt on cognitive aspects of language learning. “As such, I had a very different methodological education, which is highly useful for my research,” she says.

As a postdoc back in the Herder Institute at Leipzig University, the main focus of her work was on the use of media in education. “This was a logical next step in that I had studied instructional psychology during my PhD and, among other things, taught and did research on the design of multimedia learning environments.” She brought this media-in-education know-how to her subject of German as a foreign language – into areas such as digital immersion and immersive media. “Language learning is contextual. This is the best way of generating this context and suitably authentic language experience.”

Basic research: What distracts learners?

Although the use of immersive media is highly promising for language learning, there are some challenges: “We know relatively little about how attention is divided in such settings. There are numerous visual stimuli or things that can distract the cognitive capacity or resources of learners,” explains Ketzer-Nöltge.

She sees the need for basic research here, leading us to her second major research focus: “We’re currently planning a project in which we construct a learning environment such that we can individually manipulate the various elements, allowing us to investigate what one sees and hears in each case – and how that affects attention and cognitive processing. The goal is to design learning environments that are genuinely conducive to learning foreign languages.”

This is highly complex, Ketzer-Nöltge observes, as different levels have to be considered – technical aspects, for instance, like the type of reception: Does the learner wear VR goggles, or do they sit in front of a screen and use a mouse to navigate through the virtual environment? What happens if subtitles are displayed on the screen and the learner can – or even must – read what is being spoken? “We don’t know yet in the case of immersive media what effects this has on the learning of languages. Moreover, it is necessary and indeed important to consider the challenges for learners of German in different countries and lesson contexts.”

Ketzer-Nöltge is also working on the further development of the DUO (Deutsch-Uni Online) platform, having taken on the role of scientific director upon coming to LMU. With the aid of DUO, German learners worldwide can prepare for higher-education studies in Germany. “We hope we’ll soon be able to use immersive media here as well – such as a 360° tour of the main LMU campus,” she says.

International networking

For these reasons, the international networking of her research area is tremendously important to Ketzer-Nöltge. “Given the nature of teaching German as a foreign language, this is pretty much inevitable,” she says. “We’re building up a network to connect with various locations worldwide in which German is taught and German teachers are trained.”

The goal is to develop teaching materials for the specific learning requirements in question, or to adapt them accordingly. The standard practice for publishers to date, notes the linguist, has been to develop teaching media that can be used worldwide whenever possible. Almut Ketzer-Nöltge finds this inadequate: “The learning settings differ too much in the various countries to just use such general-purpose media.” It is important, therefore, to create additional precisely tailored materials for the respective context in order to do justice to the specific requirements.

The concept of “service learning” plays an important role here: “This is about looking at where there’s a particular need and how to help with things like seminars – for example, at a language course for professionals in Vietnam. Students should develop teaching and learning materials for target-group-specific contexts, which can then be used in practice. And so, as well as acquiring the theoretical foundations of teaching, these students are also involved in the transfer of knowledge into practice.