Completed projects
- Coordination and Integration within the DFG Research Group "Orchestrating Computer-Supported Processes of Learning and Instruction"
Together with Prof. Dr. Dr. Friedrich Hesse (Knowledge Media Research Center) and Prof. Dr. Josef Schrader (Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen), Prof. Dr. Fischer coordinates the backbone project of the DFG research group. This project aims at bringing out the full potential of the research group's collaborative approach. An important task of this activity will be to scaffold the ongoing interaction between the individual projects in order to ensure the best use of the existing expertise and to stimulate interdisciplinary cooperation. The project is conceived as an interface between the research group, affiliated groups, the relevant research communities and a wider audience.
This project is part of the DFG research group "Orchestrating Computer-Supported Processes of Learning and Instruction"
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Coordination of the Special Interest Group on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (funded in the context of the European Network of Excellence „Kaleidoscope“)
Prof. Fischer has been coordinating the Special Interest Group "Computer Support for Collaborative Learning" (CSCL SIG) of the European Network of Excellence Kaleidoscope since 2005. The CSCL SIG encompasses currently over 380 members from 23 nations, 135 of which are Ph.D students. As part of this activity, the chair is currently involved in the planning and organization of the CSCL Alpine Rendez-Vous, a series of scientific workshops initiated by the CSCL SIG. One of the workshops will bring together architects, designers, IT specialists, educational scientists and psychologists to discuss about designing collaborative spaces in the classroom and seminar room of the future.
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Kaleidoscope Scientific Facilitator (funded in the context of the European Network of Excellence „Kaleidoscope“)
The Chair of Education and Educational Psychology is hosting the so-called Kaleidoscope Scientific Facilitator in 2007. Kaleidoscope is an European Network of Excellence. Kaleidoscope brings together outstanding European institutions and researchers in the field of technology-enhanced learning (TEL). The task of the Kaleidoscope scientific facilitator is to enhance collaborative activities between these projects. That way synergetic effects may be reached. Besides the Kaleidoscope scientific facilitator the post of the Kaleidoscope interface facilitator was created, which is hosted in Bristol, UK. The activities of the Kaleidoscope facilitators are coordinated by Paul Davey (University of London, Institute of Education), who is the current Kaleidoscope dissemination leader.
- Kaleidoscope European Research Team „Cossicle“ (EU-funded)
To socio-cognitively structure online discussions through collaboration scripts has proven in several studies to be an effective method to facilitate specific processes and outcomes of computer-supported collaborative learning. In this multi-disciplinary field, highly different approaches and definitions are being used, and different approaches are defined with a similar terminology. Therefore, single script approaches can hardly be compared with each other to accumulate scientific knowledge on scripting. Thus, collaboration scripts are mainly being conceived as experimental interventions that are incompatible with other learning environments. The European Research Team CoSSICLE (Computer-Supported Scripting of Interaction in Collaborative Learning Environments) aims at integrating approaches coming from different domains within a script framework as well as at formalizing collaboration scripts, i.e. making them machine readable. Based on these efforts, we aim to systematically investigate the script approach, e.g., with a cross-cultural study applying scripts in university contexts in Finland and Germany. Furthermore, we investigate how formalized scripts can be assembled adaptively with the help of an automatic analysis of discourse corpora and to what extent adaptive scripts can support small groups of learners to reduce acute deficits in their collaborative argumentation.
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Collaborators:
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Promoting Teacher Expertise: The Relation of individual Prerequisites and Instructional Processes in Computer-supported Case-based Learning Environments (funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG; April 2007 - June 2010)
The DFG-funded project “Promoting teacher expertise: The relation of individual prerequisites and instructional processes in computer-supported case-based learning environments“ was applied for by Prof. Dr. Josef Schrader (Universität Tübingen), Prof. Dr. Stefanie Hartz (TU Braunschweig), and Prof. Dr. Frank Fischer. Analytical competency in classroom situations can be seen as a crucial aspect of teachers’ professional competency. This project focused on the analytical competency of teachers with regard to instructional situations and different learning prerequisites. The main research question of the project was how pre- and in-service teachers could be supported in the acquisition of analytical competency with a computer-supported case-based learning environment. Among other things, a field study was conducted to improve understanding of how case-based learning can be promoted using digital media. Two different forms of instructional support based on the ideas of the Cognitive Flexibility Theory were implemented into a computer-supported learning environment (i.e., hyperlinks to conceptual knowledge and / or multiple perspectives). First results of the study show that additional instructional support can indeed increase the effectiveness of case-based learning by fostering specific components of analytical competency. A PDF document with a more detailed overview can be downloaded here (last update: September 2010).
This project was part of the DFG research group "Orchestrating Computer-Supported Processes of Learning and Instruction" (FG738)
Publications:
Zottmann, J. M., Goeze, A., Frank, C., Zentner, U., Fischer, F. & Schrader, J. (in press). Fostering the analytical competency of pre-service teachers in a computer-supported case-based learning environment - a matter of perspective? Interactive Learning Environments.
