Executive Director
Executive Director, Head of the Knowledge Construction Lab and the e-teaching-Transfer Lab, Provisional Head of the Multiple Representations Lab
Ulrike Cress has been director of the IWM since 2017. She has been a W3 professor at the University of Tübingen in the Department of Psychology since 2008 and heads the Knowledge Construction lab at the IWM.
With her Knowledge Construction lab, she focuses on social and cognitive psychological processes that are relevant to the collaborative construction and use of knowledge. Much of her work serves to further develop the cognitive-systemic "co-evolution model for individual learning and collaborative knowledge construction" (Cress & Kimmerle, 2008). It is applied, for example, in mass collaboration (e.g., collaborative writing in Wikipedia), in science communication, or in participatory decision-making by doctors and patients. Recently, the model has been extended to hybrid knowledge constructions between humans and AI.
Ulrike Cress has conducted numerous projects on a range of topics related to digital learning in schools and universities, as well as on informal learning contexts such as Citizen Science, Search as Learning, or knowledge construction with social media. These projects have been funded by e.g. the EU, DFG, BMBF, the federal states of BW, NRW, HE and the Leibniz Competition.
Ulrike Cress has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and edited nine books, including the International Handbook of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, which was published in 2021. She is also an Executive Co-Editor of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Learning (2022 IF=4.3). In 2022, she was named an ISLS Fellow by the International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Ulrike Cress has been a member of the Standing Scientific Commission of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (SWK) since its establishment in 2021. Its task is to advise the Länder on issues relating to the further development of the education system and the challenges it faces, in particular with regard to ensuring and enhancing quality, improving the comparability of education systems, and developing medium- to long-term strategies on education issues of relevance to the Länder as a whole.
Since June 2022, Ulrike Cress has been Co-Director of the Tübingen LEAD Graduate School & Research Network.
Since 2018, she has been Deputy Chair of the Board of the Deutsche Telekom Stiftung, which advocates for quality education in the digital world.
Ulrike Cress is a member of the Speaker Group of the Leibniz Research Network Educational Potentials (LERN). She is also a member of several advisory boards and committees: the program committee of the Virtual Hochschule Bayern (vhb), the Leibniz-Kolleg Tübingen, and the German Literature Archive Marbach (DLA). In 2020, she was appointed to the German Commission for UNESCO, where she served for 3 years. From 2021 to 2023, she was a member of the Communication and Information Committee of the German Commission for UNESCO.
For her socially relevant work, Ulrike Cress 2024 received the Order of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg, awarded by the Minister President Winfried Kretschmann.
Schleichstr. 6
72072 Tübingen
Room 6.411
+49 7071 979-209u.cress@iwm-tuebingen.deProjects with a current term and projects that have taken place in the last 5 years are shown.
Knowledge Construction lab
Duration 05/2021 - 04/2024
Go to Projecte-teaching Transfer lab
Duration 04/2023 - 03/2026
Go to ProjectKnowledge Construction lab
Duration 01/2023 - 12/2025
Go to ProjectKnowledge Construction lab
Duration 07/2020 - 09/2025
Go to ProjectKnowledge Construction lab
Duration 01/2019 - 12/2021
Go to ProjectMultimodal Interaction lab - e-teaching Transfer lab
Duration 04/2023 - 09/2025
Go to ProjectKnowledge Construction lab
Duration 09/2018 - 12/2023
Go to ProjectKnowledge Construction lab
Duration 01/2022 - 12/2024
Go to ProjectKnowledge Construction lab
Duration 01/2016 - 03/2024
Go to Projecte-teaching Transfer lab
Duration 02/2023 - 06/2026
Go to Projecte-teaching Transfer lab
Duration 11/2022 - 10/2024
Go to ProjectKnowledge Construction lab - e-teaching Transfer lab
Duration 01/2024 - 12/2026
Go to ProjectMultimodal Interaction lab - e-teaching Transfer lab
Duration 07/2023 - 02/2026
Go to ProjectArticles (peer-reviewed) | Books and book chapters | Position papers and statements | Research data | Other publications
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