For their cooperative project "Experiencing biodiversity. How nature research benefits from interactive web maps on your own doorstep", the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde (IfL), the Dachverband Deutscher Avifaunisten (DDA) and the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM) were honored as official projects of the UN Decade on Biodiversity at the end of October. The initiative launched by the United Nations is designed to counteract the worldwide decline in natural diversity.

"Experiencing Biodiversity" is one of 13 projects for the promotion of citizen science projects for which the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) provided about 5 million euros in funding from 2018 to 2021. In the joint project, the scientists have developed the web portal ornitho-regioportal.de for the analysis of ornithological observation data with extensive citizen science support. In order to ensure that this data can be used and evaluated by the public, the Realistic Depictions lab of the IWM attached great importance to the most intuitive handling possible when developing the user interface. The online tool is  supposed to be accessible as free software by other Citizen-Science projects.

In its statement, the jury was impressed by the idea, the implementation and the results of the joint project and praised the commitment to the preservation of biological diversity in Germany. Further information on the project

What could be an efficient use of digital media in science teaching?
This question is the focus of the project "Kolleg Didaktik:digital" of the Joachim Herz Foundation, which aims to implement digital media in teacher training. To this end, it brings together experienced professors of science didactics (Senior Fellows) with young professionals from these disciplines (Junior Fellows). Since March 2020, IWM doctoral student Salome Wörner has been accepted as a "Junior Fellow" at the fellowship programme. As one of 17 doctoral candidates and postdocs from all over Germany, she convinced the jury of her project "Orchestration of Real and Virtual Experiments". The admission to the research training group is accompanied by a grant of 10,000 euros for the realization of her research project. It concerns the question of how real and virtual experiments can be combined in a didactically efficient way in science lessons. The digital tools are not intended to replace the analogue working methods in research-based learning, but to expand, supplement and support them. "In addition to financial support, the Fellowship programme includes numerous workshops and regular meetings where the Junior Fellows can exchange ideas with the Senior Fellows and benefit from their experience – this advice and support in implementing my project represents the greatest added value for me", Salome Wörner said about the programme.

The Leibniz WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen (WCT) was established 10 years ago as an interdisciplinary research network between the IWM and the University of Tübingen. Since 2018, the University of Stuttgart has also been an associated partner of the WCT. On Friday, May 15, the end of this successful and research-intensive period was celebrated with a virtual festive event at which around 100 participants gathered online.
The online ceremony was opened by Prof. Dr. Ulrike Cress, spokeswoman of the research network and director of the IWM. She spoke about the development of the WCT, the ideas it had pursued and which path the research would take in the future. Virtual greetings were given by Prof. Dr. Bernd Engler, Rector of the University of Tübingen, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Kleiner, President of the Leibniz Association, Prof. Dr. Nikol Rummel, Chairwoman of the WCT's Scientific Advisory Board, and Ulrich Steinbach, Ministerial Director and Head of Department in the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts of Baden-Württemberg.
The keynote was given by Prof. Dr. Kristian Kiili from Tampere University of Technology in Finland, whose research focuses on the advantages and challenges of digital educational games. His presentation linked up with the work of the WCT scientists who had researched on cognitive interfaces in the previous years. The WCT research was concentrated on investigating how these interfaces between man and machine should be designed in order to encourage knowledge acquisition, understanding and exchange.
All contributions, greetings and project presentations on the WCT research are now available and can be viewed on the event website www.cognitiveinterfaces.de.

After Prof. Dr. Korbinian Moeller had leaded the IWM junior research group Neuro-cognitive Plasticity since 2013, he successfully completed this qualification phase with a call to Loughborough University in Great Britain. Since April, he has held a professorship in mathematical cognition and will continue to work on the cognitive and neural basics of the acquisition and development of mathematical skills. At the IWM, his research focused particularly on game-based applications for learning numerical skills. The work of his group has been widely appreciated. Moeller looks back on a productive time: His group has published 153 papers and received 14 awards in the past seven years. „We congratulate Korbinian Moeller, who has led his junior research group at the IWM very successfully with great commitment, and we wish him for his further academic career all the best", said IWM Director Ulrike Cress at the farewell ceremony.

What happens in our brain when we write letters and numbers? Stefanie Jung from the Junior Research Group Neurocognitive Plasticity of the IWM answered this question in her defense of her doctoral thesis on March 4. In her thesis, she uses various empirical studies to present both the differences between the cognitive processes involved in writing letters and numbers and the shared writing processes.

“We found that identical brain regions are activated for the motor planning and executions of writing movements when we write numbers and letters. These regions, however, integrate the input from specific brain networks,” explained Stefanie Jung. The results provide a better understanding of impairments such as dyslexia and dyscalculia and enable the development of appropriate intervention options. The doctoral student also showed how the use of a keyboard influenced writing processes in children. When children typed on a keyboard in the experiment, their case sensitivity dropped compared to handwriting due to the additional motor component required when pressing the shift key. Linguistic processes such as the recognition of double consonants and rule knowledge remained unaffected. "In the digital age, this knowledge is essential regarding the development of orthographic and arithmetic skills," said Stefanie Jung after her successful defence.

By resolution of the Joint Science Conference (GWK), the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien is granted additional funding for the expansion of its research. The establishment of a research network on human-agent interaction will begin this year, followed in 2021 by the new lab Data Science. At the end of the build-up phase in 2022, the IWM will then receive additional permanent grants of around 1.2 million Euros per year.

With this expansion, the Institute is reacting to the rapid growth of Big Data. For the analysis of knowledge acquisition, the complex data sets offer enormous potential: They enable processes of human information processing, for example on social media, to be examined comprehensively and directly in the application context.
The new IWM lab Data Science is therefore dedicated to the goal of rendering large amounts of data interpretable and researching new evaluation methods such as AI-based systems. It combines specific knowledge from psychology, communication science and neuroscience with approaches of computer science and methods of statistics. The group is headed by a W3-professorship in cooperation with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Tübingen. In addition, the establishment of a network on Human-Agent Interaction is also part of the project. Its research subjects are the acceptance and user behaviour when interacting with intelligent voice assistants.

"We are pleased that the GWK supports the expansion of the IWM", Director Prof. Dr. Ulrike Cress welcomes the decision. "By continuously researching the potential of Big Data for knowledge processes, we provide decisive impulses for a society that is further challenged and transformed by digital media".

What does physics lessons have to do with the magic classes at Hogwarts? Quite a bit, according to Salome Woerner. The IWM doctoral student combined her research with Harry Potter magic at the Science Slam of the Tübingen PhD Days on February 19. As one of five young researchers, the physicist and educationalist enchanted the packed auditorium of the Kupferbau. In ten-minute contributions on linguistics, the secret life of ponds and data fairies, the speakers competed for the loudest applause from the audience.

At the beginning of her slam “Expelliarmus and Experiments”, Salome Wörner explained why experiments of physic lessons are similar to the magic ones in Harry Potter: “They are not always understandable, often lead to chaos in the classroom or fail entirely.” But to make sure that children leave the classroom just as clever as model witch student Hermine Granger, Wörner is currently investigating in her dissertation at the IWM how experiments can be made more accessible. Her studies on different teaching concepts show that combinations of traditional hands-on experiments with virtual simulations are particularly helpful for knowledge acquisition. The virtual experiments can primarily illustrate invisible processes such as light refraction and are also interactive. Even if it wasn't enough to win first place in the slam at the end of the evening, the IWM doctoral candidate's evocative Harry Potter analogies provided many "Lumos" moments.  

On 1 January, Dr. Markus Huff was appointed to a W3 professorship at the University of Tübingen. In addition to managing the Applied Cognitive Psychology research group at the Department of Psychology, he will also be head of the Knowledge Exchange Lab at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM). "Prof. Huff will continue the successful work here and at the same time introduce innovative topics," emphasizes IWM Director Prof. Dr. Ulrike Cress.

The cognitive psychologist had already worked as a research assistant at the Tübingen IWM from 2004 to 2010 before being appointed Junior Professor of General Psychology at the Eberhard Karls University. "This background and his dual function qualify Prof. Huff to further promote the exchange and cooperation between the non-university IWM and the university's Department of Psychology and, as a result, to enrich the work of both institutions," stresses Prof. Cress. She also thanks the provisional head of the Knowledge Exchange Lab, Dr. Jürgen Buder.

In his research, Markus Huff is interested in the question of how people learn and acquire knowledge with dynamic media - a focus that the Knowledge Exchange Lab at the IWM is also dedicated to. As the subsequent head, Markus Huff will further develop the lab and add individual research topics to it. In the future, for example, the team will investigate how processes of knowledge exchange can be supported with methods of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Tübingen, with its diverse university and non-university research institutions, is an ideal location for interdisciplinary work on these important topics, explains the new head.

Markus Huff studied psychology and computer science at the University of Tübingen where he received his doctorate in 2007. In the past two years, he worked as head of the Research Infrastructure Department at the German Institute for Adult Learning (DIE) in Bonn.

At the end of the year, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Cress visited the cultural centre Urania in Berlin in the context of a lecture series of the Leibniz Association to address one of 2019 central questions in digitisation: How is knowledge created in times of Wikipedia and eco chambers?

“Before digitisation, knowledge was mainly imparted by experts. Now it is often collaboratively generated online but also influenced by the subjective convictions of the communities,” Prof. Cress provocatively emphasized at the beginning of her lecture. In the following, the head of the IWM illustrated knowledge construction processes using Wikipedia. Due to the the highly dynamic exchange and the rigid rules of the Wiki community, articles are created which in terms of their quality come close to entries of the renowned Britannica Encyclopaedia. Yet, Wikipedia is not completely neutral. Knowledge systems mirror the norms of their respective community and draw people into their own set of rules, as do other online encyclopaedias like Metapedia and Conservapedia. Cress pointed out: “In order to secure a high level of quality, knowledge construction needs friction, dialogue and disruptive algorithms.”