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Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen »Cognitive Interfaces«


The Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Cognitive Interfaces (WCT) is an interdisciplinary research network of the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien and the University of Tübingen. It focuses on how thinking, acting and working in the context of digital media can be improved by designing human-computer interfaces. Apart from psychology, the fields of computer science, medicine, dentistry, didactics of biology, media science and education are also involved.

 

The development of information and communication technologies has made tremendous progress in the 21st century. Finding a phone number in Australia or getting a weather forecast for Timbuktu: What was done with considerable effort 30 years ago can be determined today within 30 seconds – even if you are on a forest walk. Digital technologies create an interface, which allows access to an enormous variety of information in real time. This interface supports how we think, what we know, how we decide and how we behave – so it is a cognitive interface in the sense that it can support cognitive processes in humans. Interfaces are also cognitive interfaces in a second sense, since they themselves increasingly have the properties of cognitive systems - they are more adaptive, form inferences and thus “participate“ in social and cognitive processes.

 

The potential of digital technologies is particularly promising in knowledge-intensive activities – these can be learning contexts, but also job-related use of cognitive interfaces. Following Drucker, we call such knowledge-intensive activities “knowledge work“.

 

The Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus “Cognitive Interfaces“ tackles the topic of the founding Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Informational Environments, but considers it in a much more strongly focused view. It focuses on the way in which the interface between an individual and his / her information environment must be designed to promote “knowledge work“ (knowledge acquisition, understanding, knowledge-building, knowledge exchange, problem solving, decision-making). Thus, it focuses on psychological and pedagogical constructs, as well as design aspects of the design of interfaces. This is an overlap with the research on the design of human-computer interaction (HCI), which is widely used in computer science.

 

The aim of the Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen Cognitive Interfaces is to bundle excellence and to carry out society-oriented and application-oriented research. Research within the network allows close strategic cooperation, the promotion of interdisciplinarity in topics, projects and methods, increases the visibility of Tübingen as an excellent research location and strengthens the scientific environment for research on the use of digital technologies.

Duration

07/2017 – 06/2020

 

Funding

  • Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts, Baden-Württemberg
  • Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien
  • University of Tübingen
  • Leibniz Association

 

Cooperations

University of Tübingen:

 

The University of Stuttgart is associated with the Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen with two projects:

 

 



Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen
»Informational Environments«

  • Duration: 2009 – 2016

 

Lifelong learning is no longer a mere idea but has become something most people in our society take for granted. However, lifelong learning is by no means limited to traditional, formal, and institutional contexts, but is increasingly found in informal contexts as well. Modern media, chief of all the World Wide Web, are perfectly suited for the latter type of learning. These developments are changing the educational landscape altogether. From this wealth of information at their hands, learners combine distinct elements according to their interests, needs, and abilities, which they access on a regular basis. This personalized subset of knowledge is called "informational environment."

 

The changed educational landscape described above has a number of characteristic properties that influence educational processes in a special way: a) an enormous variety of (sometimes conflicting) information and diverse media formats, taken from both formal and informal contexts; b) new possibilities to represent and process information, and c) the fact that learning processes are embedded into a social context. At the Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen Informational Environments, pivotal research questions concerning prerequisites for and obstacles to these developments and the design of media which are able to support educational processes in formal and informal contexts were addressed.

 

The Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen Informational Environments was the first Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus to be realized nationwide in the context of the identically named initiative by the Leibniz Association. The Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien along with the University of Tübingen initiated this interdisciplinary reseach network. Further partners were the Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, the University of Freiburg, and the Freiburg University of Education, and the Stuttgart Media University.

 

Its objective was to establish a denser network with a clear strategic focus to further the development of empirical educational research in Tübingen and to strengthen the scientific field dealing with this topic. For this purpose, the Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen bundled expertise from psychology, sociology, educational research, computer science, economics, media science, and medicine. In eight topic clusters comprising 27 projects overall, questions concerning knowledge-related processes influenced by digital media were addressed.



  

 

 

Funding

  • Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts, Baden-Württemberg
  • University of Tübingen
  • Leibniz Association

 

 

Cooperations

University of Tübingen:

 

External affiliates: