Lessons Learned from 11 Years of an E-Democracy Community: Governance vs. Community Development

We investigated the German democracy simulation website dol2day.com which is currently struggling to survive after active member count fell from 23.000 in 2003 to ca. 500 in 2011. An initial analysis of the community revealed a deep technical and social complexity and a rich history of changes driven by owners, community, or both. Most interestingly, because of the democratic nature of the platform, community members where involved in the administration and in the evolution of administrative processes, so that important lessons can be learned by aligning the history of major governance changes with the development of member counts. In particular, we found that the community did not recover from a major backlash that happened between 2002 and 2003, independent of all governance changes. We therefore suggest a theory on community trust that may explain the backlash and should be tested in follow-up research on other communities

Multi-National Topics Maps for Parliamentary Debate Analysis

In recent years, automated political text processing became an indispensable requirement for providing automatic access to political debate. During the Covid-19 worldwide pandemic, this need became visible not only in social sciences but also in public opinion. We provide a path to operationalize this need in a multi-lingual topic-oriented manner. Using a publicly available data set consisting of parliamentary speeches, we create a novel process pipeline to identify a good reference model and to link national topics to the cross-national topics. We use design science research to create this process pipeline as an artifact

Abwehrrechte im Cyberspace: rechtsstaatlicher Ausverkauf oder kontextbedingte Adaption?

'Nach herkömmlicher Auffassung bedeuten die technologischen Entwicklungen des Cyberspace eine besondere Gefahr für die Gewährleistung bürgerlicher Freiheitsrechte. Der indiskrete Blick in und auf das Privatleben der BürgerInnen wird durch neu erschlossene Überwachungsmöglichkeiten im Rahmen eines dafür geeigneten, erweiterten Kommunikationsumfeldes erleichtert. Dabei ist der Blick in die Ideengeschichte für die Beurteilung des genannten Zusammenhangs instruktiv. Es wird hier argumentiert, dass Freiheitsrechte weder unabhängig vom jeweiligen Staatsverständnis noch von den ihnen zugewiesenen 'Funktionen' begriffen werden können. Lockes Konzept der 'Freiheit in der Gesellschaft' und Jellineks 'Freiheit vom Staat' werden exemplarisch einander gegenüber gestellt. Die Nutzung beider Ansätze zur Analyse des genannten Zusammenhangs von Freiheitsrechten und Cyberspace erbringt keinen zwingenden Schluss, dass Freiheitsrechte substantiell einer neuen Gefährdung ausgesetzt werden.' (Autorenreferat)'Common sense has it that civil liberties are at risk in the age of cyberspace. New technologies are said to provide new means to interfere with the privacy of citizens. In this article it is argued that a closer look at the history of political thought is instructive to analyse the risk potential created by information technologies vis-à-vis civil liberties. Furthermore, it is claimed that civil liberties cannot be understood independently neither from how the 'state' is conceptualised nor from the 'functions' civil liberties fulfil in a specific state-societal context. Two fundamentally different approaches are identified, Locke's 'freedom in society' and the Jellinekian concept of 'negative freedom', illustrating both conceptual diversity as well as an analytical framework to evaluate the above common sense opinion. Here, it is argued that there is no compelling evidence to substantiate common sense.' (author's abstract

Cultural appropriation of spaces and things

This proceedings volume gathers papers presented at the symposium “Cultural Appropriation of Spaces and Things” held in Siegen, Germany in October 2019. All over the world, children are confronted with an increasingly complicated and fast-moving world. Children need elementary cultural techniques and skills to shape their own lives and enable them to find individual interpretations of meaning. In addition to the acquisition of classical cultural techniques such as arithmetic, writing and reading, the competent handling of spaces and things – through manifold processes of appropriation and reflection – is crucial. It forms the basis and prerequisite for the development of competences or abilities that are suitable for understanding the dimensions, the complexity and changeability of their world and enable them to critically deal with associated problems and find appropriate solutions. The aim of the conference was to find suitable ways for children all over the world for a methodically and didactically guided examination of their natural, social and technical environment. At the same time, the aim was to achieve a mutual enrichment of monodisciplinary research accesses. It also included a self-critical reflection of one’s own culturally shaped approaches of research.Contents: Martin Gröger, Christian Prust, Alexandra Flügel: Preface LECTURES Alexandre Avelino Giffoni Junior, Sebastião Lázaro Pereira, Alberto Barella Netto: Haus Früher Hilfen UniRV: A historic building in process in the heart of Brazil Hyeongjoo Kim: Designing and Applying the Moral Turing Test for Korean Children Karen Barfod and Peer Daugbjerg: Teaching Science and Mathematics Outside the Classroom, a pilot study on assessing inquiry-based practices Jan Höper: Towards integrated science education by using mobile technologies outdoors WORKSHOPS Mareike Janssen: Exploring the things of life: First insights into chemical processes with sparkling water as an example Julia Gaffron, Martin Gröger: Children like to experiment, many teachers apparently do not Volker Heck: Alexander von Humboldt - The Voyage to the Americas as an approach to science in Primary School Thomas Sukopp: Interculturality in Philosophy Education: Challenges and Prospects of Education for Sustainable Development in Primary Schools POSTERS André Dorn, Martin Gröger: ESD in general studies -prospective general studies teachers deal with the educational concept of ESD in a student-oriented and cooperative manner Andree Georg: From Carlowitz to Sustainable Development and Education for Sustainable Development Irina Landrock: Children at NS Memorial Sites Dr. Markus Schaal: Martha Muchow in the Context of the New Sociology of Childhood What Can a Classic Still Teach Us Today? Martin Gröger: Open air laboratory FLEX – Starting to learn chemistry in a near-natural learning environment Martin Gröger: FoodLAB - a molecular gastronomic experimental laboratory in teacher training Martin Gröger: How Alexander von Humboldt saw the world from a chemist’s point of view Matthias Weipert: Extracurricular learning locations in the historical perspective of general studies - the example of the Wendener Hütte Mirko Schommer: Spatial Orientation - Competence expectations and common misconceptions based on map projections Sarah Gaubitz: Options for handling complex problems of global change from the perspective of primary school children Swaantje Brill: Museum Field Trips in Primary School: An Approach to Children’s Perspectives Urs Gießelmann and Uta Birkhölzer: The “Hauberg” as an extracurricular learning locatio

Towards an intelligent reviewer's assistant: recommending topics to help users to write better product reviews

ACM international conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '12), Lisbon, Portugal, February 14 - 17, 2012User opinions and reviews are an important part of the modern web and all major e-commerce sites typically provide their users with the ability to provide and access customer reviews across their product catalog. Indeed this has become a vital part of the service provided by sites like Amazon and TripAdvisor, so much so that many of us will routinely check appropriate product reviews before making a purchase decision, regardless of whether we intend to purchase online or not. The importance of reviews has highlighted the need to help users to produce better reviews and in this paper we describe the development and evaluation of a Reviewer's Assistant for this purpose. We describe a browser plugin that is designed to work with major sites like Amazon and to provide users with suggestions as they write their reviews. These suggestions take the form of topics (e.g. product features) that a reviewer may wish to write about and the suggestions automatically adapt as the user writes their review. We describe and evaluate a number of different algorithms to identify useful topics to recommend to the user and go on to describe the results of a preliminary live-user trial.Science Foundation IrelandThis work is supported by Science Foundation Ireland under grant 07/CE/I1147

Mehr als eine Rechenmaschine. Computer im mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Unterricht

Im mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Unterricht kann der Computer verschiedene Funktionen als Werkzeug übernehmen. Er bietet beispielsweise die Möglichkeit, komplexe Berechnungen durchzuführen, abstrakte Sachverhalte zu veranschaulichen und mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Kontexte zu erforschen. Dabei ist der Computer in der Regel nicht nur Hilfsmittel, sondern auch Lerninhalt. Seine Nutzung muss ebenso erlernt werden wie die mathematischen oder naturwissenschaftlichen Fachinhalte. Unter anderem muss aus diesem Grund der Computereinsatz didaktisch-methodisch begründet und geplant sein, um Gefahren und Probleme der Computernutzung im Unterricht zu vermeiden. (DIPF/Orig.

Benachrichtigungsagenten für die mobile Reiseunterstützung

Mobile Kommunikation stellt neuartige Herausforderungen an die Bereitstellung, Verwaltung, und Übermittlung von Informationen. Während einerseits ein gewaltiges Überangebot an Informationsbruchstücken existiert, das auch mit fortschrittlichen Technologien für die Suche und Indizierung von Wissen kaum überschaubar gehalten werden kann, fehlen dem Menschen andererseits oft genau die wesentlichen Kerninformationen, um eine bestimmte Aufgabe besser oder gar überhaupt zu bewältigen. Auf dem entstehenden Gebiet der Informationslogistik werden daher Technologien erforscht und entwickelt, die eine optimale und an individuellen Bedürfnissen orientierte Informationsversorgung ermöglichen. Ein allgegenwärtiges Anwendungsfeld ist hierbei die mobile Reiseunterstützung, insbesondere die Benachrichtigung des Reisenden über alternative und bessere Reisewege, die sich aus unvorhersehbaren Veränderungen der Reisemöglichkeiten ergeben können, beispielsweise durch das Ausfallen bzw. Einsetzen von Zügen. Der Hauptbeitrag dieser Arbeit besteht in der Konzeption eines Verfahrens für die Auswahl von individuellen Benachrichtigungen, das auch zukünftige Benachrichtigungsmöglichkeiten unter einer dann verbesserten Informationslage berücksichtigt. Zwei konkrete Szenarien demonstrieren die individualisierte und fortlaufende Benachrichtigung des Reisenden über den besten Reiseweg. Die Unsicherheit über zukünftige Situationen und die Informationsverbesserung durch Abwarten wird quantifiziert und durch probabilistische Modelle dargestellt. Die Topologie des Verkehrsnetzes wird berücksichtigt und dient als strukturelle Vorlage für die Erstellung von Influenzdiagrammen zur Lösung von Benachrichtigungsentscheidungen. Bei der probabilistischen Routenplanung wird üblicherweise die Route mit dem besten Erwartungswert einer Zielfunktion ausgewählt. Im Gegensatz dazu werden in dieser Arbeit auch zukünftige Benachrichtigungsmöglichkeiten eingeplant und die beste Benachrichtigungstrategie wird gewählt anstatt der besten Route. Dadurch lässt sich ein besserer Erwartungswert der Zielfunktion erreichen als bei den herkömmlichen Verfahren.Ubiquitous and mobile computing has become an important field in computer science. The provision, management and transmission of information within computer systems and for human-computer interaction is required for many applications and the individual needs of the mobile user are manifold. Due to information overflow it is difficult for the user to access specific pieces of information while key information for decision makers is often missing. Technologies for the emerging field of information logistics are studied in order to enable an optimal information supply with respect to the individual users needs. A dominant application area for this is mobile route guidance, especially when it comes to messaging about alternative routes. Such alternative routes might be advantageous in case of unexpected incidents such as the emergence of an additional train (or cancellation) so that the traveller may reach his/her destination earlier. The main contribution of this thesis is the conceptualization of a method for the selection of individual notifications for mobile route guidance which considers future notification options and the information quality gain to be achieved. Two scenarios are used for the demonstration of continuous individual messages for the traveller notifying him about the best route to follow. Explicit models for the uncertainty about future situations are introduced and the uncertainty reduction by waiting for more information is quantified. The topology of the transportation network is considered and used as a structural model for the construction of influence diagrams as decision models. These influence diagrams answer the questions about the best notifications to be sent both with respect to time and content. Our approach goes beyond probabilistic route planning, which selects a route with maximum expected utility. Other than that, future notification options are considered and the best notification policy is selected rather than the best route. By this, the expected utility can be improved with respect to the standard approach

A Computational Model for Information Value

The estimation of information value will be a key issue for upcoming intelligent information systems, that not only provide information on request but deal with time-dependently varying information needs. Due to its subjective nature, information value cannot be computed and each individual has a dierent perception of what exactly is relevant to him. However, we propose a concept of information value and a computational model for its estimation. Our model is based upon the observation that information concerning the future can easily be divided into relevant and irrelevant information as long as the future is deterministic and well known. We use a network representation of uncertain quantities to model the uncertainty of the future. Information value is introduced as the likelihood of reaching a situation in the future where the information is relevant. The approach is demonstrated for the modelling of individual travel planning. keywords: network representation, uncert..