External funding

Current projects

Digital technologies gain autonomy and meet humans in more and more places in various physical forms, for instance as self-driving vehicles, robots, and drones, but also as avatars and other smart agents with virtual bodies. Digital technologies do also connect more often to the human body as digitally augmented prosthetics, exoskeletons, and virtual reality goggles, for example. Such technologies are embodied digital technologies (EDTs). Autonomously acting EDTs and humans sharing real or virtual environments as well as humans wearing EDTs or operating artificial bodies create hybrid societies. For efficient and smooth interaction in hybrid societies, human capabilities and technological possibilities have to be analyzed with specific foci and matched in novel ways. To this end, social sciences, humanities, and engineering disciplines have to join forces. The collaborative research of these disciplines on human-machine interaction is exceptionally strong at Chemnitz University of Technology. The CRC Hybrid Societies gathers the local expertise around a core in psychology and creates an international center for empirical investigation, analysis, and development that are urgently needed to ensure the most beneficial coexistence of living and synthetic bodies in the imminent hybrid societies. The CRC’s two leading research questions are: What is required so that humans can coordinate with EDTs as smoothly as with conspecifics? And: How to design EDTs to meet these requirements? For smooth coordination in shared environments, perceiving general capabilities and situation-specific intentions of interaction partners as well as predictable and cooperative action control are needed on the sides of both humans and EDTs. Accordingly, research in the CRC is grouped in four connected research areas: (A) Embodied Sensor and Motor Capabilities encompasses sensing, predicting, and executing movements when coordinating and interacting with EDTs. (B) Artificial Bodies comprises attributing capabilities to EDTs based on the appearance of their artificial bodies and their behavior as well as experiencing artificial bodies as substitutes or extensions of the human body. (C) Shared Environments targets joint attention, spatial orientation, and coordinated behavior of humans and EDTs. Fourth, (D) Intentionality in Hybrid Societies focuses on the attribution and communication of situationspecific intentions between humans and EDTs. Thus, the CRC Hybrid Societies comprehensively addresses looming societal challenges. It arises from collaborative research projects and infrastructure in the university’s core competencies Humans and Technology, and Materials and Intelligent Systems, and will strengthen and expand them substantially - also via the CRC's integrated and internationally embedded research training group - to form a future-oriented and internationally recognized science center that generates sound scientific results ensuring beneficial hybrid societies.

More informations to this projects can you get here.

EU Fairplay
The joint project EU-FairPlay will substantially contribute to strengthening educational research and practice by strategically networking experts from different disciplines and further developing the state of the art of Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) with a special focus on educational equity. The planned joint project bridges a gap by bringing together national and international experts from the fields of Educational Technologies, Game Research, and Educational Research through a long-term network and by developing a common agenda on the question: How can educational equity be achieved in and with DGBL, by utilizing its new technological potential? The focus here is on collaborative research and practice that is sustainable and effective. The project activities (or actions) are complemented by comprehensive, recipient-oriented dissemination of the network content, which includes both informal and formal teaching and learning across all stages of education with digital game formats.

More informations to this projects can you get here.

Completed projects

	The chair is involved in the Research Training Group "Connecting Virtual and Real Social Worlds" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The Research Training Group is concerned with interfaces between virtual and real spaces of social experience from a technology-oriented perspective grounded in media research methodology. The fields of communication, emotion, sensomotorics and learning are investigated by research teams, each consisting of a social scientist and a computer scientist.
	In cooperation with the professorship of Applied Functional Analysis from TU Chemnitz, an in-sessional e-learning course will be designed and evaluated. This course will be offered in order to reduce study discontinuations in mathematics. For this, aspects of instructional psychology and teaching methodology are taken into account. Entitled with “Digitalization of teaching in mathematics”, this European Social Fund project was first funded until 2017. The project was extended for 2018 with the purpose to adapt new mathematical courses to foreign students.
	The chair successfully acquired funding for a teaching and learning project within the joint research project "Lehrpraxis im Transfer (transferring teaching practice)" of Saxon universities. The project is conducted in cooperation with the chair Educational Technologies and the Media Center of the faculty of education at TU Dresden and is funded by the Center for Didactics in Higher Education of Saxony. The teaching and learning project “ID4EM – instructional design for educational management” aims to accomplish the collaborative production of open learning resources in the context of a multi-university course cooperation.
	The influence of anthropomorphism and emotional valence in decorative pictures on learning with media Experimentally confirmed design principles for multimedia learning environments are primarily based on the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML). These theories emphasize the limitation of the working memory and a potential cognitive overload of learners, which should be prevented by an appropriate design of instructional media. For example, it is postulated to avoid decorative pictures in learning materials. The intended use of decorative pictures is to provide an aesthetic appeal rather than present learning-relevant information. Recent empirical studies have shown that decorative pictures improve rather than reduce learning performance under certain conditions. In the proposed project, the level of anthropomorphism and emotional valence of decorative pictures are considered as central factors of influence. Anthropomorphism is defined as the mental transfer of human characteristics, motivations, intentions and emotions to non-human beings or artefacts. In contrast, valence refers to the content or the value of a presented emotion. Prior research results concerning these two variables indicate that anthropomorphism and emotional valence are closely intertwined. However, these two variables have not been systematically investigated in regard to potential interaction effects regarding their use in decorative pictures. It can be postulated that a higher degree of anthropomorphism in decorative pictures as well as decorative pictures inducing a positive valence lead to higher states of motivation and thereby improve learning. In a series of experiments (N = 160 per experiment) consisting of two laboratory and two field experiments, a 2x2 factorial between-subject design with the factors emotional valence (neutral vs. positive) and the degree of anthropomorphism (low vs. high) of decorative pictures and an additional control group without decorative pictures will be used to analyze these postulations. In a first step, two preliminary studies with 52 participants each are planned to validate the levels of both factors. Subsequently, the first and the third experiment will be conducted with university students under laboratory conditions including physiological measurements, while the second and the fourth experiment take place at school computer rooms. Cognitive load, motivation, emotion as well as retention and transfer learning scores will be measured. The learning materials of the first and the second experiment deal with the fundamentals of proteins as important components of life, whereas the third and the fourth experiment will cover the characteristics and definitions of life. The results of these experiments should thereby provide important insides into the effects of designing learning materials with decorative pictures.
	Bienen gehören zu den wichtigsten Nutztieren, weil sie durch die Bestäubung der Pflanzen und Bäume maßgeblich zum Erhalt der Vielfalt der Flora beitragen. Ohne Bienen hätten wir beispielsweise knapp zwei Drittel weniger Äpfel, Birnen und Kirschen. Neben den Honigbienen helfen insbesondere deren vielen Menschen unbekannte „Wilde Schwestern“ entscheidend bei dieser wichtigen Aufgabe – im Gegensatz zu Honigbienen jedoch ohne den Schutz eines Bienenstocks und die Pflege durch Hobby oder Berufsimkerinnen und -imker. Wie zahlreiche Medienberichte zeigen, sind die Lebensräume von Wildbienen aktuell zunehmend bedroht, einige Arten sind bereits ausgestorben und die daraus entstehenden Konsequenzen für den Ernteertrag kritisch. Unser Modellprojekt BeeLife möchte dieser Entwicklung entgegenwirken und ein nachhaltig ökologisches Bewusstsein für die hohe Relevanz von Wildbienen für unser Ökosystem und deren Schutz schaffen. Dem Zitat von Konrad Lorenz folgend „Man liebt nur, was man kennt und man schützt nur, was man liebt.“ steht dabei der persönliche Bezug zu der Thematik im Vordergrund, der durch den virtuellen Charakter einer ausgewählten Wildbiene in einer mobilen App erreicht werden soll, die gleichsam wie ein Haustier versorgt und gepflegt wird. Das wesentliche Ziel besteht darin, durch ökologisch umsichtiges Handeln gute Lebensbedingungen für die eigene Wildbiene zu schaffen. Unsere neuartige Verbindung eines digitalen Mediums mit handlungsorientierten Projektwerkstätten eignet sich in besonderer Weise dazu, die Konsequenzen des eigenen Handelns in der sozialen Welt direkt in der virtuellen Welt zu erfahren. Unser Vorhaben richtet sich bewusst an eine junge Zielgruppe, Schülerinnen und Schüler in den Klassestufen fünf und sechs, um in den Erwachsenen von morgen ein Verantwortungsgefühl zu schaffen, das sie dann beispielsweise als spätere Landwirtinnen und -wirte zum achtsamen Umgang mit Pestiziden bewegt oder als Hobbygärtnerinnen und -gärtner zu einer insektenfreundlichen Blühpflanzenwahl animiert. Konkrete Schritte des Vorhabens umfassen dabei neben der inhaltlich-didaktischen Konzeption der mobilen App und deren technischer Implementierung die Konzeption, didaktische Aufbereitung und Umsetzung der Projektwerkstätten. Beides erfolgt in enger Abstimmung mit den beteiligten Schulen, um durch die Anpassung an die Gegebenheiten vor Ort eine nachhaltige Verortung des Konzepts im Schulleben zu erreichen und perspektivisch auch eine Ausweitung auf Nachbarschulen anzuregen. Ein starker Fokus auf die begleitende Öffentlichkeitsarbeit trägt ebenfalls dazu bei, den Projektgedanken zu verbreiten und aus der beantragten Modellphase heraus einen flächendeckenden Einsatz sowie die inhaltliche Erweiterung zu erreichen. Kooperation mit der Abteilung Lehren und Lernen mit intelligenten Systemen an der Universität Stuttgart.
	Strengthening metacognition and motivation of students through individualized smart personal assistants The digital form of teaching poses particular challenges for the learning process of students. It requires significantly greater metacognitive skills such as discipline (e.g. not allowing oneself to be distracted), the ability to concentrate (for digital teaching presentations), organizational skills (e.g. when planning the daily routine) and can be more difficult for certain personality profiles (e.g. in cases of uncertainty). Against this background, the goal of the project “MeMo – Strengthening metacognition and motivation of students through individualized smart personal assistants” is to optimize the learning processes of students to increase learning success through the individualized strengthening of 1) metacognitive skills and 2) motivation when using the As part of the project, selected courses at Chemnitz University of Technology are supplemented as test cases with Smart Personal Assistants (SPAs), which provide students with targeted and individualized support. In contrast to existing SPAs, the project is particularly characterized by taking into account the heterogeneity of students through individualization based on metadata. The SPAs are continuously checked and adjusted through vignette studies and experiments with regard to the successful promotion of students' metacognitive skills and motivation. More informations can you find here.