Ralf Klamma

• PD Dr. rer. nat. Dipl.-Inform.
• Group Leader at RWTH Aachen University

The fast-growing complexity of decentralized infrastructures outpaces end-users from acquiring the required knowledge to operate them. A possible remedy for this ever-aggravating problem might be the integration of natural-language-driven interfaces that allow end-users to interact with those systems. This work focuses on a Distributed Analytics (D...

Inquiry-based learning focuses on asking questions and finding answers through investigation while engaging students in active learning. Decentralized knowledge building in the community can benefit from applying the approach to modern web technologies and collaboration. Distributed Noracle is a decentralized, question-based tool for building commu...

Psychomotor abilities are typically taught in a physical learning environment since they require focused practice and techniques to be learned. However, the lack of feedback modalities in remote psychomotor training makes learning processes ineffective and inefficient and can impede the learner's progress. In this paper, we propose an immersive lea...

Psychomotor learning develops our bodies in organized patterns with the help of environmental signals. With modern sensor arrays, we can acquire multimodal data to compare activities with stored reference models of body motions. To do this on a large scale in an efficient way, we need cloud-based infrastructures for the storage, processing and visu...

Die Gestaltung und Erprobung intelligenter Benutzerschnittstellen gehört zu den originären Aufgaben der Mensch-Maschine Interaktion. Durch den Einsatz von erweiterter Realität (Extended Reality) und künstlicher Intelligenz haben sich die Gestaltungsräume enorm erweitert. Sie bringen aber auch neue Herausforderungen mit sich. Der Einsatz von Avatare...

Relevance & Research Question: Surveys can be used to collect information from a large number of people. Nowadays, a large part of the population is surveyed through online surveys using modern technologies. However, the response rates for online surveys are decreasing because either no survey is started or the survey is abandoned after it has been...

Mentoring processes can enhance education by providing personalized advice and feedback to students. A challenge of mentoring is that with a rising number of students, more mentors are required. As it is oftentimes infeasible to employ such a high number of mentors, automated tools can support the activities of mentors by e.g., answering common que...

Mixed reality is known as an advanced technology that provides a new approach for learning environments. Such environments allow learners to interact with both virtual and real worlds and bringing in potential enhancements to the learning process at the same time. For example, chatbots can facilitate the learning process. However, security and priv...

Presentation about the mixed reality presentation system ImPres. https://github.com/rwth-acis/Immersive-presentation---3D-editor This presentation is based on our paper submission to the ICWL 2021 conference: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90785-3_3

The understanding of three-dimensional structures is an important learning goal, e.g. in anatomy courses or archeology. However, existing 2D slide-based presentation formats are not up to this visualization task as they cannot convey depth and spatial structure well enough. Moreover, a projected slide in a lecture room can be hard to see, depending...

Conducting assessments is necessary to evaluate student performance. Online tests offer a scaling solution over traditional tests administered by examiners. However, these online tests come with the drawback of losing the interactivity that one has with examiners, as online tests mostly take the form of self-correcting tests which expect students t...

This presentation introduces the requirements of a scalable infrastructure for personalized mentoring. We present the implemented architecture and use an example to show how heterogeneous data flows together and is transferred into a standardized format. With some examples, we move on to an outlook on further possibilities arising from integrating...

Social learning theories like communities of practice are dominating the research on informal learning, in particular on workplace learning. Recently, major investments in digital infrastructures for learning were made due to the major need for digitalization but also because of the COVID-19 pandemics. Still the question remains, how can communitie...

Modern cloud-based big data engineering approaches like machine learning and blockchain enable the collection of learner data from numerous sources of different modalities (like video feeds, sensor data etc.), allowing multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) and reflection on the learning process. In particular, complex psycho-motor skills like dancin...

With the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed and remote working became a necessity but in agile project management, social interactions like daily standup meetings in Scrum are vital for the project success. Mixed reality can provide a new way of combining remote collaboration with innovative 3D visualizations to analyze the project status. In this pape...

Collaborative mixed reality environments provide new ways of structuring and conveying information by spatially organizing content like 3D models. To visualize associations between ideas, users can place connections between virtual elements. However, in 3D spaces where the user can determine the placement of such content, obstacles that intersect t...

Ziel des MILKI PSY Teilprojektes "Sichere und Skalierbare Cloud-Daten-infrastruktur" ist die Schaffung und der Betrieb einer Plattform zur Erfassung, Speicherung, Prozessierung und Darstellung von multimodalen Echtzeitdaten. Diese Echtzeitdaten werden für (semi)-automatische Verfahren zur Entwicklung psychomotorischer Fähigkeiten mit künstlicher In...

Learning and training with Augmented Reality has moved out of the experimental space into the coming mainstream – thanks to the AR learning system, MirageXR, described in this article. MirageXR is open source and available cross- platform for iOS, Android, and Hololens, implements the IEEE standard for AR learning experience models (P1589- 2020), a...

Like most curricula in the humanities and social sciences, the curriculum of pre-service teacher training in educational sciences often includes time-consuming reading and writing tasks, which require high quality support and feedback in a timely manner. A well-known way to provide this support to students is one-to-one mentoring. However, limited...

Mentoring students in online courses is an essential task to keep students on track. Often, they ask simple questions or have repetitive issues. However, due to a high resource demand, this task is difficult to achieve on a massive scale. Digitizing mentoring processes has a high potential to fill this resource gap. In this paper, we present the co...

Augmented Reality (AR) is a rapidly growing field in information and communication technologies, drawing increasing numbers of professionals. Higher education institutions, however, are struggling to keep abreast of its development and to train specialists quickly, providing few courses which sufficiently align with the needs of industry. In additi...

Today’s Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) approaches automatically generate Web applications from conceptual, domain-specific models. This enhances productivity by simplifying the design process through a higher degree of abstraction. Due to this raised level of abstraction, the collaboration on conceptual models also opens up new use cases, such...

Escape Games are new real-world entertainment formats where two to six people collaboratively solve riddles to escape a locked room in a certain fictional setting, e.g. a space station. Educational researchers have adopted the concept for teaching science subjects, e.g. in K12 teaching. However, setting up such rooms is costly because of the physic...

Technology enhanced learning (TEL) research connects Learning Sciences, Educational Psychology, and Computer Science, in order to investigate interventions based on digital technologies in education and training settings. In this paper, we argue that doctoral training activity for TEL needs to be situated at the intersection of disciplines in order...

This paper outlines the objectives of the working group on developing a model Augmented Reality curriculum for higher education. We motivate the need for the model curriculum by the growing Augmented Reality industry and subsequent demand for trained professionals. While the industry is growing, the educational offers that train the required skills...

Mentoring is the activity when an experienced person (the mentor) supports a less knowledgeable person (the mentee), in order to achieve the learning goal. In a perfect world, the mentor would be always available when the mentee needs it. However, in the real world higher education institutions work with limited resources. For this, we need to care...

Standardized interfaces are the connecting link of today's distributed systems, facilitating access to data services in the cloud. REST APIs have been prevalent over the last years, despite several issues like over- and underfetching of resources. GraphQL enjoys rapid adoption, resolving these problems by using statically typed queries. However, th...

Standardized interfaces are the connecting link of today's distributed systems, facilitating access to data services in the cloud. REST APIs have been prevalent over the last years, despite several issues like over- and underfetching of resources. GraphQL enjoys rapid adoption, resolving these problems by using statically typed queries. However, th...

The accuracy of fingerprinting-based indoor localization correlates with the quality and up-to-dateness of collected training data. Perpetual crowdsourced data collection reduces manual labeling effort and provides a fresh data base. However, the decentralized collection comes with the cost of heterogeneous data that causes performance degradation....

Learning in Communities of Practice (CoPs) makes up a significant portion of today's knowledge gain. However, only little technological support is tailored specifically towards CoPs and their particular strengths and challenges. Even worse, CoPs often do not possess the resources to host or develop a software ecosystem to support their activities....

With the rise of mixed reality hardware and software, formal higher education , e.g. in anatomy, can better support an understanding of 3D structures than by texts, 2D images or physical models. But even with access to virtual 3D models, motivation is a key element for successful learning and for progressing over a longer period of time. Mixed Real...

The interaction between instructors and students is one of the key concepts to improve the student's learning process. To personalize learning on a massive scale, social bots can be used as supporting technology. However, their development for virtual learning environments currently requires deep technical knowledge. This leaves learner communities...

Today’s Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) approaches automatically generate Web applications from conceptual, domain-specific models. This enhances productivity by simplifying the design process through a higher degree of abstraction. Due to this raised level of abstraction, the collaboration based on conceptual models also opens up new use cases...

Wearable enhanced learning (WELL) is an emerging area of interest for researchers, practitioners in educational institutions, and companies. Also many grassroots movements are providing new sensors, devices, prototypical concepts, and learning solutions for WELL. Deeply rooted in the traditions of technology enhanced learning (TEL), such as self-re...

The collaboration of Wikipedia editors is well researched, covered by scientific works of many different fields. There is a growing interest to implement recommender systems that guide inexperienced editors to projects which fit their interests in certain topical domains. Although there have been numerous studies focusing on editing behavior in Wik...

User satisfaction determines the quality of a product idea. Yet it is hard to accomplish when designers are isolated from their users, creating a gap in the design practices. Co-design seeks to meet the needs of users by giving them a voice in the design process. Technology-enhanced learning provides an ideal testbed, as co-design practices on lear...

Nowadays, we can use immersive interaction and display technologies in collaborative analytical reasoning and decision making scenarios. In order to support heterogeneous professional communities of practice in their digital transformation, it is necessary not only to provide the technologies but to understand the work practices under transformatio...

Decentralized information systems radically change the power dynamics of the Web by establishing participants as equal peers, which form a self-governing community. However, decentralized infrastructures currently do not offer a way for users to easily explore available services in the network, nor the ability to securely verify their origin and hi...

Download from: http://ixdea.uniroma2.it/inevent/events/idea2010/index.php?s=10&a=10&link=ToC_38_P

This report informs the community about the current teaching practices on topics related to Augmented Reality (AR) and associated industry needs. The report aims to raise awareness and allow for better decision-making within educational policies, in order to increase the number of high-qualified specialists prepared for AR-related tasks. The goal o...

Many real-world networks can be modeled by networks of interacting agents. Analysis of these interactions can reveal fundamental properties from these networks. Estimating the amount of collaboration in a network corresponding to connections in a learning environment can reveal to what extent learners share their experience and knowledge with other...

People participate and activate in online social networks and thus tremendous amount of network data is generated; data regarding their interactions, interests and activities. Some people search for specific questions through online social platforms such as forums and they may receive a suitable response via experts. To categorize people as experts...

Social media are connected to the daily life of people. While participating in a particular social platform, people belong to structures named communities. Detection of communities and analysis of their life cycles have been a topic of interest in the social network analysis research. There have been several methods—sometimes rather complex—that ap...

Multimedia platforms dealing with movie streaming and video-based short messages have increased the global Internet video traffic substantially in the last couple of years. Over the same period, multimedia on the Web has been standardized in terms of codecs and browserbased JavaScript APIs. However, today the technological challenges concerning the...

Wearable technologies – such as smart glasses, smart watches, smart objects, or smart garments – are potential game-changers, breaking ground and offering new opportunities for learning. These devices are body-worn, equipped with sensors, and integrate ergonomically into everyday activities. With wearable technologies forging new human-computer rel...

Non-formal learning in Communities of Practice (CoPs) makes up a significant portion of today's knowledge gain. However, only little technological support is tailored specifically towards CoPs and their particular strengths and challenges. Even worse, CoPs often do not possess the resources to host or even develop a software ecosystem to support th...

Industry 4.0 is currently transforming industrial workplaces into sensor-assisted high-tech environments. While it is often feared that jobs will be lost through increasing automation, we are convinced that there is an enormous potential for versatile and competent workers at innovative workplaces. Training at the workplace may contribute to this....

Non-formal learning in Communities of Practice (CoPs) makes up a significant portion of today’s knowledge gain. However, only little technological support is tailored specifically towards CoPs and their particular strengths and challenges. Even worse, CoPs often do not possess the resources to host or even develop a software ecosystem to support th...

Scalable real-time processing of large amounts of data has become a research topic of particular importance due to the continuously rising amount of data that is generated by devices equipped with sensing components. While existing approaches allow for fault-tolerant and scalable stream processing, we present a pipeline architecture that consists o...

Services and their interfaces are a cornerstone of Web applications. API description formats help developers in accessing and combining service functionalities. The OpenAPI speci�cation has gained considerable popularity over the last years. Existing tools around OpenAPI support the generation of HTML interfaces to mockup requests. While these inte...

New Internet-enabled devices and Web services are introduced on a daily basis. Documentation formats are available that describe their functionalities in terms of API endpoints and parameters. In particular, the OpenAPI specification has gained considerable influence over the last years. Web-based solutions exist that generate interactive OpenAPI d...

Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) methodologies enhance productivity and offer a high level view on software artifacts. Coming from classical software development processes, many existing approaches rather enforce a top-down structure instead of supporting a cyclic approach that integrates smoother with modern agile development. State-of-the-art...

Virtual training centers are hosted solutions for the implementation of training courses in the form of e.g. Webinars. Many existing centers neglect the informal and social dimension of vocational training as well as the legitimate business interests of training providers and companies sending their employees. In this paper, we present the virtual...

Nowadays, people use online social networks almost every day. They activate either due to their interests, or to search or catch their desirable information. Users of online social networks generate structural and contextual traces that can be analyzed by, i.e., network science researchers. Researchers can describe networks fabricated out of online...

An abundance of audio-visual (AV) learning content is available on the Web, e.g. in massive open online courses (MOOC), in Webinars and on AV streaming platforms. However, the coherence of the AV content is depending on the resources put into the production of the material. This results in a big gap between learning analytics capabilities in MOOcs...

Given the flexible nature of virtual organizations and the barriers raised by multinational environments, increasing the participation rate of adult learners in vocational training is a difficult task. The latest developments in distant, open and collaborative learning techniques bare the potential to advance knowledge in the field and increase par...

Inquiry skills are an essential tool for assessing and integrating knowledge. In facilitated face-to-face settings, inquiry skills were improved successfully by using a " question-based dialog " and its resulting visual representation. However, groups that work without a facilitator, or in which members collaborate asynchronously or in different ge...

Gamification is the use of game elements in non-game contexts like office work or learning. Due to its deep implications on human behavior, there are many critical voices but in principle the gamification of learning management systems is possible and different solutions are on the market. The situation is very different when users are mashing-up t...

In agile practices, near real-time collaboration on the Web facilitates stakeholder activities, their communication and joint impact analysis. In providing an abstraction layer on the software development process, modeling enables participatory design and improves requirements negotiation by close involvement of end users. However, model-driven eng...

Conceptual modeling is a creative, social process driven by the views of involved stakeholders. Collaboration can facilitate stakeholder activities, their negotiation and joint impact analysis, especially in agile practices. Existing systems do not offer view-based conceptual modeling on the Web using lock-free synchronous collaborative editing mec...

Recommender systems support users in nding relevant items in overloaded information spaces. Researchers and practitioners have proposed many diierent collaborative ltering algorithms for different information scenarios, domains and contexts. One of the laaer, are time-aware recommender methods that consider temporal dynamics in the users' interests...

Learning analytics in formal learning contexts is often restricted to collect and analyze data from students following curricula through a learning management system. In informal learning, however, a deep understanding of learners and entities interacting with each other is needed. The practice of exploring these interactions is known as community...

Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Industry 4.0 are complex application domains. Doing interdisciplinary research with architects, engineers and computer scientists at the intersection of the domains is both challenging and promising, since many relevant research problems need multi-perspective views and cooperatively designed solution strateg...

With the pervasive need for digitization in modern information society, publicly funded research projects increasingly focus on engineering digital approaches to manage societal processes. Such projects inherently face the challenge of establishing a sustainable software engineering culture. A major challenge thereby is that project consortia need...

Social networks are non-detachable part of modern life. It is improbable that someone is not familiar with Facebook or Twitter. Nowadays people join these platforms and communicate with other members. In social networks, some people are more similar to each other and they form densely connected components named communities. Detection of these tight...

Learning at the workplace is largely informal and there is a high potential to make it more effective and efficient by means of technology, especially by using the power of multimedia. The main challenge is to find relevant information segments in a vast amount of multimedia resources for a particular objective, context and user. In this paper, we...

Near real-time collaboration using Web browsers is becoming rapidly more and more popular for many applications such as text editing, coding, sketching and others. These applications require reliable algorithms to ensure consistency among the participating Web clients. Operational Transformation (OT) and more recently Commutative Replicated Data Ty...

Networks with positive and negative connections have gained popularity in social media. Positive links show trust (friendship) and negative connections are sign of distrust(enmity). An instance of such networks is Wikipedia, in which some contributors are promoted to administrators by other users. Similar to unsigned networks, overlapping communiti...

Small companies play a crucial role in developed economies. In order to address new challenges they have to fill promptly their competence gaps, when these appear. To achieve this, suitable forms of informal learning at the workplace are usually needed. As a possible solution we have developed a customized Personal Learning Environment for this pur...

Establishing a common practice between (startup) companies and universities in applied computer science labs has been tackled by pedagogical approaches based on the communities of practice theory. However, modern agile and distributed software engineering methods and recent developments like DevOps demand focused training of undergraduate students...

Learning and training at the workplace is critical for economic development of companies and their competitiveness. Nevertheless, it is known that especially small firms have difficulties with long term planning and systematic cultivation of employees’ knowledge and skills. The challenge is to integrate learning and training activities into the wor...

The practice of service development in general and Web service development in particular is not easy to acquire for novice and even experienced software developers. Either you have to learn a huge software stack or you have to rely on third party libraries, whose quality you cannot know and trust. Moreover, the needs of professional communities for...

Self-assessment is an important tool to improve student performance. A good serious game (SG) would be a very strong self-assessment tool because of the additional motivational aspects. However, self-assessment tools have to fit the learning matters of a course by 100 %, what general SG seldom do. The goal of this work is to build a simple SG edito...

Conceptual modeling is a creative, social process that is driven by the views of involved stakeholders. However, few systems offer view-based conceptual modeling on the Web using lock-free synchronous collaborative editing mechanisms. Based on a (meta-)modeling framework that supports near real-time collaborative modeling and metamodeling in the We...