Research

Learning and thereby teaching plays an ever increasing role in our lives, especially if we include knowledge acquisition facing information overload and know-how acquisition with today's faster innovation cycles and product/process sophistication. For centuries, we have considered it appropriate to decouple learning from daily life and to emphasize it in specialized educational institutions. Increasingly, we find it important to re-connect learning with daily life. Learning happens at freely chosen times and locations, in the work-life and daily-life processes which stimulate us to learn: learning becomes ambient.

In the context of several projects around novel learning approaches in institutions (universities, enterprises), on the move, and at work, our main concern is a computer sophistication paradox. Many appliances and software components are well suited to effectively support teaching and learning processes. However, current solutions are often very complex and thus may easily distract the user's attention from the actual content. We research how this apparent contradiction between powerful hardware/software components and unobtrusive, non-distracting use can be resolved to lead to better learning and teaching support.

Below, we have listed our main research projects.

• Digital Lecture Hall (DLH): The Digital Lecture Hall is a scalable integrated solution for in-class presentation and interaction, combined with out of class interaction and rehearsal.
• Animal (Advanced Navigation and Interactive Modeling of Animations for Lectures): Animal is a general-purpose animation tool with a focus on algorithm animation. It is ideally prepared for exhibiting the dynamic behaviour of algorithms and data structures. To further improve the learning chances, elements for active engagement are integrated into Animal.

• Kai Höver

Former Research Members

• Dr. Michael Hartle
• Georg Turban
• Gundolf von Bachhaus
• Jana Abbing (Mgr.)
• Dr. Henning Bär
  
• Gina Häußge
  
• Martin Leidl