Virtual immersion in other language worlds

Language labs are so yesterday. Students now learn foreign languages via virtual reality and avatars. With the assistance of colleagues from LMU Munich, researchers and teachers at h_da have developed an innovative language learning app that should enable international students to learn German more efficiently via AI and virtual reality – and have more fun in the process! In parallel, new learning formats based on the “Deutsch-Uni Online (DUO)” learning platform were designed and tested at h_da’s Language Centre. The project was funded by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (“Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education Teaching”).

By Astrid Ludwig, 23.2.2026

Professor Paul Grimm from h_da’s Faculty of Media is convinced: “The best place to learn a foreign language is in the country itself.” But since that is not always possible, he and his doctoral student Andreas Fuchs set themselves the goal of giving learners of German at least the impression that they are sitting on a bus or in a café in Darmstadt, Munich, or Frankfurt, deep in conversation with the locals. “The idea was to develop an app that would allow students to immerse themselves in this language world in a completely authentic way,” says Grimm. Interactive roleplay in language courses is one option, but Grimm and Fuchs found that insufficient. Especially since Professor Grimm teaches virtual and augmented reality at h_da.

In close collaboration with the university’s language centre, his team developed an app that transports students into virtual worlds. Once they put on their VR headsets, language learners can meet up in a restaurant, cook a meal together, or chat with fellow German students: a pleasant atmosphere in which 3D avatars act as interlocuters and a wide variety of dialogues are generated and analysed using artificial intelligence. “A learning environment that offers protection and a feeling of security so that students can speak freely and without feeling nervous – and without worrying about making mistakes or even being laughed at,” explains Andreas Fuchs. What’s more, lecturers can easily create their own new teaching content and stories with the app.

Learning German with a VR headset is something completely new. This innovative approach is part of the project “DaF2L: Teaching and Learning German as a Foreign Language”, for which h_da was funded over two years by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (“Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education Teaching”) as part of the “Freiraum 2023” invitation to tender. Teachers from h_da’s Language Centre and its Faculty of Media worked together with colleagues from the Deutsch-Uni Online (DUO)/g.a.s.t. learning platform and LMU Munich. “The Language Centre at h_da was responsible for the practical part of LMU Munich’s tutor training,” explains project manager Dr Stefanie Morgret from the Language Centre. This enabled several Master’s students from LMU Munich’s “German as a Foreign Language” programme to participate in h_da’s German courses as online tutors during their in-person training period and to test and evaluate the new teaching methods developed on Media Campus.

h_da was awarded €390,000 to develop and test these new learning formats, work on the VR-based concepts and implement the practical part. “Funding that is otherwise extremely difficult to obtain,” reports Morgret, who works as a coordinator and teacher of German as a foreign language at h_da’s Language Centre. At the same time, she is also responsible for “Multilingualism and Interculturalism” within the “European University of Technology (EUT+)” alliance.

The overarching objective of the “DaF2L” project was to expand and upgrade opportunities for international students to learn German. At the same time, the aim was to further develop teachers’ skills and optimise teaching. But Stefanie Morgret and her colleague Uta Hameister are also hoping for another effect: “We want to compensate for the shortage of staff in this area of language teaching. It is especially difficult to find teachers of German as a foreign language,” they report.

h_da is one of the nine European universities in the EUT+ alliance, and German courses are greatly in demand among international students. That is why its Language Centre generally offers eleven “German as a Foreign Language” courses at any one time, in the shape of intensive and extensive courses. “We are seeing a distinct and growing demand for a more flexible course portfolio,” says project manager Morgret. For that reason, the Deutsch-Uni Online learning platform has also been used to test concepts with a greater proportion of tutorial teaching, which met with very positive feedback from international students, reports Morgret.

It is not just its virtual worlds that makes h_da’s new language tool particularly interesting. As Professor Paul Grimm and app developer Andreas Fuchs highlight, the team has created a supplementary web application that allows teachers to produce their own texts for language exercises. They can easily add and vary scenarios with the help of the editor function. “Teachers can also devise stories or dialogues specifically for different learning levels,” says Grimm. These are entered manually into the app and converted into learning formats within a few minutes. “In addition, they can generate further suggestions with the help of AI,” says Fuchs. This makes it very easy to adapt new stories, and learning situations are never the same or monotonous. “Learning becomes more exciting and varied,” Andreas Fuchs is convinced. The goal is always for international students to engage in conversation and improve their fluency.

The media team at h_da spent two years working on this app. First, they developed a prototype that has been continuously refined and can be upgraded further. “You can add new ideas and formats to the tool, as well as other languages,” says Fuchs. “It really is a creative space and, in combination with AI, very exciting for the language centre,” h_da expert Stefanie Morgret is happy to say.

In any case, students thoroughly enjoy classes with VR headsets, apps and avatars. They feel like they are immersed in real scenarios and environments, reports Morgret. “It’s completely different from learning from a book or on a screen; it’s more like conversing with a native speaker.” Students and teachers from LMU Munich provided extensive support for the project within the Media Didactics course. “The evaluation results were very positive,” reports Stefanie Morgret. “It’s a different way of working, really cutting-edge, and it opens up new possibilities, especially for teachers,” she says, summing up. The tool is very easy to apply in practice, even if some students have yet to accustom themselves to the VR headsets. “But the higher the level of learning, the greater the enthusiasm,” observes Uta Hameister.

In the meantime, the team has now successfully presented the DaF2L project to a wider audience at international conferences, most recently in Cyprus in February, as well as at a workshop and panel discussion at h_da. “We are receiving a lot of enquiries,” say Stefanie Morgret and Uta Hameister, delighted with the response. These enquiries are often from EUT+ universities, as it is possible to add other languages to the app: “We are very curious to see what new ideas and insights will emerge from this.”