The Leibniz Graduate School for Knowledge Media Research

Maintaining a high standard of its research is one of the objectives of the KMRC. The Leibniz Graduate School for Knowledge Media Research is part of our efforts to create the best possible conditions for post-graduate researchers.

This is a program to deal with research topics on "Cooperative knowledge construction using social software" across different disciplines, jointly under the guidance of the KMRC research units on "Knowledge Construction" (Prof. Dr. Cress) and "Knowledge Exchange" (Prof. Dr. Hesse), also involving the research unit "Knowledge Acquisition with Cybermedia" of Prof. Dr. Schwan and the Psychological Institute of the University of Tuebingen, represented by Prof. Dr. Diehl and Prof. Dr. Heller, as well.

Doctoral students in Psychology and Information Sciences will receive a scholarship (grant) for three years. The idea of the Leibniz Graduate School is that these graduates (who possess diploma or master degrees) should work on high-class doctoral dissertations, covering both fundamental and applied research. The Leibniz Graduate School was launched in July, 2008.

Focus: Social Software
The term social software refers to technologies and tools in virtual environments, like the Internet, which allow collaborative knowledge exchange and construction of new knowledge. These applications include tools for the cooperative creation of texts (wikis), for exchanging resources (file-sharing, social bookmarking, social tagging) and social networking (facebook, myspace). These very recent developments are relevant for understanding new processes of human-information interaction, using Web-based applications. Systematic research in this field will offer great opportunities for the integration of different schools and methods of research.

Postgraduate projects in the framework of the Leibniz Graduate School will cover the following dimensions of social software: