Gamification Meets Reality: What Students Loved About the Pilot

22. December 2025 | Blog » CU REMEMBER
22. December 2025

by Veronika Schallhart and Thiemo Kronlechner [University of Vienna]

Feedback from the students (Pilot project in Vienna – Meet the Library)

We need constructive feedback to improve. Therefore, we prepared a short online survey and asked the participating students to provide feedback following the presentations on 19 November 2025.

Around 35 students completed the survey and provided feedback on the four components of this pilot project.

  1. General introduction to the topic of ‘National Socialism at the University of Vienna’, which took place in the Main Building of the University of Vienna using the Actionbound multimedia guide. (see blog post 1)
  2. Workshop at the Vienna University Archive, which is part of the Vienna University Library. Brief introduction to relevant sources, group work on the biographies of ten academics and students expelled in 1938, poster presentation and feedback session (see blog posts 2+3)
  3. Interviews with descendants and/or individuals close to the expelled persons (see blog post 4)
  4. Video production 3 to 5 minutes, horizontal format (see blog post 5)

Graphic from the student feedback survey: game (blue) and interview (green) have highest approval

Gamification and reality are top

The results of the survey show that the gamification approach worked very well for the group of 18-year-old students. They evaluated the opportunity to independently explore historical contents and to participate very positively.

Students found the workshop in the Archive interesting but also mentioned that it took a lot of time and effort. This also reflected in the feedback.

As mentioned, the interviews were the most emotional element of this project. Some interviews were not conducted by the entire group, but by individual group members. Those who conducted an interview described the experience as unique and memorable. They described the interviews using terms such as impressive, interesting, very fascinating, touching, inspiring, motivating and a ‘lesson for life’.

Word Cloud: How did you experience the interview?