The present study examined the effectiveness of the oral history approach with respect to students' historical competence. A total of 35 ninth-grade classes (N = 900) in Germany were randomly assigned to one of four conditions--live, video, text, or a (nontreated) control group--in a pretest, posttest, and follow-up design. Comparing the three intervention groups with the control group, the intervention groups scored better on four of the five achievement tests. Comparing the live group with the video and text groups, students in the live condition were more convinced of their learning progress at both measurement points. However, they scored lower than the video/text group on two achievement measures and higher on one at the posttest.