NGO

Turning students into history detectives

History comes alive in this investigative classroom game about the Danish-German border

Play case

Client

Grænseforeningen (The Danish Border Association)

Dansk Centralbibliotek for Sydslesvig

Organisation

NGO

Audience

Secondary education, 7th-9th grade

Purpose

Teaching young people about life in the Danish-German border region under German rule, in a self-directed and engaging way

A new way to bring history to life

The classic detective story meets historical education in this innovative, collaborative learning game, where students are dropped into history and tasked with solving “the mystery of the blue songbook”. The game takes place in Northern Schleswig, a generation after it was annexed by Germany, and brings to life the ethnic and political tensions of the time, and the Danish population’s struggles with preserving their language and cultural heritage.

As students investigate the disappearance of a book of illegal Danish folk songs, they interview a number of characters with different allegiances and identities, and try to put together what happened. To investigate the mystery, students thus also have to dive into the complexities of the historical situation itself with the critical, investigative mindset of a detective.

The game combines many of the interactive elements offered by DiBL, sorting students into different groups, letting them decide who to interview at different stages, quizzing them on the historical context, letting them share their thoughts on complex questions through custom word clouds, tasking them with deciphering coded messages, and ultimately asking them to guess which of the many colorful characters is the culprit. All of this is accomplished with simple and inutitive interactivity, in a format that lets the teacher control the game as easily as clicking through a slideshow presentation.

The game’s narrative and educational content was developed in close collaboration with the client, Grænseforeningen (The Danish Border Association), an organization supporting Danish language and culture in the Danish-German border region. Grænseforeningen wanted to offer Danish schools an innovative and playful way to learn about this unique period of history. While they brought the domain expertise, we brought a strong knowledge of classroom-based games and interactive narrative, and a platform that could support the wide range of interactions necessary to bring their vision to life. Grænseforeningen has since used DiBL to create more learning materials themselves, building on the foundation we created together.