Historical learning processes are omnipresent. They affect all age groups, forms of media, and are encouraged in both formal and non-formal education. But how do we learn to internalize and classify historical knowledge, to evaluate and contextualize it? And how can this be supported in the face of a digitalizing society facing tendencies of increasing political radicalization? My research project attempts to find answers and propose solutions to encourage data literacy and historical thinking by creating the learning platform “The Digital Logbook” and reflecting on its implications.
I start with the basic observation that history is being explored in schools, museums, or memory institutions in analog and digital formats alike with the aid of computers.1 In the analog world, knowledge is mainly imparted in classrooms, museum exhibitions, or memorial sites. In order to communicate appropriately to the target group, digital applications must support historical learning processes in the digital age. However, as supporting elements for teaching, they often fail in practice in educational institutions. The reasons are manyfold: inadequate digital infrastructure, lack of skills among teaching staff, insufficient staffing levels, and a perceived dichotomy between analog and digital learning media.2 For these reasons, students need both analog and digital learning opportunities to strengthen their data literacy.3 Challenges of digital historical learning was exacerbated about five years ago by the coronavirus pandemic, when necessity became a virtue and learning processes in schools had to be digitalized. For students, the challenges of historical learning processes in the digital are complicated further by AI systems. Now, at the latest, the system is challenged by a “digital transformation”4 thanks to the perceived accessibility of AI systems. After all, students use them several times a week for research (58%), term definitions (50%), and explanations (45%) for school, as a 2024 study stated.5 The extent to which such usages challenge meaning-making processes can only be guessed: AI agents and large language models behind them reproduce the training data on which they are based according to probability and present them to users as finished narratives. In doing so, these systems hallucinate and sometimes invent references to literature; radicalized ideas and narratives can be reproduced uncritically and easily. This poses a threat to historical knowledge bases and a democratic culture of remembrance (so called ‘Erinnerungskultur’), as well as to the necessary methodological skills.6
Unfortunately, digital applications on the history of National Socialism and World War II are predominantly descriptive.7 From my perspective for successful support of learning processes, interaction is key. This desideratum I will address with my “digital logbook”. Only a few applications, such as those from digital public history and the field of Holocaust education, include participatory elements for learning users.8 Furthermore narrative elements for knowledge retention are rare, and only a handful of applications give learners space to formulate their own thoughts along their learning experience.9 However, the added value of education-based applications in the digital space should lie in their ability to build historical knowledge and interactively involve learners in this process, because they can participate actively and bring in their own thoughts, experiences and do not simply consume historical ‘facts’. In short: to give students and other users the opportunity to formulate their own perspectives on historical material in narrative forms. In this way, they not only learn about historical events, but also actively participate in historical culture (‘Geschichtskultur’). These brief remarks reveal a need to support students as learners in developing factual, methodological, media, and judgmental competencies on topics relevant to memory culture. My doctoral project, “The Digital Logbook,” provides an opportunity to do that.
My PhD-project is based on my fruitful experience of “student laboratories” which I have set up with my former co-worker Vanessa Neumann in the CRC 1288 “Practices of Comparing” at Bielefeld University. In these student labs we have analyzed historical sources and data from denazification trials as a historical use-case with students from different schools and age groups. The results were impressive: students gained historical knowledge by engaging with historical data; they just needed encouragement and guidance from teaching staff to work with digital tools, e.g. data visualizations.
With the “digital logbook,” I propose a bridge between the analog and the digital in exhibitions and learning spaces. It supports learners in non-formal educational contexts in their individual engagement with learning materials from history, both classical source representations and research data. Learning units are organized as modules, which strengthens narrative skills, understanding of historical ‘facts’, and digital literacy. Driven by their interests, learners immerse themselves in the thematically curated, multimodal learning materials. Using multimodal stimuli from the historical learning material, e.g. source texts or data visualizations, learners digitally store their own narrative puzzle pieces (‘Erzählbausteine’) in the logbook. Each stimulus gives learners the opportunity to immediately record what they see in the material in a narrative form of their choice. In this way, learners form narrative puzzle pieces in written, visual, and auditory media formats. If necessary, pedagogues provide support in this hermeneutic step digitally and analogously. Learners can then assemble their narrative puzzle pieces into broader historical picture and share them with their learning group in the “Safe Logbook Space.” In this space, learner’s narrations serve as a basis for discussion within the learning group in both digital and analog spaces. Long story short: In the “digital logbook,” learners become captains on their individual routes through the past by digitally storing their observations, impressions, interpretations, and analysis results as logbook entries. In the long term, their own thoughts, perspectives, and narrations on historical events are collected in the “digital logbook” and accessible for co-learners.

I understand historical learning as an interest-driven and thus exploratory process, which ideally leads to the development of one’s own historical narratives and individual positioning.10 When we talk about something from the past that we have read about in books, seen in exhibitions, or heard in podcasts, historical meaning-making takes place: we link events together semantically and coherently, place them in a chronological sequence, contextualize and sometimes assess them.11 Narratives are therefore highly individual and at the same time subject to cultural memory and geopolitical norms. That is the reason why strengthening individual, participatory learning processes among learners is a cornerstone of memorial site education – and why the digital logbook is specifically written for these spaces. Using different forms of communication is an essential feature of the “digital logbook” while processing historical information in multimodal representations. After all, whether young or old, we communicate with each other every day in a variety of ways, telling each other about our experiences and latest news. We see, we listen, we talk, we write, we draw. Such narrative practices are also constitutive for historical learning processes. However, “grand narratives” dominate interpretive patterns of memory culture and historical scholarship and impact the way people tell their stories. Narrativization in digital spaces as the Digital Logbook promotes alternative story, fostering historical thinking as an individual “mental procedure of interpretive engagement between humans and themselves and their world.”12 Historical education in non-formal educational institutions is not subject to external evaluation or rigid curricula, but benefits most when learners explore the learning materials in an interest-driven, participatory, and voluntary manner. Thereby, they actively participate in historical and memory culture processes.13 This is all the more important when dealing with highly emotional topics and reflecting on such like Nazi crimes.14 Therefore, they feature prominently in the digital logbook.
Given the lack of historical awareness about victim groups of National Socialism15, contemporary historical case studies in the “digital logbook” serve to interactively engage learners in non-formal educational opportunities. Learners work with carefully curated learning materials on Nazi crimes and their reappraisal.
In sum, with my doctoral project at the Digital History department at Bielefeld University, I would like to contribute to non-formal education and strengthen it with a digital solution that supports learners in acquiring both content-related and methodological skills. Digital infrastructures in such educational institutions are often dependent on financial resources; the smaller the institution, the weaker its financial position. That is why I am cooperating with the Gedenkstätte Stalag 326, which commemorates crimes committed by the German Wehrmacht against Soviet prisoners of war during the Second World War. It currently runs mostly on a voluntary basis. On a methodological level, I am interested in how digital learning platforms need to be modeled in order to promote historical (long-term) learning (as sustainably as possible). I demonstrate how didactics theory and memorial sites can be translated into the digital space. What kind of learning results do “narrators” produce? In which ways can a digital learning tool encourage discussions in the analogue space? In short, how do digital learning tools needed to be designed to make future learners fit for competences in critical historical thinking and data literacy? These and more questions drive me in my project and help me to sort out the different levels, target groups and results of my work. During my upcoming time as a Fellow in Digital Humanities at the DH Lab of the IEG, I will push forward the development of a prototype of the “digital logbook” in order to prepare it for testing by learning groups.
Featured Image: Students Lab (Schüler*innen-Labor), Foto: Stephan Kreher, Universität Bielefeld, all rights reserved.
- Marcel Mierwald, Historisches Lehren und Lernen mit digitalen Medien. Geschichtsdidaktische Impulse für die Digital Humanities, in: Christina Antenhofer/Christoph Kühberger/Arno Strohmeyer (Hrsg.), Digital Humanities in den Geschichtswissenschaften. (utb-studi-e-bookBand-Nr. 6116) Wien 2024, 461–475. [↩]
- Mierwald, Historisches Lehren und Lernen mit digitalen Medien (wie Anm. 1), 474–475; Vgl. Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe LWL/Arbeitsbereich Digital History Universität Bielefeld/Gedenkstätte Stalag 326 (VI K) Senne/VHS Bielefeld/Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung lpb nrw (Hrsg.), Das Lager in der digitalen Fläche. Digitale Vermittlung von und in Gedenkstätten 2024; Vgl. Stefan Paul, Kommunizierende Räume. Das Museum, in: Alexander C. T. Geppert/Uffa Jensen/Jörn Weinhold (Hrsg.), Ortsgespräche. Raum und Kommunikation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Bielefeld 2005, 341–358. [↩]
- Olaf Hartung, Historisches Lernen in einer ‚(Geschichts-)Kultur der Digitalität‘?, in: Olaf Hartung/Alexandra Krebs/Johannes Meyer-Hamme (Hrsg.), Geschichtskulturen im digitalen Wandel? (Wochenschau Geschichte) Frankfurt/M. 2024, 131-146. Hartung konzentriert sich vor allem auf die Methodenkompetenz von Schüler*innen, die hinsichtlich der Art von Geschichtsnarrationen, des Erzählens als narrative Operation im digitalen und ihre Genese im Digitalen unmittelbar beeinflusst werden. [↩]
- Jörg Dräger/Ralph Müller-Eiselt, Die digitale Bildungsrevolution. Der radikale Wandel des Lernens und wie wir ihn gestalten können. 4. Aufl. München 2018, 8. [↩]
- Bayerisches Institut für Digitale Transformation, KI-Systeme in der Bildung: Schülerinnen und Schüler sind den Schulen voraus. München 2024; Vodafone Stiftung Deutschland, Jugendstudie zum Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz an Schulen. Jugendliche wünschen sich Umgang mit KI als festen Bestandteil des Unterrichts. Düsseldorf 2024, 6. [↩]
- Richardson-Walden, Victoria-Grace, Landecker Digital Memory Lab, 2024, https://www.alfredlandecker.org/de/article/launch-landecker-digital-memory-lab (29.01.2025). [↩]
- Helena Kubica, Children at KL Auschwitz, in: International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust ICEAH) (Hrsg.), E-Learning. Online Lessons. Oświęcim 2025; Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, „Fritz Bauer. Der Staatsanwalt NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht“, 2021, https://www.topographie.de/ausstellungen/fritz-bauer#c694.; Laura Maria Niewöhner, Haller ZeitRäume – a virtual museum, in: Href, 2020, https://href.hypotheses.org/1685 (02.09.2024).; Laura Maria Niewöhner, LeMo Lebendiges Museum Online – A reliable source for an introduction to modern German History, in: Href, 2020, https://href.hypotheses.org/1699 (02.09.2024).; DZOK Dokumentationszentrum Oberer Kuhberg Ulm Kz-Gedenkstätte, Erinnern in Ulm. Auseinandersetzungen um den Nationalsozialismus. Entnazifizierung unter amerikanischer Besatzung: 1945-1948. Ulm 2014-2015, https://dzok-ulm.de/ausstellungen/online-ausstellung/ (11.09.2024). [↩]
- Yad Vashem Internationale Holocaust Gedenkstätte, IRemember Wall, 2025, https://iremember.yadvashem.org/?p=10046&&language=de (27.01.2027).; Bańkowska, Aleksandra/Citrigno, Flavia/Kreutzmüller, Christoph/Cazan, Marius/Kahnt, Elisabeth/Tournay, Nahïa, Interaktive Karte: „Statistics and Catastrophes“, 2022, https://www.ghwk.de/statisticsandcatastrophe/ (24.01.2025).; KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg/Scharnetzky, Julius/Lauer, Johannes/Volkmer, Louis/Kruse, Vera/Pütz, Miriam/Schäfer, Marcus/Scharnagl, Annika/Simon, Pascal/Enzinger, Fiona/Grapetin, Johannes/Venetzke, Marcus, Lernplattform „Keeping Memories. Lebensgeschichten von Gefangenen des KZ Flossenbürg“, 2023, https://keepingmemories.gedenkstaette-flossenbuerg.de (28.01.2025).; Gedenkstätte Ehrenhain Zeithain, Ziele, Methoden, Ansprechpartner, 2021, https://www.stsg.de/cms/zeithain/paedagogisch/ziele_methoden_ansprechpartner (23.01.2025). [↩]
- KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg/Scharnetzky/Lauer/Volkmer/Kruse/Pütz/Schäfer/Scharnagl/Simon/Enzinger/Grapetin/Venetzke, Lernplattform „Keeping Memories (wie Anm. 8). [↩]
- Cornelia Chmiel, Pädagogische Mitarbeiter*innen an Gedenkstätten und das Dilemma der antifaschistischen Waschmaschinen. Agency im geschichtskulturellen Wandel in der Migrationsgesellschaft, in: Lernen aus der Geschichte, 2021, 14–18. [↩]
- Hans-Jürgen Pandel, Historisches Erzählen. Narrativität im Geschichtsunterricht. (Methoden Historischen Lernens). 2. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main 2015, 135, 159; Jörn Rüsen, Was ist Geschichtskultur? Überlegungen einer neuen Art, über Geschichte nachzudenken, in: Klaus Füßmann/Heinrich Theodor Grütter/Jörn Rüsen (Hrsg.), Historische Faszination. Geschichtskultur heute. Köln, Weimar, Wien 1994, 3–26. [↩]
- Translation by author. Jörn Rüsen, Historische Sinnbildung durch Erzählen. Eine Argumentationsskizze zum narrativistischen Paradigma der Geschichtswissenschaft und der Geschichtsdidaktik im Blick auf nicht-narrative Faktoren, in: Internationale Schulbuchforschung 18, 1996, 501–543. [↩]
- Johannes Meyer-Hamme/Cornelia Chmiel, Historisches Lernen – ein Beitrag zum geschichtskulturellen Wandel? Am Beispiel von Akteursperspektiven aus dem Projekt ”Geschichten in Bewegung”, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtsdidaktik 22, 2023, 100–115. [↩]
- Meyer-Hamme/Chmiel, 56. [↩]
- Papendick, Michael/Rees, Jonas/Scholz, Maren/Zick, Andreas, MEMO Jugendstudie 2023. Multidimensionaler Erinnerungsmonitor 2023, Berlin 2023, 37. Papendick, Michael/Rees, Jonas/Scholz, Maren/Zick, Andreas, MEMO. Multidimensionaler Erinnerungsmonitor Studie IV | 2021, Bielefeld 2021, 17. [↩]
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Laura Maria Niewöhner (26. September 2025). Learning about history in a digital world. “The Digital Logbook” as a research project and educational resource. DH Lab. Abgerufen am 23. Januar 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/14rbh