Despite a growing body of research about the design and use of Smart Personal Assistants, existing work has mainly focused on their use as task support for individual users in rather simple problem scenarios. Less is known about their ability to improve collaboration among multiple users in more complex problem settings. In our study, we directly compare 21 groups who either use a Smart Personal Assistant tutor or a human tutor when solving a problem task. The results indicate that groups interacting with Smart ...

The skills students need nowadays have changed over the last decades. The required skills are shifting more and more towards higher order thinking skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration and communication. One of the main ways of practicing these skills is through formative feedback, which consists of self-assessment and peer-assessment in our setting. However, today’s lecturers are facing the challenge that the number of students per lecture is continuously increasing, while the available budget is stagnating. ...

What if artificial intelligence (AI) machines became teammates rather than tools? This paper reports on an international initiative by 65 collaboration scientists to develop a research agenda for exploring the potential risks and benefits of machines as teammates (MaT). They generated 819 research questions. A subteam of 12 converged them to a research agenda comprising three design areas – Machine artifact, Collaboration, and Institution – and 17 dualities – significant effects with the potential for benefit or harm. ...

Carbon nanotubes possess many interesting properties, which make them a promising material for a variety of applications. In this paper, we present a unified framework for the simulation of the mechanical behavior of carbon nanotubes. It allows the creation, simulation and visualization of these structures, extending previous work by the research group “MISMO” at TU Darmstadt. In particular, we develop and integrate a new matrix-free iterative solving procedure, employing the conjugate gradient method, that drastically ...

Technology-mediated learning (TML) is a major trend in education, since it allows to integrate the strengths of traditional- and IT-based learning activities. However, TML providers still struggle in identifying areas for improvement in their TML offerings. One reason for their struggles is inconsistencies in the literature regarding drivers of TML performance. Prior research suggests that these inconsistencies in TML literature might stem from neglecting the importance of considering the process perspective in ...

Der Ort, an dem ein Nutzer sich in einem Gebäude aufhält, spielt für technische Dienste wie Heimautomatisierung eine zentrale Rolle. In dieser Dissertation wird die Implizite Positionierung vorgestellt, ein neues Verfahren, das den Aufenthaltsort eines Nutzers mittels des Kompasses eines Smartphones erkennt, das der Nutzer bei sich trägt. Das Verfahren findet in den Kompassdaten Muster, die entstehen, wenn Nutzer durch Flure, Treppen, etc. oder um Ecken gehen. Da die Ausrichtungen dieser Orte die Nutzer in ihrer ...

The primary objective of Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is the support of resource-constrained mobile devices by means of Cloud or nearby computing resources. In general, this is achieved by outsourcing or offloading computational intensive tasks of mobile applications. This allows, for instance, to virtually extend the processing power of mobile devices and, indirectly, to save battery life. In case remote resources are not available or the communication link is broken, still a local execution is possible. The ...

Wir stellen eine neue Familie von Simulationsrelationen zwischen zwei nicht deterministischen Büchi Automaten (NBA), genannt gepufferte Simulation vor. Wir erweitern das Spiel-Framework der üblichen fairen Simulation, so dass Duplicator ihren Spielzug überspringen und die Buchstaben, die Spoiler gelesenen hat, vorübergehend in einem Puffer speichern kann. Duplicator kann diese Buchstaben in ihrer Struktur dann später ausführen. Duplicator hat damit eine Vorschau in die Bewegungen von Spoiler und somit mehr Chancen, ...

Comprehensive knowledge of biodiversity is a prerequisite for its long-term conservation and sustainable use. Fungi play crucial roles in ecosystems and are among the species-richest organism groups on Earth. However, all aspects of their diversity remain underexplored. In this study, we aimed to fill the gaps in occurrence data and taxonomy as well as in understanding spatial diversity patterns of aphyllophoroid fungi (non-gilled macroscopic Basidiomycota). We digitized and made openly accessible 4,041 records of ...

Trust is the enabler of social interaction. Although the origins of research on trust traditionally lie outside the Information Systems (IS) domain, the importance of trust for IS research rapidly grew in the late 1990s, and it is still growing with the increasing ubiquity and advancement of technology in organizations, virtual teams, online markets, and user-technology interactions. Theoretically, the central role of trust is tied to the growing social change that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has ...