@phdthesis{Ahmad2014,
  author    = {Ahmad, Nadeem},
  title     = {People centered HMI's for deaf and functionally illiterate users},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-70391},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {The objective and motivation behind this research is to provide applications with easy-to-use interfaces to communities of deaf and functionally illiterate users, which enables them to work without any human assistance. Although recent years have witnessed technological advancements, the availability of technology does not ensure accessibility to information and communication technologies (ICT). Extensive use of text from menus to document contents means that deaf or functionally illiterate can not access services implemented on most computer software. Consequently, most existing computer applications pose an accessibility barrier to those who are unable to read fluently. Online technologies intended for such groups should be developed in continuous partnership with primary users and include a thorough investigation into their limitations, requirements and usability barriers. In this research, I investigated existing tools in voice, web and other multimedia technologies to identify learning gaps and explored ways to enhance the information literacy for deaf and functionally illiterate users. I worked on the development of user-centered interfaces to increase the capabilities of deaf and low literacy users by enhancing lexical resources and by evaluating several multimedia interfaces for them. The interface of the platform-independent Italian Sign Language (LIS) Dictionary has been developed to enhance the lexical resources for deaf users. The Sign Language Dictionary accepts Italian lemmas as input and provides their representation in the Italian Sign Language as output. The Sign Language dictionary has 3082 signs as set of Avatar animations in which each sign is linked to a corresponding Italian lemma. I integrated the LIS lexical resources with MultiWordNet (MWN) database to form the first LIS MultiWordNet(LMWN). LMWN contains information about lexical relations between words, semantic relations between lexical concepts (synsets), correspondences between Italian and sign language lexical concepts and semantic fields (domains). The approach enhances the deaf users' understanding of written Italian language and shows that a relatively small set of lexicon can cover a significant portion of MWN. Integration of LIS signs with MWN made it useful tool for computational linguistics and natural language processing. The rule-based translation process from written Italian text to LIS has been transformed into service-oriented system. The translation process is composed of various modules including parser, semantic interpreter, generator, and spatial allocation planner. This translation procedure has been implemented in the Java Application Building Center (jABC), which is a framework for extreme model driven design (XMDD). The XMDD approach focuses on bringing software development closer to conceptual design, so that the functionality of a software solution could be understood by someone who is unfamiliar with programming concepts. The transformation addresses the heterogeneity challenge and enhances the re-usability of the system. For enhancing the e-participation of functionally illiterate users, two detailed studies were conducted in the Republic of Rwanda. In the first study, the traditional (textual) interface was compared with the virtual character-based interactive interface. The study helped to identify usability barriers and users evaluated these interfaces according to three fundamental areas of usability, i.e. effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. In another study, we developed four different interfaces to analyze the usability and effects of online assistance (consistent help) for functionally illiterate users and compared different help modes including textual, vocal and virtual character on the performance of semi-literate users. In our newly designed interfaces the instructions were automatically translated in Swahili language. All the interfaces were evaluated on the basis of task accomplishment, time consumption, System Usability Scale (SUS) rating and number of times the help was acquired. The results show that the performance of semi-literate users improved significantly when using the online assistance. The dissertation thus introduces a new development approach in which virtual characters are used as additional support for barely literate or naturally challenged users. Such components enhanced the application utility by offering a variety of services like translating contents in local language, providing additional vocal information, and performing automatic translation from text to sign language. Obviously, there is no such thing as one design solution that fits for all in the underlying domain. Context sensitivity, literacy and mental abilities are key factors on which I concentrated and the results emphasize that computer interfaces must be based on a thoughtful definition of target groups, purposes and objectives.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Lindauer2014,
  author    = {Lindauer, T. Marius},
  title     = {Algorithm selection, scheduling and configuration of Boolean constraint solvers},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-71260},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {ii, 130},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Boolean constraint solving technology has made tremendous progress over the last decade, leading to industrial-strength solvers, for example, in the areas of answer set programming (ASP), the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), propositional satisfiability (SAT) and satisfiability of quantified Boolean formulas (QBF). However, in all these areas, there exist multiple solving strategies that work well on different applications; no strategy dominates all other strategies. Therefore, no individual solver shows robust state-of-the-art performance in all kinds of applications. Additionally, the question arises how to choose a well-performing solving strategy for a given application; this is a challenging question even for solver and domain experts. One way to address this issue is the use of portfolio solvers, that is, a set of different solvers or solver configurations. We present three new automatic portfolio methods: (i) automatic construction of parallel portfolio solvers (ACPP) via algorithm configuration,(ii) solving the \$NP\$-hard problem of finding effective algorithm schedules with Answer Set Programming (aspeed), and (iii) a flexible algorithm selection framework (claspfolio2) allowing for fair comparison of different selection approaches. All three methods show improved performance and robustness in comparison to individual solvers on heterogeneous instance sets from many different applications. Since parallel solvers are important to effectively solve hard problems on parallel computation systems (e.g., multi-core processors), we extend all three approaches to be effectively applicable in parallel settings. We conducted extensive experimental studies different instance sets from ASP, CSP, MAXSAT, Operation Research (OR), SAT and QBF that indicate an improvement in the state-of-the-art solving heterogeneous instance sets. Last but not least, from our experimental studies, we deduce practical advice regarding the question when to apply which of our methods.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{ZoernerKoehlmannBrandt2014,
  author    = {Zoerner, Dietmar and K{\"o}hlmann, Wiebke and Brandt, Christopher},
  title     = {Mobiles spielebasiertes Lernen an historischen Lernorten},
  series = {E-Learning Symposium 2014 : Mobil und vernetzt - studieren im digitalen Zeitalter ; Potsdam, 14. November 2014},
  journal   = {E-Learning Symposium 2014 : Mobil und vernetzt - studieren im digitalen Zeitalter ; Potsdam, 14. November 2014},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-44235},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-442354},
  pages     = {53 -- 54},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Im Rahmen eines interdisziplin{\"a}ren studentischen Projekts wurde ein Framework f{\"u}r mobile pervasive Lernspiele entwickelt. Am Beispiel des historischen Lernortes Park Sanssouci wurde auf dieser Grundlage ein Lernspiel f{\"u}r Sch{\"u}lerinnen und Sch{\"u}ler implementiert. Die geplante Evaluation soll die Lernwirksamkeit von geobasierten mobilen Lernspielen messen. Dazu wird die Intensit{\"a}t des Flow-Erlebens mit einer ortsgebundenen alternativen Umsetzung verglichen.},
  language  = {de}
}
@inproceedings{BreitlauchNoskovaRensingetal.2014,
  author    = {Breitlauch, Linda and Noskova, Tatiana N. and Rensing, Christoph and Ifenthaler, Dirk and Owassapian, Dominik and Hensinger, Johannes and Buschmann, Jana and Glasemann, Marie and Dirwelis, Swenja and Mach, Michael and Kallookaran, Michael and Robra-Bissantz, Susanne and Zoerner, Dietmar and K{\"o}hlmann, Wiebke and Brandt, Christopher and Kutzner, Tobias and Steinert, Christian},
  title     = {E-Learning Symposium 2014},
  editor    = {Lucke, Ulrike and Gr{\"u}newald, Franka and Hafer, J{\"o}rg},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-6984},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-72154},
  pages     = {59},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Der Tagungsband zum E-Learning Symposium 2014 an der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam beleuchtet die diversen Zielgruppen und Anwendungsbereiche, die aktuell in der E-Learning-Forschung angesprochen werden. W{\"a}hrend im letzten Symposium 2012 der Dozierende mit den unterschiedlichen M{\"o}glichkeiten der Studierendenaktivierung und Lehrgestaltung im Fokus der Diskussionen stand, werden in diesem Jahr in einem großen Teil der Beitr{\"a}ge die Studierenden ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit ger{\"u}ckt. Dass nicht nur der Inhalt des Lernmediums f{\"u}r den Lernerfolg eine Rolle spielt, sondern auch dessen Unterhaltungswert und die Freude, die die Lernenden w{\"a}hrend des Prozesses der Wissensakquise empfinden, zeigt sehr anschaulich die Keynote von Linda Breitlauch zum Thema „Faites vos Jeux" (Spielen Sie jetzt). Der Beitrag von Zoerner et al. verbindet den Gedanken des spiele-basierten Lernens mit dem nach wie vor aktuellen Thema des mobilen Lernens. Auch in diesem Forschungsbereich spielt die Fokussierung auf den Lernenden eine immer herausragendere Rolle. Einen Schritt weiter in Richtung Individualisierung geht in diesem Zusammenhang der eingeladene Vortrag von Christoph Rensing, der sich mit der Adaptivit{\"a}t von mobilen Lernanwendungen besch{\"a}ftigt. Mit Hilfe zur Verf{\"u}gung stehender Kontextinformationen sollen gezielt individuelle Lernprozesse unterst{\"u}tzt werden. Alle Beitr{\"a}ge, die sich auf mobile Applikationen und auf Spiele beziehen, sprechen auch die zwischenmenschliche Komponente am Lernen an. So wird neben der Mobilit{\"a}t insbesondere auch der Austausch von Lernobjekten zwischen Lernenden (vergleiche den Beitrag von Zoerner et al.) sowie die Kooperation zwischen Lernenden (siehe Beitrag von Kallookaran und Robra-Bissantz) diskutiert. Der interpersonelle Kontakt spielt allerdings ebenfalls in den Beitr{\"a}gen ohne Spiel- oder App-Fokussierung eine Rolle. Tutoren werden beispielsweise zur Moderation von Lernprozessen eingesetzt und Lerngruppen gegr{\"u}ndet um das problem-orientierte Lernen st{\"a}rker in den Mittelpunkt zu r{\"u}cken (siehe Beitrag von Mach und Dirwelis) bzw. n{\"a}her am Bedarf der Studierenden zu arbeiten (wie in eingeladenen Vortrag von Tatiana N. Noskova sowie in dem Beitrag von Mach und Dirwelis beschrieben). In der Evaluation wird ebenfalls der Schritt weg von anonymen, akkumulierten statistischen Auswertungen hin zu individualisierten Nutzerprofilen im Bereich des Learning Analytics untersucht (vergleiche dazu den Beitrag von Ifenthaler). Neben der Schwerpunktsetzung auf die Lernenden und deren Mobilit{\"a}t r{\"u}ckt das Thema Transmedialit{\"a}t st{\"a}rker ins Zentrum der Forschung. W{\"a}hrend schon die Keynote mit ihrem Spielefokus darauf anspricht, geht es in weiteren Beitr{\"a}gen darum Abl{\"a}ufe aus der analogen Welt bestm{\"o}glich in der digitalen Welt abzubilden. Lerninhalte, die bisher mittels Bildern und Texten f{\"u}r Lehrende und Lernende zug{\"a}nglich gemacht wurden, werden nunmehr mit weiteren Medien, insbesondere Videos, angereichert um deren Verst{\"a}ndnis zu erh{\"o}hen. Dies ist beispielsweise geeignet, um Bewegungsabl{\"a}ufe im Sport (vergleiche dazu den Beitrag von Owassapian und Hensinger) oder musikpraktische {\"U}bungen wie Bodyperkussion (beschrieben im Beitrag von Buschmann und Glasemann) zu erlernen Lernendenfokussierung, pers{\"o}nlicher Austausch, Mobilit{\"a}t und Transmedialit{\"a}t sind somit einige der Kernthemen, die Sie in diesem Sammelband erwarten. Auch zeigt die h{\"a}ufige Verkn{\"u}pfung verschedener dieser Kernthemen, dass keines davon ein Randthema ist, sondern sich die Summe aus allen im E-Learning b{\"u}ndelt und damit eine neue Qualit{\"a}t f{\"u}r Lehre, Studium und Forschung erreicht werden kann.},
  language  = {mul}
}
@phdthesis{Videla2014,
  author    = {Videla, Santiago},
  title     = {Reasoning on the response of logical signaling networks with answer set programming},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71890},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Deciphering the functioning of biological networks is one of the central tasks in systems biology. In particular, signal transduction networks are crucial for the understanding of the cellular response to external and internal perturbations. Importantly, in order to cope with the complexity of these networks, mathematical and computational modeling is required. We propose a computational modeling framework in order to achieve more robust discoveries in the context of logical signaling networks. More precisely, we focus on modeling the response of logical signaling networks by means of automated reasoning using Answer Set Programming (ASP). ASP provides a declarative language for modeling various knowledge representation and reasoning problems. Moreover, available ASP solvers provide several reasoning modes for assessing the multitude of answer sets. Therefore, leveraging its rich modeling language and its highly efficient solving capacities, we use ASP to address three challenging problems in the context of logical signaling networks: learning of (Boolean) logical networks, experimental design, and identification of intervention strategies. Overall, the contribution of this thesis is three-fold. Firstly, we introduce a mathematical framework for characterizing and reasoning on the response of logical signaling networks. Secondly, we contribute to a growing list of successful applications of ASP in systems biology. Thirdly, we present a software providing a complete pipeline for automated reasoning on the response of logical signaling networks.},
  language  = {en}
}