Mobile, Playful and Collaborative Learning with TellYourTown: Empirical Results from Field Studies in Trier and Esch

In the context of the transnational development and research project "Language Learning - Promoting Integration", a mobile app (TellYourTown) was developed together with school classes of the Kurfürst-Balduin-Realschule (Trier, Germany) and the Brill Schule (Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg), which tells fictional stories at real locations in Trier and Esch. The stories were developed during the 2016/2017 school year in collaboration with the students and their teachers. These stories were then used as a basis for the development of the routes. The Esch route focuses on the history of Luxembourg's mining industry and its miners. The route Trier is about a race between Karl-Marx and Nero through Trier. In this game, the player is accompanied by Karl-Marx and thus gets to know well-known places from Trier. The users should discover the city "per pedes" and at the same time learn a lot about the history of the city, which is conveyed to them by the fictional travel guide in the interactive dialogues. The geolocation function of the smartphone is used to guide the users to places of interest, where interactive mini-games or dialogues with the fictional travel guide take place. To thoroughly test the app in practice, two field trials were organised, one in Trier and one in Esch. These field trials were documented by researchers from the University of Luxembourg and were scientifically analysed with regard to the social interactions and learning processes that took place. Based on this analysis, suggestions for improvement were made to the developers and possible scenarios for a meaningful use of the app in pedagogical contexts were developed. During the first field trial certain technical issues were identified. Observational data showed that the app has great potential to initiate a relatively autonomous exploration of both cities and also allowed the local students to perceive their city more consciously with new eyes. But there were also certain limitations as to the learning, social and motivational effects that the use of the app had. We will try to address these in future iterations of the app.