Project “Learning the use of AI to foster the communication between Danubians”

22-24 July 2025

Short Resume

In July 2025, 19 students from German-speaking schools in Odessa, Ukraine, and Sofia, Bulgaria, met in Ulm, Germany, together with German pupils and volunteers. During a three-day workshop, they learned how to conduct effective interviews with experts on five selected sustainability goals and how to use new digital tools, especially AI, to make the content engaging and to translate it into other languages. The aim was to ensure that the interviews could be discussed without language barriers.

Before the workshop, the students completed an online course on interview techniques in Ulm. After an introduction by an expert, they were divided into five mixed-nationality groups.

Day 1: Introduction to ViMA Danube and other useful digital tools.

Day 2: The students worked in their groups to conduct five-minute, video-based interviews with experts in Ulm and share their findings. The experts came from politics, municipalities, business, and the social and cultural sectors.

Day 3: The students learned, with guidance from an external expert, how to edit videos and apply AI tools such as subtitles and avatars to make the content accessible in English, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian. They used HeyGen, an AI tool for processing video sequences and generating multilingual subtitles.

They presented their AI-enhanced interviews and discussed the results with teachers and other students at Schubart Gymnasium, demonstrating how AI translation can help share valuable insights on the SDGs across the Danube region.

After the summer break, the students from Odessa and Sofia will present the project in their home schools. The interviews will be uploaded to the ViMA Danube platform and discussed in the forum “Implementing sustainability goals in daily life to promote democracy?”. This will ensure the exchange continues beyond the project and that the new digital tools are applied further.

Key goals: Raising awareness of sustainability goals and equipping students with AI skills to break language barriers and foster international dialogue.

Sponsor

“The project is sponsored by the DANUBE SMALL PROJECT FUND funded by: The Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg, the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of Austria, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft (ARGE) Donauländer / State of Lower Austria, the Provincial Government of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina within the Republic of Serbia, the City of Regensburg, the Danube Office Ulm / Neu-Ulm and the Volksbank Ulm Biberach“