ABOUT FIMARO
7. Semester / Bachelor thesis
Fimaro is a platform that supports teachers in the preparation of modern lessons by simplifying the material research. By taking a photo of a book page, suitable teaching material can be found quickly, giving the teacher an easy introduction to digital teaching.
Problem description and context: the "Digitalpakt"
Education matters to everybody and is currently on everyone's lips because of the „Digital Pakt“ adopted in March 2019. Financial support from the federal government is helping schools with digitalisation. Initially, the focus will be on setting up a digital infrastructure such as nationwide WLAN connections and the acquisition of digital terminal equipment.However, once they have been purchased, many schools lack a solution that enables teachers to prepare digital lessons and distribute digital materials efficiently to their students. Often, therefore, new equipment is simply purchased but not actively integrated into the classroom because digital solutions are missing. This is where we started with this bachelor thesis and developed a solution how teachers can use digital devices and especially be able to profitably integrate digital content into their lessons.
Research
All interviewees have in common that they would like to integrate digital content in their lessons, and in some cases they are already doing so, but the switch from analogue to digital teaching is very time-consuming and the search for material is often laborious, as appropriate content has to be gathered from a wide variety of sources. Furthermore, we have found out that many teachers estimate their preparation effort for research and material creation as high. One reason for this is that lessons must always be adapted to the progress of the class and are therefore usually planned at short notice. As the schoolbook is strongly orientated towards the associated curriculum, for that reason itserves as a central support for planning and preparing lessons.
How does Fimaro help teachers?
With the help of Fimaro, teachers can easily scan a book page or a worksheet with the camera of their tablet or smartphone to find suitable teaching content. For this we implemented an image recognition and an intelligent search algorithm. This combination can search for teaching materials such as quizzes, videos, audio content, interactive tasks or augmented reality content in our database and in the web. Therefore the text on the page will be recognised and then be checked for key words to compare these with the associated curriculum. The teacher can then link the provided content to the previously scanned page in the book (or worksheet) to give access to the students in his classroom.
Students App
Students can then access this content using their smartphone or tablet by scanning the relevant page with the Fimaro student application.
Here the contents are displayed in
Augmented Reality on the book (picture on the left) and can then be played or edited. This offers a new level of interaction with the learning content as well as digital technology.
By making learning exciting, we engage students to deal deeply with the content to improve learning naturally.
Fimaro - find material resources online
The result of this bachelor thesis is Fimaro - a prototypically implemented proof of concept of a platform for the digital preparation of lessons.
With the help of Fimaro, digital enhanced lessons can be implemented by any teacher. The platform is especially aimed at teachers with little affinity for technology and is intended to make the entry into semi-digital lessons as easy as possible.
By empathising with the problem areas of teachers and understanding the many hurdles of lesson preparation, a concept was created that was well received by teachers and students. Our interview partners were always open to the practical solution and were enthusiastic about how easy it is to access digital materials by taking a single photo.
Supervisor: Prof. Michael Schuster, Prof. Hans Krämer
Partners: Dominik Fink, Robin Deeg
Key Skills: User Research, Concept Ideation, Visual Design, Business Model