The seminar gave the students the opportunity to broaden their awareness of socio-political issues and to improve their own professional, methodological and social skills. It fell under the heading of "service learning", i.e. learning through community service. This new form of teaching and learning combines subject-specific learning in the classroom with civic action and has been well integrated into our university in recent years through numerous courses and workshops. The idea for a course with a focus on "inclusion" arose in an exchange with the staff unit that works to reduce barriers and increase equal opportunities at the university.
In the theoretical part of the module, students in the Geoinformation working group at the IGG first learned the basics as well as advanced algorithms for analyzing, processing and applying location-based data. The exercise accompanying the lecture gave them the opportunity to apply and deepen their newly acquired knowledge in practice. This hands-on process is a fundamental part of "service learning."
The students were divided into two working groups to develop the app. One group dealt with modeling the data in OSM (OpenStreetMap) and also created a "barrier-free" campus map for the Poppelsdorf campus based on floor plans and on-site surveys. The other group developed the so-called "routing framework" as well as the mobile application. The resulting demo version is thus not only applicable for the PC, but also for smartphones. After selecting their route, the users of the app can choose between two routing profiles and adjust the routing individually according to their needs.
Further information and the link to the demo version of the app can be found here (german).