1. Multimedia and self-regulated learning

Projects in this line of research investigate how to support self-regulated understanding of complex contents (e.g., statistical concepts). Three factors set this research apart from traditional research in this area, i.e. 

• explicit consideration of the interaction of individual and collaborative learning processes,

• development and evaluation of innovative tools to support learning, and

• their application within formal and informal educational scenarios (e.g., school, university, museum, library and internet).

2. Cognitive Group Awareness and social navigation

Projects in this line of research investigate how providing social cognitive information to communicating partners affect behaviour and cognition. Examples include information on knowledge and opinions.

In contrast to traditional research in this area focused on deficits of network-based cooperation, we target specific potentials of computer-based information exchange.

The assessment, transformation and visualization of knowledge and opinions aim at supporting an efficient, structured and detailed search for information, as well as effective processing and communication of content (e.g., by raising awareness about differences in knowledge or opinion controversies).

3. Methods to analyze social interaction processes

This area of research seeks innovative ways to link psychological research methods with methods of computer science to acquire knowledge about structures of social interaction processes as well as their intercorrelations and differences.

These research topics include interdisciplinary challenges, such as:

• making the large and dynamic amounts of data accumulating in web 2.0 applications available for systematic statistical analyses comparing different interaction scenarios and

• automating analyses in order to provide user-specific information (e.g., recommender systems)