Students discover Roman history: Creative excursion to Passau!

Students discover Roman history: Creative excursion to Passau!

On July 24, 2025, students from the Von-Müller-Gymnasium Regensburg visited the University of Passau. This excursion was part of the P seminar “Getting to know Provincial Roman Archaeology”. The excursion gave the students the opportunity to intensively engage with history lessons at the Center for Teacher Training and Didactics (ZLF).

A central part of the event was the use of the miniDiLab, a modernly equipped seminar room that was specially designed for digital education projects. Here the students independently produced a news program in which they discussed important battles in Roman history. To achieve this, students designed both the script and the visual backgrounds for their on-camera presentation.

Creative approaches in history lessons

Dr. Hannes Birnkammerer and Tobias Bumberger from ZLF praised the creativity and enthusiasm of the students, which was reflected in the design of their program. Teacher Anton-Claudio Schäfer noted the high motivation of the students and the artistic freedom that was offered to them during the project. This underlines the importance of modern teaching methods in history lessons.

In the context of today's teaching methods, teachers have significantly more resources at their disposal than they did 15 years ago. There are numerous creative ideas for improving history teaching that combine analog and digital elements. For example, an article from BookWidgets offers 14 innovative suggestions, many of which can benefit both teachers and students.

• Zeitskala: Visualisierung von Informationen, z.B. zu Erfindungen.
• Mindmap: Grafische Darstellung von Ideen, etwa zu den Auswirkungen des Ersten Weltkriegs.
• Kreuzworträtsel: Eignet sich zur Vertiefung von Themen, wie z.B. über Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
• Bingo: Fördert aktive Teilnahme im Unterricht.
• WebQuest: Ermöglicht selbstständiges Lernen und vertieftes Eintauchen in Themen.

The role of digital media

The integration of digital media and technologies can significantly enrich history lessons. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers, among other things, the opportunity to individually support learning processes, for example by simplifying texts for students with German as a second language (DAZ). Using chatbots to differentiate tasks is another way to make lessons more interactive.

However, there are also critical voices about the challenges that the use of AI brings with it. There is a risk of treating the results of chatbots without thinking. The quality of these technologies varies, and often unfiltered content is provided without sufficient verification. A reflective approach to the information is therefore essential in order to avoid misunderstandings and a lack of contextualization of historical events.

Overall, it shows that the combination of creative approaches and modern technologies can significantly enrich history lessons. While there are challenges, the benefits, such as greater student focus and the promotion of critical thinking, cannot be ignored. Future collaborations between the Von-Müller-Gymnasium and the ZLF will certainly help to further advance these positive developments.