As part of DNR, the interdisciplinary transferable skills course “Die schlimmste Nachricht gut überbringen. Entwicklung eines Trainingmoduls für Polizisten zur Überbringung von Todesnachrichten“ (delivering bad news well - developing a training module for police officers tasked with delivering death notifications), was offered by Kirsten Mahlke and Melanie Brand in the summer semester of 2017. It provided students with an opportunity to actively participate in the development of the blended learning module for police officers. The overall aim of the project was to edit and prepare scientific knowledge generated by relevant cultural and sociological studies - , e.g. on topics such as death and society, grieving, interactions between the citizens and the state (bureaucracy), crisis communication - for long-term application in social contexts. In terms of service learning, the students were able to experience and shape the knowledge transfer process as it unfolded.
Besides discussing the relevant secondary literature, they were prepared for conducting and evaluating guided, qualitative interviews. The seminar participants were free to choose whichever interview partner they preferred. The only condition they had to meet was that the interviewees should belong to the professional group of “death workers”, i.e. individuals used to dealing with death, grief and affected relatives in a professional capacity. As a result, interviews were conducted with police officers, priests, doctors and paramedics, a control centre official, a hospice staff member, an undertaker as well as a relative who had received a death notification from the police. In those cases where permission was granted, the interviews were recorded. In all other cases, the interviews were later put to paper from memory and with the help of written notes. The recorded interviews were later carefully transcribed by the seminar participants and coded by topic.
One important aspect of the blended learning course is to enable police officers training to deliver death notifications with responsibility by offering them insight into other perspectives. To that end, various video and audio clips as well as text files taken from the student’s interviews with death workers and relatives have been added to the “voices” category.
Once the interviews had been classified, the students chose characteristic passages suitable for publication in the “voices” category. The passages were narrated and recorded by the course participants in the University of Konstanz’s media laboratory.
Listen to a few of the recordings listed below to get a first impression: