Knowledge Work as Research Work; Annual Report 2010

The research group Computers and Society deals with application-oriented, but not application-specific concepts and methods for the design of computing systems. Besides, developing methods to capture relevant aspects of the usage context we are working on a theoretical framework that allows us to derive design hypotheses for the development of IT systems. Our defined goal is to turn the multidisciplinary world of terms and concepts into a coherent background for computer scientists. Based on the general concept of knowledge work we develop hypotheses for design in three different research areas (software ergonomics, cooperation support systems, and e-learning), implement technical systems, and evaluate their usefulness and appropriateness.

In the context of the graduate school “Automatisms – Emergence of Structure Without Planned Processes in Information Technology, Media and Culture” we continued the interdisciplinary discourse with respect to media theoretical investigations of digital and non-digital media. But, the application of our concepts to the realm of business practices became more important during the last year. In spring 2010 members of our research team founded the coactum GmbH. The company’s initial mission was to market the e-learning platform koaLA beyond its use at the University of Paderborn and to develop a new platform for bakeries with many distributed stores. With these two business domains this spin-off company proved successfully that the knowledge we acquire within our research group can be productively used in a variety of application domains.

Within the university context we began to build up the technical and organizational infrastructure for the e-lab. This laboratory enables us to conduct research on innovative e-learning scenarios and to employ them in a setting that is almost identical to the day to day use of e-learning by students and teachers of the university (elab. uni-paderborn.de). To accomplish this, we have built a clone of the koaLA system that resembles the university platform in all relevant aspects. The project council set up for the laboratory comprises at present five partners from different faculties and from the Information and Media Technologies Center (IMT) as well as from the central facility for University Didactics and the District Government Detmold with whom we have established a 5-year educational partnership in 2009 ( www.bid-owl.de).

Another milestone was the completion of a platform for co-active work with product development plans for the business unit Daimler Trucks. With the end of the project in September the implementation was completed und the system was successfully evaluated.

The very positive results stimulated great interest in other business units such as Mercedes Benz Cars and Daimler Buses. As a consequence, the Daimler AG is preparing a call for tenders for a system that is based on our prototype and which is in compliance with regulations of the Daimler data processing department.

The quest or developing adequate support systems for knowledge work is also growing in the academic environment. In collaboration with the Laboratory of Technical Mechanics (LTM) of the University of Paderborn we further strengthened the service-oriented modularization and integration of the various laboratory components. Furthermore, we were successful in applying for a research grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for an interdisciplinary project to support research activities in the domain of preservation of cultural heritage. In cooperation with the UNESCO Competence Centre on “Tangible and Intangible Heritage” and the Information and Media Technologies Center (IMT) we are developing a co-active virtual workplace which aims to support collecting, investigating, researching, and archiving tangible and intangible material collaboratively. The project is called “studiolo communis”. We seek to implement an environment that provides new mechanisms for persistent linking, annotating, and arranging of media assets in various media formats and from different distributed sources and databases. Again, the integration of the work environment into the overall technical infrastructure of the university is of paramount importance.