Practical example
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The blended learning units provide students with an in-depth introduction to the topic of German colonialism using archive material. The focus is on childhood, education and educational institutions in former German South West Africa. At the same time, historical events and developments are reflected on with regard to their significance for the present day.
In the „digital age“, access to knowledge and information is changing rapidly - this also affects historical learning. University teaching is faced with the challenge of supporting students in categorising information, reflecting on it critically and transferring it to socially relevant contexts.
At the same time, it is often found in practice that students find it difficult to engage independently with historical sources and processes and to establish links to current developments.
The aim of the course units was to introduce students to the topic of colonialism in depth using archive material, with a particular focus on childhood, education and educational institutions in former German South West Africa.
Students acquire specialised, methodological, personal and social skills. These include naming central aspects of colonialism, carrying out source criticism, analysing archive material and cooperatively creating posters to present the results.
After completing the unit, students can:
- name and differentiate between key phases and aspects of colonialism in German South West Africa (professional competence)
- explain the significance of education in the context of colonisation (professional competence)
- Critically analyse sources (methodological competence)
- Use and analyse archive materials independently (methodological competence)
- develop a scientific self-image through the independent development of learning content (self-competence)
- cooperate in groups and prepare and present results together in the form of posters (social skills)
Financial resources for a scientific assistant and material resources for specialised literature were required for the implementation.
In addition, the support provided by the EAH's university didactics team (advice, feedback and support in the use of digital tools) was extremely helpful. The accompanying further education programme (e.g. on H5P) also contributed significantly to the successful implementation.
The self-study units were developed in collaboration with a research assistant. They were based on archive materials and the applicant's initial research findings as well as extensive research into decolonial education materials and tutorials on working with sources.
The result was a Seven-part Moodle course with integrated H5P elements. This was placed in the middle of the seminar, so that the preceding face-to-face sessions served as an introduction to the topic (including basic concepts such as colonialism/post-colonialism, the establishment of German colonial rule in German South-West Africa, wars and genocides, remembrance work and struggles for recognition). The subsequent face-to-face sessions were used to present and discuss the results.
The Moodle course lasts two seminar sessions of 180 minutes each and includes the following elements:
1st quiz on German colonialism
2nd documentary film with subsequent questions (processing via a shared digital pinboard tool)
3. timeline of thematically relevant historical events of German colonisation in present-day Namibia
4. online tutorial on working with historical sources (University of Cologne), supplemented by texts on racist terms in historical documents and their sometimes persistent use in today's language
5th group project:
The students receive historical source material - including (auto)biographical texts, letters, reports - as well as corresponding work assignments. They choose a topic and work on it in small groups (4-5 people). The results are prepared in the form of a poster and presented in the final classroom session.
6. feedback on the course
7 Bibliography
Selection:
https://www.mangoes-and-bullets.org
Eva Cersovsky, Nicole Kramer et al, Tutorial Quellenarbeit (DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18716/estudies/00015), in: historicum-estudies, 2023 (13 March 2026).
S. Arndt & N. Ofuatey-Alazard (2021) (eds.), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht: (K)Erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutscher Sprache. A critical reference work (4th edition, pp. 660-667). Unrast-Verlag.
Gründer, H. (2023). Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien (8th updated edition). utb Geschichte: Bd. 1332. Brill | Schöningh.
Kreienbaum, J. (2015). „Ein trauriges Fiasko“: Koloniale Konzentrationslager im südlichen Afrika 1900-1908. Studien zur Gewaltgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Hamburger Edition.
Hartmann, W. (2002). Sexual Encounters and Their Implications on an Open and Closing Frontier: Central Namibia from the 1840s to 1905. Columbia University.
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