Novel Technologies for Learning Engineering

The research work of the team of Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel in this field aims to make the vision of a Digital University reality. It is focused on the design and implementation of user centric learning environments, like openHPI or the tele-TASK portal, by

studying and explorating Internet- and IT-technologies to establish novel virtual learning environments, e.g., for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and to enhance university teaching at openHPI,
continuously developing and improving powerful tools for producing knowledge content like the mobile tele-TASK system for recording and broadcasting lecture videos,
designing and implementating lecture browsers like the tele-TASK Lecture Browser, which assist learners in screeing, searching, navigating, visualizing, and personalizing knowledge content like lecture videos.

Ongoing Projects

Designing a Learning and Teaching Environment for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

MOOCs provide a recent format of online learning events, that combine video lectures, interactive self tests, homeworks, and peer assessments with a social learning forum. With openHPI, we are developing a platform for the delivery of MOOCs based on a scalable architecture that allows flexible integration with content production workflows, learning tools and virtual laboratories, personal learning environments, and social networks. [more]

Live and On-Demand Teleteaching with tele-TASK

The tele-TASK system realizes a drastically simplified entrance technology for online lectures. From their home or office, each user with a suitable Internet connection can follow online lessons comfortably. tele-TASK simultaneously records both video and audio of the lecturer as well as their presentation desktop which is presented to the students in the lecture room through either a smartboard or a video beamer. Various navigation bars allow fast navigation through the recorded lecture. tele-TASK supports all usual platforms, different net bandwidths, arbitrary presentation programs, and needs no special software installations or configurations at side of the end-users. [more]

Previous Projects

The HPI School-Cloud

A modern learning and teaching environment is crucial to make the digital transformation in the education sector a success. Children should be introduced to digital media already in school to prepare them for a increasingly digitized society. For this reason, the Hasso Plattner Insitute (HPI) launched a project in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Network of Excellency of STEM schools (MINT-EC) called "HPI School-Cloud". HPI developed a cloud infrastructure which helps students, teachers and parents to gain easy access to learning and teaching materials for everybody, everytime and everywhere. This initiated a revolution in in the German education system.

teachingkids.eu

The aim of this project is to determine the benefit of using short video sequences in education. "teachingkids.eu" is a platform where students and teachers can freely watch visual learning objects, rate / tag them and upload their own videos, e.g. modified versions of existing ones. The objective is twofold: first, students are motivated to produce good presentations which respect the quality requirements of "teachingkids.eu". Secondly, students explain items or issues to other students in their own words and gestures. This helps them to set "landmarks" and to better memorize and understand the topic.

e-Librarian Service

Our E-Librarian Service is able to retrieve multimedia resources from a knowledge base in a more efficient way than by browsing through an index, or by using a simple keyword search. In our E-Librarian Service, the user can enter his question in a very simple and human way; in natural language (NL). The returned results are then logical consequences of an inference rather than of keyword matchings.
Our E-Librarian Service was implemented prototypically in three different educational tools. A first prototype is CHESt (Computer History Expert System); it has a knowledge base with 300 multimedia clips that cover the main events in computer history. A second prototype is MatES (Mathematics Expert System); it has a knowledge base with 115 clips that cover the topic of fractions in mathematics for secondary school w.r.t. the official school programme. All clips were recorded mainly by pupils. The third and most advanced prototype is the Lecture Butler's E-Librarain Service; it has a Web service interface to respect a service oriented architecture (SOA).

TASK_Moniminer

The TASK_Moniminer deals with the analysis of the students learning interest from usage data in web-based learning environments. To discover learning interests semantic technologies are used.

Development of the STACS Electronic Submission Service

After STACS'97 (Lübeck) and STACS'98 (Paris), STACS'99 was taking place in Trier and used the Electronic Submission Service, too, which receives the submissions via email and puts them at the organisators' disposal. Again, the range of applications of the software developed is not at all limited to the example chosen (STACS).

Publication of the web pages of the GI special interest group "Komplexität"

The web pages of the special interest group consist mainly of a collection of current announcements - calls for papers, conference programs, open positions, links etc. - from the field of complexity theory.