PROF. DR. CLAUDIA FINKBEINER
RESEARCH PROJECTS
VIRTUAL REALITY AND MULTILINGUALISM
Virtual Reality and Multilingualism is an interdisciplinary course concept for web-based foreign language didactics (English, French, Spanish) under the direction of Prof. Dr. Claudia Finkbeiner and Prof. Dr. Claudia Schlaak, and Wiebke Sophie Ost as a research assistant. The cooperative research project "Virtual Reality and Multilingualism" at the University of Kassel aims to prepare future teachers for effective, digital work in everyday school life and ties in with the multilingual and multicultural reality of learners' lives. The project aims to promote didactic, multilingual, intercultural and digital skills, in particular for the development and analysis of 360-degree and VR learning environments. As in DigCompEdu, these skills also play an important role in the professionalization model "LMR-Plus" (Finkbeiner, 2004). A pre-post design (Finkbeiner, Schlaak & Ost, 2024) collects qualitative and quantitative data in order to measure and evaluate the impact of the project. Initial analyses show a significant increase in digital skills. It is clear that learning progression has taken place at various levels. Student teachers who acquire these skills as part of their training can act as multipliers and mediators in their future careers. Funding: Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre 360-degree learning environments and multilingualism In the winter semester 2021/22, the development, implementation and evaluation of an interdisciplinary course concept in the field of 360-degree learning environments and multilingualism (English, French and other foreign languages) was piloted. The aim was to enable future teachers to autonomously construct, implement and evaluate multilingual, virtual spaces for the most authentic teaching/learning situations possible. In the course of the course, the students dealt with the concepts of augmentedreality, mixed reality and virtual reality , got to know the concept of visual literacy and, based on their newly acquired knowledge, created virtual teaching and learning spaces using suitable tools (in the seminar context: Lapentor) whose design takes into account the embedding of specific, contextually situated and culturally bound situations as well as the use of multilingual means of communication. The project will also create new, inclusive access to facilities and institutions in times of crisis and evaluate the opportunities and limitations of multilingual and multicultural embedded competence experiences in virtual spaces. Virtual reality and multilingualism Due to the impact of the pandemic, the research project went fully digital in 2021. In the summer semester of 2023, face-to-face courses were able to take place again and in this semester, the use and evaluation of the language learning application with the help of VR glasses was specifically tested in the training of prospective foreign language teachers. Based on the seminar approach of the winter semester 2021/2022, a course was developed that was both interdisciplinary and multilingual. This course was organized by the departments of English/American Studies and Romance Studies and was aimed at students studying to become teachers of English, French and Spanish. 15 Meta Quest 2 VR headsets were used in the seminar. The integration of the VR headsets into the seminar made it possible to add the VR dimension to traditional teaching methods. This opened up the opportunity to integrate the potential benefits of virtual reality into the process of language teaching and learning. Following a criteria-based analysis, the following language learning applications were used and evaluated in the seminar: - BRINK Traveler - Mondly - learning languages in VR - National Geographic VR - Noun Town - Language Lab More information can be found here: https://lehrportal.uni-kassel.de/course/view.php?id=74 // https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb02/institute/anglistik/amerikanistik/fachgebiete/fremdsprachenlehr-und-lernforschung-interkulturelle-kommunikation/emerita/forschung/virtual-reality-und-mehrsprachigkeit
INTERNATIONAL ONLINE COOPERATION
Learn more about the award-winning project "International Online Cooperation" Awared with the Higher Institution Teaching Excellence Award by the Hesse Ministry for Sciences and Research in 2019, the project was endowed with a research grant of €30,000. The Erasmus+ project “International Online Collaboration” brings together Jewish as well as Arabic students from Israel and a diverse group of students from the University of Kassel to form an academic online cooperation. An important goal lies in preparing prospective teachers as well as prospective business men and women for cooperation in a diversified international world in schools and in the workplace. The basic principle of the class is learning by doing. As described in the LMR plus Model (Finkbeiner, 2004), students are learners, moderators and researchers alike. The online learning environment is implemented into a 13-week long class which is simultaneously taught in Germany and Israel. The blended learning approach combines face-to-face, self-access-learning and online teaching, and includes video conferences and audio sessions. After introductory face-to-face meetings, permanent international learning groups are formed. Each group consists of two to three students from both universities. Students investigate various aspects in the domain of distance learning and complete the following activities: Four-Word-Activity, Key Words in Padlet, Concept Map in Google Slides, Article Search on group topic, Personal Interviews to gain qualitative data and WIKI Page Construction and Evaluation. The groups present their findings during three joint video conferences. The project aims at enhancing students’ technical skills and fosters digitalization. The students learn how to implement online tools into the classroom and/or business environment and additionally develop intercultural communicative competence.
TRANSABCs
Prof. Dr. Claudia Finkbeiner was lead investigator of TRANSABCs (Atlantis / FIPSE) together with Prof. Dr. Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt. As part of the TRANSABCs project, twelve university professors from the USA (California, Michigan, Oklahoma, Philadelphia, Syracuse NY) and Europe (Germany, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Spain) learned about the possible applications of the ABC's of Cultural Understanding and Communication teaching model developed by Prof. Dr. Patrica R. Schmidt and adapted by Prof. Dr. Claudia Finkbeiner. This model offers the opportunity to prepare people for encounters with others through active engagement with the self. They develop intercultural confidence by questioning ways of thinking and habits in discourse that are taken for granted, safe and reliable, and by learning to renegotiate with others. The resulting change in perspective is intended to contribute to seeing multiculturalism as an opportunity. The participants in the TRANSABC's project learned to apply the ABC's model practically in seminars in the training and further education of teachers at their home universities with n = 1229 subjects. This procedure has a multiplier effect, since not only the intercultural competence of future and already active teachers is promoted, but also the intercultural communication skills of their students as well as their literacy skills. Preis gewonnen: Ideenpreis der Körber Stiftung für den Beitrag "Teaching the Power to Empower, Das ABCs-Modell: Ein Katalysator interkulturellen Lernens und Lehrens" im Rahmen der Ausschreibung USable zum Thema "Empowerment. Menschen stärken" (zusammen mit Dr. Eva Wilden, 2008).
LIFE STORIES
Learn more about the project: “Life stories in the context of the present and the past" The project “Life stories in the context of the present and the past: A CLIL approach” is embedded in PRONET (professionalization through networking) which is part of the “Teacher Training Quality Campaign” funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It is based on the ABC’s approach. Seniors 80 plus are interviewed as time witnesses to access their historical funds of knowledge about the end of WWII. The design focuses on the following target groups: seniors telling their life stories in the mother tongue German as well as seniors telling their life stories in mother tongues other than German, e.g. English, Spanish etc. The project aims at developing interdisciplinary, bilingual tuition modules for prospective teachers of English, Spanish or French and a content subject (such as history) in order to help them acquire content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and teaching skills and a qualification for CLIL teaching in the subject history. A qualifying offer in this area is urgently required since from the school year 2011/12, bilingual lessons in the subject history (and other core subjects) have become an integral part of the Hessian core curriculum in all types of schools. This project enhances the teaching focus of future teachers giving them the opportunity to acquire an additional professional qualification in the area of bilingual teaching and learning.
LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES
This project was funded by the e-learning funding scheme of the University of Kassel - Zentrale Lehrförderung. A learning environment will be developed in which students learn about linguistic landscapes and multilingualism in public spaces. The study of linguistic landscapes is a relatively new interdisciplinary field of research that deals with the visibility and perception of written representations in a multilingual society. Students will examine the impact of linguistic landscapes regarding language awareness in a linguistically diverse society and conduct a mini field study. During this mini field study, students will collect linguistic data in a natural context and thus explore their immediate surroundings while capturing a variety of interesting signs and texts. The results will be compiled, processed, analyzed, interpreted, and presented. Students will acquire receptive competences in script recognition, so they will be able to identify which script and which language underlying the script is displayed. This promotes their multilingual receptive competence, awareness of linguistic script representations as well as their language awareness.
PRONET
Professionalization through networking With its application for the continuation of the project "Professionalization through Networking" (PRONET), the University of Kassel once again prevailed in the nationwide competition within the framework of the "Quality Offensive Teacher Education". In the first funding phase, the University of Kassel was one of 19 universities (out of a total of more than 80 applicants from all over Germany) that received funding in the first round. In the second funding phase, the federal and state governments are supporting the further development of teacher education at the University of Kassel with over 6 million euros. The funding follows on from the first project phase (2015 to 2018) and will last until the end of 2023. The project is broadly anchored in the University of Kassel and the North Hesse region. A key factor in the success of PRONET² is that 30 professors from almost all teacher education subjects represented at the university are proactively involved in the project and cooperate with schools in northern Hesse as well as the study seminars, school authorities, the Hessian Ministry of Education and the Hessian Teachers' Academy. Project duration PRONET1: 2015-2018 Project duration PRONET2: 01.01.2019 - 31.12.2023 PRONET2 is funded under the funding code 01JA1805 as part of the joint "Quality Offensive Teacher Education" by the federal and state governments with funds from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. www.qualitaetsoffensive-lehrerbildung.de
ADEQUA
Learning Strategies in self-regulated, text based cooperative literacy events in the context of English as a foreign language Research Grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG) First Grant Period: April 2005 till March 2007 Second Grant Period: April 2007 till March 2008 The research project wants to gain empirical evidence as to how autonomous learning in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom can effectively be supported during textbased classroom activities by means of moderate teacher intervention and the creation of conducive learning environments. For this purpose, new task formats for the EFL classroom are being developed which allow for independent work with texts in the foreign language (text comprehension) in a group-work setting that makes cooperation among the learners compulsory (cooperative literacy events). The research focuses on the following questions: (1) What learning strategies do students use under what conditions? (2) Are these strategies adequate in the given learning setting? (3) What interventions do teachers identify as necessary to support the learners, and what interventions do they apply? (4) Are these teacher interventions effective? Findings pertaining to the assumed efficacy of the teacher interventions will be synthesized in a “moderation model” which is to guide teacher interventions with this type of task. In an experimental control-group design, the model will be tested on its effects on learning outcomes, situational subject-matter interest, and motivation. Moreover, the use of learning strategies will be analysed micro-analytically, in a “fine-grained” fashion. The research project is to be seen within the context of current efforts in education and foreign language teaching methodology to implement high-quality student-centered, cognitively challenging classroom activities, to foster autonomous, student-active learning, and to support the development of learning competence. More Information ADEQUA-Abstract Article in Publik 03/2005 Research Report Online DFG Annual Report Research group: Lehren, Lernen, Literacy Pictures from the Poster Session, ADEQUA - LLL convention, University of Kassel, July 2006 Article about the convention in uniprotokolle.de LLL Article in innovations-report.de