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- Projects
- "Knowledge and Information Awareness" for Fostering the Efficiency of Net-based Collaborative Problem Solving of Spatially Distributed Group Members
- Augmented Group Awareness Tools for Collaborative Learning
- Awareness in Social Software
- Innovative Digital Video Technologies for Collaborative Design Tasks in German Classes - Conditions for Effective Cooperation and Learning
- Knowledge Awareness for supporting the identification of solution-relevant case features
- Mediated Body Awareness & Multi-sensory Body Representation
- Mental models of digital video tools of teachers in training: An approach to the didactic integration of digital media in the classroom
- Social Navigation & Recommender Systems: Effects on Individual Learning
- Supporting Collaborative Multimedia Learning
- Supporting Interest and Knowledge Exchange through Mobile Devices and Interest Trails in Informal Settings
- Tacit Visitor-Oriented Guidance
- The role of shared mental models in learning through design with digital media
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Knowledge Exchange Lab
This lab deals with innovative net-based communication scenarios that have no direct equivalent in conventional learning environments. Examples for this kind of scenarios are knowledge exchange during collaborative design of digital video and net-based knowledge exchange in distributed groups. In contrast to well explored approaches that explicitly structure the interaction between group members via instruction, the lab Knowledge Exchange brings its studies on implicit design mechanisms in the focus of research. Implicit approaches act on the assumption that exchange between communication partners not always requires structuring by explicit instructions, but is highly influenced by the respective situational condition, in particular by the affordances of communication tools. These communication tools determine which communicative activities are available to communication partners to express themselves. They also determine the extent of information that communication partners have at their disposal. Two groups within this lab investigate the implicit design principles that make knowledge exchange efficient and beneficial for learning:
Knowledge Exchange and Knowledge Building During Visual Design Activities
In this group, we investigate visual design activities, such as collaborative multimedia design based on digital video, photos, graphics, and text. Visual design activities are "rhetorical problems", which are comparable to writing problems on the one hand, and general design problems on the other. Their solution depends on the complex interaction of social, cognitive and technical factors implicitly influencing design processes. In a series of empirical projects, we focus on these influencing factors and their impact on collaboration during design tasks. We conduct research on how learners exchange knowledge during visual design processes and how they select, integrate, and discuss visual information. Our projects relate to two areas of application: first, collaborative design tasks involving advanced digital video technologies in school-based education, and second, related strategies for supporting informal learning with digital media in museums (opinion formation, interest and knowledge construction).
Knowledge Exchange by Means of Group Awareness Tools
This group deals with the analysis, development and experimental evaluation of communication tools that provide interacting partners with context information (so-called Group Awareness Tools). It focuses on gathering and visualizing cognitive information that is usually not available in face-to-face groups (e.g. attitudes, preferences, degree of knowledge), thereby contributing an additional benefit to computer-based communication scenarios. This research perspective contrasts other group awareness approaches that emphasize barriers and pitfalls of net-based communication and thus suggest a rather deficit-oriented view on this form of communication. In the scope of seven projects, Group Awareness Tools are developed that differ along several dimensions such as type, assessment, processing, and presentation of context information.