Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus „Informational Environments“ (2010 –2016)
The Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen „Informational Environments“ was founded in January 2010 and ran on this issue for three funding phases until December 2016. Since July 2017, it is continued with an emphasis on “Cognitive Interfaces”.
Interdisciplinarity
The Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus “Informational Environments” aimed to create an interdisciplinary network in order to promote scientific excellence in the field of empirical education research. It offered an excellent motivation for the strategic development of science at the science location Tübingen.In the WCT, synergies between cooperation partners were used to address research questions, which substantially extended the scientific competence of the partners involved. Thus, by bundling expertise from psychology, educational sciences, computer sciences, media studies, medicine, sociology, sports science, and economics, the WCT performed duties, which could not be carried out by the single partner institutions alone
Furthermore, interdisciplinarity is reflected in the 31 so called “cross-publications”, which were created at the WCT until 2016.
Structure
In the three funding phases the personnel composition and the thematic focus of the WCT “Informational Environments” changed.In the first funding phase (2010–2012), the WCT consisted of 11 clusters, 29 subprojects and 64 persons (22 PhD students).
After realignment in the second funding phase (2013–2014), the WCT included 8 clusters with 27 subprojects and 72 persons (23 PhD students)
Finally, 8 clusters with 24 subprojects and 54 persons (17 PhD students) were involved in the third funding phase (2015–2016).
Through the 7 years 106 persons including 41 PhD students in total participated in the WCT “Informational Environments”.Scientific communication
In the WCT, 198 publications were released:102 Journal articles
49 Proceedings
41 Book chapters
6 Monographs
31 publications are so called “cross-publications”, which were transdisciplinary published by scientists of at least two departments. The disciplines involved are psychology with sports science, medicine, communication science, economy, computer science, medicine didactics, sociology, educational science as well as lifelong learning and empirical education research.
Book “Informational Environments” (2017)
The research of the WCT is summed up in a monograph with chapters being contributed by the 8 clusters of the third funding phase. Furthermore, Roger Azevedo, Phil Winne, and Arthur Graesser, three high level US colleagues who cooperated with the WCT, provided one chapter each. The book discusses the effects of the use of informational environments and their effective designs in terms of cognitive, motivational-affective and social-interactive aspects.Buder, J., & Hesse, F. W. (Eds.). (2017). Informational environments: Effects of use, effective designs. New York: Springer. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
Internal and external communication
From 2010–2016, 15 meetings of the whole WissenschaftsCampus, 7 workshops for PhD students, 2 PhD retreats, and 2 international summer schools on the topics “Making Sense of Social Media” (2011) and “Self-Regulation in a Digital World” (2014) were organized on top of numerous meetings of the separate clusters.Furthermore, the research of the WCT was presented to the public in numerous reports, brochures and flyers as well as in an image film and with the popular scientific journal “Wissensdurst”.
Strategic Impact
The WCT “Informational Environments” was engaged in a variety of activities at the Tübingen location and resulted in further activities:Excellence Initiative: Many partners of the WCT Tübingen were involved in the Graduate School and the research network LEAD of the University of Tübingen, which are part of the excellence initiative of the federal and state governments. Furthermore, the WCT was presented as an important part of the research landscape in Tübingen at the successful acquisition of the future concept “Research – Relevance – Responsibility”.
Education location Tübingen: The development of the education location Tübingen was accelerated through further measures. These include the participation of partners of the WCT in the newly established Tübinger School of Education (TüSE) and the establishment of the TüDiLab (Tübingen Digital Teaching Lab), a joint laboratory of the IWM and the University of Tübingen.
Further projects and initiatives in Tübingen: A series of follow-up projects emerged from the Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus “Informational Environments”. These include for example:
Digital Learning Map (2017–2020, BMBF)
Open Teach (2017–2020, BMBF)
“Ubiquitous working: Challenges and prospects of the interconnected working environment” (in cooperation with ZEW, 2014 – 2018, Leibniz-SAW)
Validation of the information potential: Ideas-to-Market (2016–2019)
IWM Junior project group “Collective Biases” (2017–2019, Leibniz Association)
Tübinger Institut für Lerntherapie as a spin-off from Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Tübingen