Alexa, Can You Help Me Solve That Problem? – Understanding the Value of Smart Personal Assistants as Tutors for Complex Problem Tasks

In recent decades, the number of students per lecturer at universities has constantly risen. In these learning scenarios, individual lecturer support for helping students actively acquiring new knowledge is hardly possible. However, active student behavior is necessary for successful learning. Smart Personal Assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Home promise to fill this gap by being students’ individual tutors. In order to understand what students expect from Smart Personal Assistants as tutors and how they interact with them, we will carry out an experiment. In this research in progress paper, we present our experiment design, where we observe the individual interaction between students and a Smart Personal Assistant tutor and between students and a human tutor applying the same methods in both cases. Drawing on the concepts of parasocial interaction and trust, we derive hypotheses, present the Smart Personal Assistant development and explain the experiment process in detail

Yes You Can - Empowering Lecturers to Simulate Collaboration among Learners in the Disciplines of Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking Regardless of Class Size

Fostering higher-level learning in the disciplines of problem-solving and critical thinking becomes important when educating knowledge workers. By taking part in collaborative learning (CL) activities, e.g., interactive discussions, learners have the chance to develop, defend, and critique positions. However, implementing CL activities is often complex because this requires knowledge in designing effective collaboration. We build on insights from learning and collaboration engineering literature to develop an IT-based Collaborative-Learning-Pattern Approach (CLPA) that consists of two patterns, each describing a process design – one for training problem-solving, and the other for attaining critical thinking abilities. To evaluate the CLPA, we use simulations, walk-throughs among lecturers, and pilot-tests among students. Results show that the CLPA empowers lecturers to implement respective activities in the classroom, takes into account pedagogical demands, and satisfies lecturers as well as learners. We contribute several findings toward a design theory for empowering lecturers to implement CL activities in their classes

A direct solution approach for multi timescale optimal control problems

In high fidelity optimal control problems, a commonly appearing problem emerges from different timescales inherent to the model, resulting in stiff differential equa- tions. When solving these problems using direct discretization, the selection of the dis- cretization nodes for all states is driven by the states associated with the fast dynamics, no matter how strong their influence on the solution is. In this paper, a novel discretization scheme is presented that uses direct collocation for the slow states while the fast states of the model are represented based on a direct multiple shooting scheme. This way, different grids may be chosen for the states, resulting in a slight decoupling of the timescales. A high fidelity air race trajectory optimization problem is implemented to demonstrate how the dimensions of the discretized problem can be significantly decreased by the method, resulting in improved computational performance during the solution process

Vier Lieder nach Gedichten von Wolfgang Bittner

Die Vier Lieder nach Gedichten von Wolfgang Bittner entstanden 1987-88. Wolfgang Bittner hatte ich während meines Stipendienaufenthalts auf dem Künstlerhof Schreyahn (Niedersachsen) kennen und schätzen gelernt. Die Gedichte sind in dem Sonderband „Kopfsprünge“ (Spectrum-Verlag) mit Gedichten des 1941 geborenen, heute in Göttingen lebenden Schriftstellers erschienen. Nach zwei düsteren, emotional weit gespannten, langsamen Liedern folgt ein lyrisches Intermezzo (Nr. 3) und ein heiter-ironischer Abschluss in der Art eines „humpelnden“ Walzers. Die Lieder wurden 1992 von Andrea Drude (Sopran) und Christopher Oakden (Klavier) auf der Kammermusik-CD mit Werken von Matthias Drude eingespielt, die beim Komponisten erhältlich ist. (Matthias Drude):1. Geräusche beim Atmen 2. Kurz davor, etwas zu begreifen 3. Von weither 4. Sanierun

'Nur keine Sorge': Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von Wolfgang Bittner

„Nur keine Sorge“ ist ein dreiteiliger Liederzyklus nach satirischen Gedichten von Wolfgang Bittner, einem Schriftsteller, den ich während meines Stipendienaufenthalts auf dem Künstlerhof Schreyahn 1987 kennen und schätzen gelernt habe. Der Zyklus wurde komponiert für den Countertenor Reinhold Coors-Genetin, der damals an der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover studierte, an der ich als Lehrbeauftragter für Musiktheorie und Gehörbildung tätig war. An der Uraufführung 1993 in der hannoverschen Hochschule habe ich als Klavierbegleiter mitgewirkt. Es war dort zugleich mein letzter öffentlicher Auftritt vor meinem Wechsel an die Hochschule für Kirchenmusik Dresden.:1. Umweltfreundlich 2. Gerüchte 3. Abends Spielfil

Seasonal Predictability over Europe Arising from El Nino and Stratospheric Variability in the MPI-ESM Seasonal Prediction System

Predictability on seasonal time scales over the North Atlantic–Europe region is assessed using a seasonal prediction system based on an initialized version of the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM). For this region, two of the dominant predictors on seasonal time scales are El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events. Multiple studies have shown a potential for improved North Atlantic predictability for either predictor. Their respective influences are however difficult to disentangle, since the stratosphere is itself impacted by ENSO. Both El Niño and SSW events correspond to a negative signature of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which has a major influence on European weather. This study explores the impact on Europe by separating the stratospheric pathway of the El Niño teleconnection. In the seasonal prediction system, the evolution of El Niño events is well captured for lead times of up to 6 months, and stratospheric variability is reproduced with a realistic frequency of SSW events. The model reproduces the El Niño teleconnection through the stratosphere, involving a deepened Aleutian low connected to a warm anomaly in the northern winter stratosphere. The stratospheric anomaly signal then propagates downward into the troposphere through the winter season. Predictability of 500-hPa geopotential height over Europe at lead times of up to 4 months is shown to be increased only for El Niño events that exhibit SSW events, and it is shown that the characteristic negative NAO signal is only obtained for winters also containing major SSW events for both the model and the reanalysis data

Clarifying the Relative Role of Forcing Uncertainties and Initial‐Condition Unknowns in Spreading the Climate Response to Volcanic Eruptions

Radiative forcing from volcanic aerosol impacts surface temperatures; however, the background climate state also affects the response. A key question thus concerns whether constraining forcing estimates is more important than constraining initial conditions for accurate simulation and attribution of posteruption climate anomalies. Here we test whether different realistic volcanic forcing magnitudes for the 1815 Tambora eruption yield distinguishable ensemble surface temperature responses. We perform a cluster analysis on a superensemble of climate simulations including three 30‐member ensembles using the same set of initial conditions but different volcanic forcings based on uncertainty estimates. Results clarify how forcing uncertainties can overwhelm initial‐condition spread in boreal summer due to strong direct radiative impact, while the effect of initial conditions predominate in winter, when dynamics contribute to large ensemble spread. In our setup, current uncertainties affecting reconstruction‐simulation comparisons prevent conclusions about the magnitude of the Tambora eruption and its relation to the “year without summer.