TY - JOUR A1 - Despujol Zabala, Ignacio A1 - Alario Hoyos, Carlos A1 - Turró Ribalta, Carlos A1 - Delgado Kloos, Carlos A1 - Montoro Manrique, Germán A1 - Busquets Mataix, Jaime T1 - Transforming Open Edx into the next On-Campus LMS BT - an ongoing project N2 - Open edX is an incredible platform to deliver MOOCs and SPOCs, designed to be robust and support hundreds of thousands of students at the same time. Nevertheless, it lacks a lot of the fine-grained functionality needed to handle students individually in an on-campus course. This short session will present the ongoing project undertaken by the 6 public universities of the Region of Madrid plus the Universitat Politècnica de València, in the framework of a national initiative called UniDigital, funded by the Ministry of Universities of Spain within the Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia of the European Union. This project, led by three of these Spanish universities (UC3M, UPV, UAM), is investing more than half a million euros with the purpose of bringing the Open edX platform closer to the functionalities required for an LMS to support on-campus teaching. The aim of the project is to coordinate what is going to be developed with the Open edX development community, so these developments are incorporated into the core of the Open edX platform in its next releases. Features like a complete redesign of platform analytics to make them real-time, the creation of dashboards based on these analytics, the integration of a system for customized automatic feedback, improvement of exams and tasks and the extension of grading capabilities, improvements in the graphical interfaces for both students and teachers, the extension of the emailing capabilities, redesign of the file management system, integration of H5P content, the integration of a tool to create mind maps, the creation of a system to detect students at risk, or the integration of an advanced voice assistant and a gamification mobile app, among others, are part of the functionalities to be developed. The idea is to transform a first-class MOOC platform into the next on-campus LMS. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-625122 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kühne, Katharina A1 - Herbold, Erika A1 - Bendel, Oliver A1 - Zhou, Yuefang A1 - Fischer, Martin H. T1 - “Ick bin een Berlina” BT - dialect proficiency impacts a robot’s trustworthiness and competence evaluation JF - Frontiers in robotics and AI N2 - Background: Robots are increasingly used as interaction partners with humans. Social robots are designed to follow expected behavioral norms when engaging with humans and are available with different voices and even accents. Some studies suggest that people prefer robots to speak in the user’s dialect, while others indicate a preference for different dialects. Methods: Our study examined the impact of the Berlin dialect on perceived trustworthiness and competence of a robot. One hundred and twenty German native speakers (Mage = 32 years, SD = 12 years) watched an online video featuring a NAO robot speaking either in the Berlin dialect or standard German and assessed its trustworthiness and competence. Results: We found a positive relationship between participants’ self-reported Berlin dialect proficiency and trustworthiness in the dialect-speaking robot. Only when controlled for demographic factors, there was a positive association between participants’ dialect proficiency, dialect performance and their assessment of robot’s competence for the standard German-speaking robot. Participants’ age, gender, length of residency in Berlin, and device used to respond also influenced assessments. Finally, the robot’s competence positively predicted its trustworthiness. Discussion: Our results inform the design of social robots and emphasize the importance of device control in online experiments. KW - competence KW - dialect KW - human-robot interaction KW - robot voice KW - social robot KW - trust Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1241519 SN - 2296-9144 VL - 10 PB - Frontiers Media S.A. CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Shlaka, Souhad A1 - Ouahib, Sara A1 - Berrada, Khalid ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - A retrospective feedback of MOOCS in Morocco BT - what is the best scenario for the Moroccan higher education? JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The integration of MOOCs into the Moroccan Higher Education (MHE) took place in 2013 by developing different partnerships and projects at national and international levels. As elsewhere, the Covid-19 crisis has played an important role in accelerating distance education in MHE. However, based on our experience as both university professors and specialists in educational engineering, the effective execution of the digital transition has not yet been implemented. Thus, in this article, we present a retrospective feedback of MOOCs in Morocco, focusing on the policies taken by the government to better support the digital transition in general and MOOCs in particular. We are therefore seeking to establish an optimal scenario for the promotion of MOOCs, which emphasizes the policies to be considered, and which recalls the importance of conducting a delicate articulation taking into account four levels, namely environmental, institutional, organizational and individual. We conclude with recommendations that are inspired by the Moroccan academic contex that focus on the major role that MOOCs plays for university students and on maintaining lifelong learning. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624826 SP - 317 EP - 327 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Theeraroungchaisri, Anuchai A1 - Thammetar, Thapanee A1 - Duangchinda, Vorasuang A1 - Khlaisang, Jintavee ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Thai MOOC academy BT - extending the platform towards a sandbox for the National Credit Bank System in Thailand JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - Thai MOOC Academy is a national digital learning platform that has been serving as a mechanism for promoting lifelong learning in Thailand since 2017. It has recently undergone significant improvements and upgrades, including the implementation of a credit bank system and a learner’s eportfolio system interconnected with the platform. Thai MOOC Academy is introducing a national credit bank system for accreditation and management, which allows for the transfer of expected learning outcomes and educational qualifications between formal education, non-formal education, and informal education. The credit bank system has five distinct features, including issuing forgery-prevented certificates, recording learning results, transferring external credits within the same wallet, accumulating learning results, and creating a QR code for verification purposes. The paper discusses the features and future potential of Thai MOOC Academy, as it is extended towards a sandbox for the national credit bank system in Thailand. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624212 SP - 163 EP - 169 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Moura Santos, Ana A1 - Corti, Paola A1 - Felipe Coimbra Costa, Luis ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - How to reuse inclusive stem Moocs in blended settings to engage young girls to scientific careers JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The FOSTWOM project (2019–2022), an ERASMUS+ funding, gave METID (Politecnico di Milano) and the MOOC Técnico (Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon), together with other partners, the opportunity to support the design and creation of gender-inclusive MOOCs. Among other project outputs, we designed a toolkit and a framework that enabled the production of two MOOCs for undergraduate and graduate students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and used them as academic content free of gender stereotypes about intellectual ability. In this short paper, the authors aim to 1) briefly share the main outputs of the project; 2) tell the story of how the FOSTWOM approach together with 3) a motivational strategy, the Heroine’s Learning Journey, proved to be effective in the context of rural and marginal areas in Brazil, with young girls as a specific target audience. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624756 SP - 271 EP - 278 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Steinbeck, Hendrik A1 - Meinel, Christoph ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - What makes an educational video? BT - deconstructing characteristics of video production styles for MOOCs JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - In an effort to describe and produce different formats for video instruction, the research community in technology-enhanced learning, and MOOC scholars in particular, have focused on the general style of video production: whether it is a digitally scripted “talk-and-chalk” or a “talking head” version of a learning unit. Since these production styles include various sub-elements, this paper deconstructs the inherited elements of video production in the context of educational live-streams. Using over 700 videos – both from synchronous and asynchronous modalities of large video-based platforms (YouTube and Twitch), 92 features were found in eight categories of video production. These include commonly analyzed features such as the use of green screen and a visible instructor, but also less studied features such as social media connections and changing camera perspective depending on the topic being covered. Overall, the research results enable an analysis of common video production styles and a toolbox for categorizing new formats – independent of their final (a)synchronous use in MOOCs. Keywords: video production, MOOC video styles, live-streaming. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-622086 SP - 47 EP - 58 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May A1 - Yokoi, Kensuke A1 - Maurice Gayed, John A1 - Suyama, Hiroshi A1 - Cross, Jeffrey ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Cross, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Preparing for Society 5.0 with MOOC Capabilities Extension BT - an industry-academia collaboration on learning analytics dashboard development JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - Academia-industry collaborations are beneficial when both sides bring strengths to the partnership and the collaboration outcome is of mutual benefit. These types of collaboration projects are seen as a low-risk learning opportunity for both parties. In this paper, government initiatives that can change the business landscape and academia-industry collaborations that can provide upskilling opportunities to fill emerging business needs are discussed. In light of Japan’s push for next-level modernization, a Japanese software company took a positive stance towards building new capabilities outside what it had been offering its customers. Consequently, an academic research group is laying out infrastructure for learning analytics research. An existing learning analytics dashboard was modularized to allow the research group to focus on natural language processing experiments while the software company explores a development framework suitable for data visualization techniques and artificial intelligence development. The results of this endeavor demonstrate that companies working with academia can creatively explore collaborations outside typical university-supported avenues. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-620809 SP - 9 EP - 20 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jin, Tonje ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - “One video fit for all” BT - game inspired online TEACHING in mathematics in STEM education JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - Online learning in mathematics has always been challenging, especially for mathematics in STEM education. This paper presents how to make “one fit for all” lecture videos for mathematics in STEM education. In general, we do believe that there is no such thing as “one fit for all” video. The curriculum requires a high level of prior knowledge in mathematics from high school to get a good understanding, and the variation of prior knowledge levels among STEM education students is often high. This creates challenges for both online teaching and on-campus teaching. This article presents experimenting and researching on a video format where students can get a real-time feeling, and which fits their needs regarding their existing prior knowledge. They have the possibility to ask and receive answers during the video without having to feel that they must jump into different sources, which helps to reduce unnecessary distractions. The fundamental video format presented here is that of dynamic branching videos, which has to little degree been researched in education related studies. The reason might be that this field is quite new for higher education, and there is relatively high requirement on the video editing skills from the teachers’ side considering the platforms that are available so far. The videos are implemented for engineering students who take the Linear Algebra course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in spring 2023. Feedback from the students gathered via anonymous surveys so far (N = 21) is very positive. With the high suitability for online teaching, this video format might lead the trend of online learning in the future. The design and implementation of dynamic videos in mathematics in higher education was presented for the first time at the EMOOCs conference 2023. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-621080 SP - 21 EP - 35 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Xue, Wei A1 - Bruillard, Éric ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - MOOC in private Chinese universities BT - behavior and attitude of students learning foreign languages JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - This paper investigates private university students’ language learning activities in MOOC platforms and their attitude toward it. The study explores the development of MOOC use in Chinese private universities, with a focus on two modes: online et blended. We conducted empirical studies with students learning French and Japanese as a second foreign language, using questionnaires (N = 387) and interviews (N = 20) at a private university in Wuhan. Our results revealed that the majority of students used the MOOC platform more than twice a week and focused on the MOOC video, materials and assignments. However, we also found that students showed less interest in online communication (forums). Those who worked in the blended learning mode, especially Japanese learning students, had a more positive attitude toward MOOCs than other students. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-621811 SP - 37 EP - 45 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van Esveld, Selma A1 - de Vries, Nardo A1 - Becchetti, Sibilla A1 - Dopper, Sofia A1 - van Valkenburg, Willem ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Cross, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Impact of Mooc and Other Online Course Development on Campus Education JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The TU Delft Extension School for Continuing Education develops and delivers MOOCs, programs and other online courses for lifelong learners and professionals worldwide focused on Science, Engineering & Design. At the beginning of 2022, we started a project to examine whether creating an online course had any impact on TU Delft campus education. Through a survey, we collected feedback from 68 TU Delft lecturers involved in developing and offering online courses and programs for lifelong learners and professionals. The lecturers reported on the impact of developing an online course on a personal and curricular level. The results showed that the developed online materials, and the acquired skills and experiences from creating online courses, were beneficial for campus education, especially during the transition to remote emergency teaching in the COVID-19 lockdown periods. In this short paper, we will describe the responses in detail and map the benefits and challenges experienced by lecturers when implementing their online course materials and newly acquired educational skills on campus. Finally, we will explore future possibilities to extend the reported, already relevant, impact of MOOCs and of other online courses on campus education. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-620785 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Alario Hoyos, Carlos A1 - Delgado Kloos, Carlos A1 - Kiendl, Doris A1 - Terzieva, Liliya ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Innovat MOOC BT - teacher training on educational innovation in higher education JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance for university teachers to have adequate pedagogical and technological competences to cope with the various possible educational scenarios (face-to-face, online, hybrid, etc.), making use of appropriate active learning methodologies and supporting technologies to foster a more effective learning environment. In this context, the InnovaT project has been an important initiative to support the development of pedagogical and technological competences of university teachers in Latin America through several trainings aiming to promote teacher innovation. These trainings combined synchronous online training through webinars and workshops with asynchronous online training through the MOOC “Innovative Teaching in Higher Education.” This MOOC was released twice. The first run took place right during the lockdown of 2020, when Latin American teachers needed urgent training to move to emergency remote teaching overnight. The second run took place in 2022 with the return to face-to-face teaching and the implementation of hybrid educational models. This article shares the results of the design of the MOOC considering the constraints derived from the lockdowns applied in each country, the lessons learned from the delivery of such a MOOC to Latin American university teachers, and the results of the two runs of the MOOC. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624560 SP - 229 EP - 237 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Xiaoxiao, Wang A1 - Shuangshuang, Guo ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Promoting global higher education cooperation BT - taking global MOOC and online education alliance as an example JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The massive growth of MOOCs in 2011 laid the groundwork for the achievement of SDG 4. With the various benefits of MOOCs, there is also anticipation that online education should focus on more interactivity and global collaboration. In this context, the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance (GMA) established a diverse group of 17 world-leading universities and three online education platforms from across 14 countries on all six continents in 2020. Through nearly three years of exploration, GMA has gained experience and achieved progress in fostering global cooperation in higher education. First, in joint teaching, GMA has promoted in-depth cooperation between members inside and outside the alliance. Examples include promoting the exchange of high-quality MOOCs, encouraging the creation of Global Hybrid Classroom, and launching Global Hybrid Classroom Certificate Programs. Second, in capacity building and knowledge sharing, GMA has launched Online Education Dialogues and the Global MOOC and Online Education Conference, inviting global experts to share best practices and attracting more than 10 million viewers around the world. Moreover, GMA is collaborating with international organizations to support teachers’ professional growth, create an online learning community, and serve as a resource for further development. Third, in public advocacy, GMA has launched the SDG Hackathon and Global Massive Open Online Challenge (GMOOC) and attracted global learners to acquire knowledge and incubate their innovative ideas within a cross-cultural community to solve real-world problems that all humans face and jointly create a better future. Based on past experiences and challenges, GMA will explore more diverse cooperation models with more partners utilizing advanced technology, provide more support for digital transformation in higher education, and further promote global cooperation towards building a human community with a shared future. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623865 SP - 85 EP - 93 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Khaneboubi, Mehdi ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Visualizing students flows to monitor persistence JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - Founded in 2013, OpenClassrooms is a French online learning company that offers both paid courses and free MOOCs on a wide range of topics, including computer science and education. In 2021, in partnership with the EDA research unit, OpenClassrooms shared a database to solve the problem of how to increase persistence in their paid courses, which consist of a series of MOOCs and human mentoring. Our statistical analysis aims to identify reasons for dropouts that are due to the course design rather than demographic predictors or external factors.We aim to identify at-risk students, i.e. those who are on the verge of dropping out at a specific moment. To achieve this, we use learning analytics to characterize student behavior. We conducted data analysis on a sample of data related to the “Web Designers” and “Instructional Design” courses. By visualizing the student flow and constructing speed and acceleration predictors, we can identify which parts of the course need to be calibrated and when particular attention should be paid to these at-risk students. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623906 SP - 121 EP - 131 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Doğu Özdemir, Paker A1 - Can Bayer, Burak A1 - Mercan, Duygu A1 - Buyurucu, Gamze ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - MOOC-based Personalized Learning Experience (Ple) BT - an innovative approach to elective courses JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - This qualitative study explores the impact of Personalized Learning Experience (PLE) courses at a higher education institution from the perspective of undergraduate students. The PLE program requires students to take at least one of their elective courses in the form of MOOCs during their undergraduate studies. Drawing on interviews with six students across different faculties, the study identified four key themes that encapsulate the effects of PLE courses: (1) Certificate driven learning with a focus on occupation skill enhancement, (2) diverse course offerings to enhance personal and academic development, (3) learning flexibility, and (4) student satisfaction. The findings suggest that PLE courses offered through MOOC platforms allow students to broaden their academic horizons, gain valuable skills, and tailor their education to better align with their interests and goals. Furthermore, this study highlights the potential benefits of incorporating PLE courses in higher education institutions, emphasizing their role in promoting a more dynamic and student-centered learning environment. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-622098 SP - 59 EP - 66 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ebner, Martin A1 - Edelsbrunner, Sarah A1 - Hohla-Sejkora, Katharina A1 - Lipp, Silvia A1 - Schön, Sandra ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Role of MOOCs and Imoox for Austrian Universities BT - analysis of performance agreements and activities at imoox JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - This research paper provides an overview of the current state of MOOCs (massive open online courses) and universities in Austria, focusing on the national MOOC platform iMooX.at. The study begins by presenting the results of an analysis of the performance agreements of 22 Austrian public universities for the period 2022–2024, with a specific focus on the mention of MOOC activities and iMooX. The authors find that 12 of 22 (55 %) Austrian public universities use at least one of these terms, indicating a growing interest in MOOCs and online learning. Additionally, the authors analyze internal documentation data to share insights into how many universities in Austria have produced and/or used a MOOC on the iMooX platform since its launch in 2014. These findings provide a valuable measure of the current usage and monitoring of MOOCs and iMooX among Austrian higher education institutions. Overall, this research contributes to a better understanding of the current state of MOOCs and their integration within Austrian higher education. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-622134 SP - 77 EP - 84 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Egloffstein, Marc A1 - Hünemohr, Holger A1 - Ifenthaler, Dirk ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Modularization of open online courses on the eGov-Campus BT - prospects and challenges JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - Modularization describes the transformation of MOOCs from a comprehensive academic course format into smaller, more manageable learning offerings. It can be seen as one of the prerequisites for the successful implementation of MOOC-based micro-credentials in professional education and training. This short paper reports on the development and application of a modularization framework for Open Online Courses. Using the example of eGov-Campus, a German MOOC provider for the public sector linked to both academia and formal professional development, the structural specifications for modularized MOOC offerings and a methodology for course transformation as well as associated challenges in technology, organization and educational design are outlined. Following on from this, future prospects are discussed under the headings of individualization, certification and integration. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623888 SP - 105 EP - 112 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Neuböck, Kristina A1 - Linschinger, Nadine ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Central elements of knowledge and competence development with MOOCs BT - using the example of the OER-MOOC JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - To implement OERs at HEIs sustainably, not just technical infrastructure is required, but also well-trained staff. The University of Graz is in charge of an OER training program for university staff as part of the collaborative project Open Education Austria Advanced (OEAA) with the aim of ensuring long-term competence growth in the use and creation of OERs. The program consists of a MOOC and a guided blended learning format that was evaluated to find out which accompanying teaching and learning concepts can best facilitate targeted competence development. The evaluation of the program shows that learning videos, self-study assignments and synchronous sessions are most useful for the learning process. The results indicate that the creation of OERs is a complex process that can be undergone more effectively in the guided program. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624668 SP - 255 EP - 262 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Khlaisang, Jintavee A1 - Duangchinda, Vorasuang A1 - Thammetar, Thapanee A1 - Theeraroungchaisri, Anuchai ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Instructional design for work-based skill MOOCs BT - challenges for workforce development in Thailand JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - As Thailand moves towards becoming an innovation-driven economy, the need for human capital development has become crucial. Work-based skill MOOCs, offered on Thai MOOC, a national digital learning platform launched by Thailand Cyber University Project, ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, provide an effective way to overcome this challenge. This paper discusses the challenges faced in designing an instruction for work-based skill MOOCs that can serve as a foundation model for many more to come. The instructional design of work-based skill courses in Thai MOOC involves four simple steps, including course selection, learning from accredited providers, course requirements completion, and certification of acquired skills. The development of such courses is ongoing at the higher education level, vocational level, and pre-university level, which serve as a foundation model for many more work-based skill MOOC that will be offered on Thai MOOC soon. The instructional design of work-based skills courses should focus on the development of currently demanded professional competencies and skills, increasing the efficiency of work in the organization, creativity, and happiness in life that meets the human resources needs of industries in the 4.0 economy era in Thailand. This paper aims to present the challenges of designing instruction for work-based skill MOOCs and suggests effective ways to design instruction to enhance workforce development in Thailand. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624318 SP - 221 EP - 227 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dixon, Fred A1 - Trabucchi, Stefania ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Using analytics in a large virtual classroom for Open edX JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The main aim of this article is to explore how learning analytics and synchronous collaboration could improve course completion and learner outcomes in MOOCs, which traditionally have been delivered asynchronously. Based on our experience with developing BigBlueButton, a virtual classroom platform that provides educators with live analytics, this paper explores three scenarios with business focused MOOCs to improve outcomes and strengthen learned skills. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623895 SP - 113 EP - 120 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nohr, Magnus A1 - Haugsbakken, Halvdan ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - A taxonomy of video genres as a scaffolding strategy for video making in education JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - This research paper aims to introduce a novel practitioner-oriented and research-based taxonomy of video genres. This taxonomy can serve as a scaffolding strategy to support educators throughout the entire educational system in creating videos for pedagogical purposes. A taxonomy of video genres is essential as videos are highly valued resources among learners. Although the use of videos in education has been extensively researched and well-documented in systematic research reviews, gaps remain in the literature. Predominantly, researchers employ sophisticated quantitative methods and similar approaches to measure the performance of videos. This trend has led to the emergence of a strong learning analytics research tradition with its embedded literature. This body of research includes analysis of performance of videos in online courses such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Surprisingly, this same literature is limited in terms of research outlining approaches to designing and creating educational videos, which applies to both video-based learning and online courses. This issue results in a knowledge gap, highlighting the need for developing pedagogical tools and strategies for video making. These can be found in frameworks, guidelines, and taxonomies, which can serve as scaffolding strategies. In contrast, there appears to be very few frameworks available for designing and creating videos for pedagogica purposes, apart from a few well-known frameworks. In this regard, this research paper proposes a novel taxonomy of video genres that educators can utilize when creating videos intended for use in either video-based learning environments or online courses. To create this taxonomy, a large number of videos from online courses were collected and analyzed using a mixed-method research design approach. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624294 SP - 201 EP - 220 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Serth, Sebastian A1 - Thomas, Max A1 - Ebner, Martin A1 - Koschutnig-Ebner, Markus A1 - Rampelt, Florian A1 - von Stetten, Alexander A1 - Wittke, Andreas ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - A metastandard for the international exchange of MOOCs BT - the MOOChub as first prototype JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The MOOChub is a joined web-based catalog of all relevant German and Austrian MOOC platforms that lists well over 750 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Automatically building such a catalog requires that all partners describe and publicly offer the metadata of their courses in the same way. The paper at hand presents the genesis of the idea to establish a common metadata standard and the story of its subsequent development. The result of this effort is, first, an open-licensed de-facto-standard, which is based on existing commonly used standards and second, a first prototypical platform that is using this standard: the MOOChub, which lists all courses of the involved partners. This catalog is searchable and provides a more comprehensive overview of basically all MOOCs that are offered by German and Austrian MOOC platforms. Finally, the upcoming developments to further optimize the catalog and the metadata standard are reported. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624154 SP - 147 EP - 161 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Giannatelli, Ada A1 - Tomasini, Alessandra ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Descriptors and EU Standards to support the recognition of MOOCs JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - Digital technologies have enabled a variety of learning offers that opened new challenges in terms of recognition of formal, informal and non-formal learning, such as MOOCs. This paper focuses on how providing relevant data to describe a MOOC is conducive to increase the transparency of information and, ultimately, the flexibility of European higher education. The EU-funded project ECCOE took up these challenges and developed a solution by identifying the most relevant descriptors of a learning opportunity with a view to supporting a European system for micro-credentials. Descriptors indicate the specific properties of a learning opportunity according to European standards. They can provide a recognition framework also for small volumes of learning (micro-credentials) to support the integration of non-formal learning (MOOCs) into formal learning (e.g. institutional university courses) and to tackle skills shortage, upskilling and reskilling by acquiring relevant competencies. The focus on learning outcomes can facilitate the recognition of skills and competences of students and enhance both virtual and physical mobility and employability. This paper presents two contexts where ECCOE descriptors have been adopted: the Politecnico di Milano MOOC platform (Polimi Open Knowledge – POK), which is using these descriptors as the standard information to document the features of its learning opportunities, and the EU-funded Uforest project on urban forestry, which developed a blended training program for students of partner universities whose MOOCs used the ECCOE descriptors. Practice with ECCOE descriptors shows how they can be used not only to detail MOOC features, but also as a compass to design the learning offer. In addition, some rules of thumb can be derived and applied when using specific descriptors. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623967 SP - 133 EP - 146 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Concia, Francesca A1 - Distler, Petr A1 - Law, Gareth A1 - Macerata, Elena A1 - Mariani, Mario A1 - Mossini, Eros A1 - Negrin, Maddalena A1 - Štrok, Marko ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - An experience in developing models to use MOOCs in teaching and to advocate OERs JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - Loss of expertise in the fields of Nuclear- and Radio-Chemistry (NRC) is problematic at a scientific and social level. This has been addressed by developing a MOOC, in order to let students in scientific matters discover all the benefits of NRC to society and improving their awareness of this discipline. The MOOC “Essential Radiochemistry for Society” includes current societal challenges related to health, clean and sustainable energy for safety and quality of food and agriculture. NRC teachers belonging to CINCH network were invited to use the MOOC in their teaching, according to various usage models: on the basis of these different experiences, some usage patterns were designed, describing context characteristics (number and age of students, course), activities’ scheduling and organization, results and students’ feedback, with the aim of encouraging the use of MOOCs in university teaching, as an opportunity for both lecturers and students. These models were the basis of a “toolkit for teachers”. By experiencing digital teaching resources created by different lecturers, CINCH teachers took a first meaningful step towards understanding the worth of Open Educational Resources (OER) and the importance of their creation, adoption and sharing for knowledge progress. In this paper, the entire path from MOOC concept to MOOC different usage models, to awareness-raising regarding OER is traced in conceptual stages. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624609 SP - 239 EP - 254 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ebner, Martin A1 - Edelsbrunner, Sarah A1 - Hohla-Sejkora, Katharina A1 - Mair, Bettina A1 - Schön, Sandra A1 - Lipp, Silvia A1 - Steinkellner, Iris A1 - Stojcevic, Ivana A1 - Zwiauer, Charlotte ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Impact assessment of a MOOC platform BT - considerations, development, and results JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - In 2020, the project “iMooX – The MOOC Platform as a Service for all Austrian Universities” was launched. It is co-financed by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research. After half of the funding period, the project management wants to assess and share results and outcomes but also address (potential) additional “impacts” of the MOOC platform. Building upon work on OER impact assessment, this contribution describes in detail how the specific iMooX.at approach of impact measurement was developed. Literature review, stakeholder analysis, and problem-based interviews were the base for developing a questionnaire addressing the defined key stakeholder “MOOC creators”. The article also presents the survey results in English for the first time but focuses more on the development, strengths, and weaknesses of the selected methods. The article is seen as a contribution to the further development of impact assessment for MOOC platforms. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624222 SP - 171 EP - 186 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Haugsbakken, Halvdan A1 - Hagelia, Marianne ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - An asynchronous cooperative leaning design in a Small Private Online Course (SPOC) JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - This short paper sets out to propose a novel and interesting learning design that facilitates for cooperative learning in which students do not conduct traditional group work in an asynchronous online education setting. This learning design will be explored in a Small Private Online Course (SPOC) among teachers and school managers at a teacher education. Such an approach can be made possible by applying specific criteria commonly used to define collaborative learning. Collaboration can be defined, among other things, as a structured way of working among students that includes elements of co-laboring. The cooperative learning design involves adapting various traditional collaborative learning approaches for use in an online learning environment. A critical component of this learning design is that students work on a self-defined case project related to their professional practices. Through an iterative process, students will receive ongoing feedback and formative assessments from instructors and follow students at specific points, meaning that co-constructing of knowledge and learning takes place as the SPOC progresses. This learning design can contribute to better learning experiences and outcomes for students, and be a valuable contribution to current research discussions on learning design in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-622107 SP - 67 EP - 76 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thirouard, Maria A1 - de la Villèsbrunne, Marie A1 - Bernaert, Oliver ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - From MOOC to “2M-POC” BT - an approach to transform a traditional MOOC to an efficient multi-modal learning path for companies JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - IFP School develops and produces MOOCs since 2014. After the COVID-19 crisis, the demand of our industrial and international partners to offer continuous training to their employees increased drastically in an energy transition and sustainable mobility environment that finds itself in constant and rapid evolution. Therefore, it is time for a new format of digital learning tools to efficiently and rapidly train an important number of employees. To address this new demand, in a more and more digital learning environment, we have completely changed our initial MOOC model to propose an innovative SPOC business model mixing synchronous and asynchronous modules. This paper describes the work that has been done to transform our MOOCs to a hybrid SPOC model. We changed the format itself from a standard MOOC model of several weeks to small modules of one week average more adapted to our client’s demand. We precisely engineered the exchanges between learners and the social aspect all along the SPOC duration. We propose a multimodal approach with a combination of asynchronous activities like online module, exercises, and synchronous activities like webinars with experts, and after-work sessions. Additionally, this new format increases the number of uses of the MOOC resources by our professors in our own master programs. With all these actions, we were able to reach a completion rate between 80 and 96% – total enrolled –, compared to the completion rate of 15 to 28% – total enrolled – as to be recorded in our original MOOC format. This is to be observed for small groups (50–100 learners) as SPOC but also for large groups (more than 2500 learners), as a Massive and Multimodal Private Online Course (“2M-POC”). Today a MOOC is not a simple assembly of videos, text, discussions forums and validation exercises but a complete multimodal learning path including social learning, personal followup, synchronous and asynchronous modules. We conclude that the original MOOC format is not at all suitable to propose efficient training to companies, and we must re-engineer the learning path to have a SPOC hybrid and multimodal training compatible with a cost-effective business model. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624268 SP - 187 EP - 200 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Morales-Chan, Miguel A1 - Amado-Salvatierra, Héctor R. A1 - Hernández-Rizzardini, Rocael ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Optimizing the design, pedagogical decision-making and development of MOOCs through the use of Ai-Based tools JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - This work explores the use of different generative AI tools in the design of MOOC courses. Authors in this experience employed a variety of AI-based tools, including natural language processing tools (e.g. Chat-GPT), and multimedia content authoring tools (e.g. DALLE-2, Midjourney, Tome.ai) to assist in the course design process. The aim was to address the unique challenges of MOOC course design, which includes to create engaging and effective content, to design interactive learning activities, and to assess student learning outcomes. The authors identified positive results with the incorporation of AI-based tools, which significantly improved the quality and effectiveness of MOOC course design. The tools proved particularly effective in analyzing and categorizing course content, identifying key learning objectives, and designing interactive learning activities that engaged students and facilitated learning. Moreover, the use of AI-based tools, streamlined the course design process, significantly reducing the time required to design and prepare the courses. In conclusion, the integration of generative AI tools into the MOOC course design process holds great potential for improving the quality and efficiency of these courses. Researchers and course designers should consider the advantages of incorporating generative AI tools into their design process to enhance their course offerings and facilitate student learning outcomes while also reducing the time and effort required for course development. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623870 SP - 95 EP - 103 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Utunen, Heini A1 - Attias, Melissa ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - xMOOCs BT - modality for mass reach during the pandemic for the World Health Organization JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - The World Health Organization designed OpenWHO.org to provide an inclusive and accessible online environment to equip learners across the globe with critical up-to-date information and to be able to effectively protect themselves in health emergencies. The platform thus focuses on the eXtended Massive Open Online Course (xMOOC) modality – contentfocused and expert-driven, one-to-many modelled, and self-paced for scalable learning. In this paper, we describe how OpenWHO utilized xMOOCs to reach mass audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; the paper specifically examines the accessibility, language inclusivity and adaptability of hosted xMOOCs. As of February 2023, OpenWHO had 7.5 million enrolments across 200 xMOOCs on health emergency, epidemic, pandemic and other public health topics available across 65 languages, including 46 courses targeted for the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results suggest that the xMOOC modality allowed OpenWHO to expand learning during the pandemic to previously underrepresented groups, including women, participants ages 70 and older, and learners younger than age 20. The OpenWHO use case shows that xMOOCs should be considered when there is a need for massive knowledge transfer in health emergency situations, yet the approach should be context-specific according to the type of health emergency, targeted population and region. Our evidence also supports previous calls to put intervention elements that contribute to removing barriers to access at the core of learning and health information dissemination. Equity must be the fundamental principle and organizing criteria for public health work. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624788 SP - 279 EP - 289 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thomas, Max A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Meinel, Christoph ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Preparing MOOChub metadata for the future of online learning BT - optimizing for AI recommendation services JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - With the growing number of online learning resources, it becomes increasingly difficult and overwhelming to keep track of the latest developments and to find orientation in the plethora of offers. AI-driven services to recommend standalone learning resources or even complete learning paths are discussed as a possible solution for this challenge. To function properly, such services require a well-defined set of metadata provided by the learning resource. During the last few years, the so-called MOOChub metadata format has been established as a de-facto standard by a group of MOOC providers in German-speaking countries. This format, which is based on schema.org, already delivers a quite comprehensive set of metadata. So far, this set has been sufficient to list, display, sort, filter, and search for courses on several MOOC and open educational resources (OER) aggregators. AI recommendation services and further automated integration, beyond a plain listing, have special requirements, however. To optimize the format for proper support of such systems, several extensions and modifications have to be applied. We herein report on a set of suggested changes to prepare the format for this task. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624830 SP - 329 EP - 338 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dietz, Michael A1 - Roth, Dennis ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Student-centered re-design of an online course with card sorting BT - how to quickly get a mental model of students JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - “How can a course structure be redesigned based on empirical data to enhance the learning effectiveness through a student-centered approach using objective criteria?”, was the research question we asked. “Digital Twins for Virtual Commissioning of Production Machines” is a course using several innovative concepts including an in-depth practical part with online experiments, called virtual labs. The teaching-learning concept is continuously evaluated. Card Sorting is a popular method for designing information architectures (IA), “a practice of effectively organizing, structuring, and labeling the content of a website or application into a structuref that enables efficient navigation” [11]. In the presented higher education context, a so-called hybrid card sort was used, in which each participants had to sort 70 cards into seven predefined categories or create new categories themselves. Twelve out of 28 students voluntarily participated in the process and short interviews were conducted after the activity. The analysis of the category mapping creates a quantitative measure of the (dis-)similarity of the keywords in specific categories using hierarchical clustering (HCA). The learning designer could then interpret the results to make decisions about the number, labeling and order of sections in the course. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624843 SP - 339 EP - 350 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kennedy, Eileen A1 - Laurillard, Diana A1 - Zeitoun, Samar ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - The Comooc model for global professional collaboration on sustainability JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - This paper presents a new design for MOOCs for professional development of skills needed to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals – the CoMOOC or Co-designed Massive Open Online Collaboration. The CoMOOC model is based on co-design with multiple stakeholders including end-users within the professional communities the CoMOOC aims to reach. This paper shows how the CoMOOC model could help the tertiary sector deliver on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) – including but not limited to SDG 4 Education – by providing a more effective vehicle for professional development at a scale that the UNSDGs require. Interviews with professionals using MOOCs, and design-based research with professionals have informed the development of the Co-MOOC model. This research shows that open, online, collaborative learning experiences are highly effective for building professional community knowledge. Moreover, this research shows that the collaborative learning design at the heart of the CoMOOC model is feasible cross-platform Research with teachers working in crisis contexts in Lebanon, many of whom were refugees, will be presented to show how this form of large scale, co-designed, online learning can support professionals, even in the most challenging contexts, such as mass displacement, where expertise is urgently required. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624803 SP - 291 EP - 303 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wasilewski, Julie A1 - Khaneboubi, Mehdi A1 - Bruillard, Éric ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - How to detect At-Risk learners in professional finance MOOCs BT - step one JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - “Financial Analysis” is an online course designed for professionals consisting of three MOOCs, offering a professionally and institutionally recognized certificate in finance. The course is open but not free of charge and attracts mostly professionals from the banking industry. The primary objective of this study is to identify indicators that can predict learners at high risk of failure. To achieve this, we analyzed data from a previous course that had 875 enrolled learners and involve in the course during Fall 2021. We utilized correspondence analysis to examine demographic and behavioral variables. The initial results indicate that demographic factors have a minor impact on the risk of failure in comparison to learners’ behaviors on the course platform. Two primary profiles were identified: (1) successful learners who utilized all the documents offered and spent between one to two hours per week, and (2) unsuccessful learners who used less than half of the proposed documents and spent less than one hour per week. Between these groups, at-risk students were identified as those who used more than half of the proposed documents and spent more than two hours per week. The goal is to identify those in group 1 who may be at risk of failing and those in group 2 who may succeed in the current MOOC, and to implement strategies to assist all learners in achieving success. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624818 SP - 305 EP - 316 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lorenz, Anja A1 - Bock, Stefanie A1 - Schulte-Ostermann, Juleka ED - Meinel, Christoph ED - Schweiger, Stefanie ED - Staubitz, Thomas ED - Conrad, Robert ED - Alario Hoyos, Carlos ED - Ebner, Martin ED - Sancassani, Susanna ED - Żur, Agnieszka ED - Friedl, Christian ED - Halawa, Sherif ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi ED - Scott, Jeffrey ED - Kristine Jonson Carlon, May ED - Deville, Yves ED - Gaebel, Michael ED - Delgado Kloos, Carlos ED - von Schmieden, Karen T1 - Challenges and proposals for introducing digital certificates in higher education infrastructures JF - EMOOCs 2023 : Post-Covid Prospects for Massive Open Online Courses - Boost or Backlash? N2 - Questions about the recognition of MOOCs within and outside higher education were already being raised in the early 2010s. Today, recognition decisions are still made more or less on a case-by-case basis. However, digital certification approaches are now emerging that could automate recognition processes. The technical development of the required machinereadable documents and infrastructures is already well advanced in some cases. The DigiCerts consortium has developed a solution based on a collective blockchain. There are ongoing and open discussions regarding the particular technology, but the institutional implementation of digital certificates raises further questions. A number of workshops have been held at the Institute for Interactive Systems at Technische Hochschule Lübeck, which have identified the need for new responsibilities for issuing certificates. It has also become clear that all members of higher education institutions need to develop skills in the use of digital certificates. KW - Digitale Bildung KW - Kursdesign KW - MOOC KW - Micro Degree KW - Online-Lehre KW - Onlinekurs KW - Onlinekurs-Produktion KW - digital education KW - e-learning KW - micro degree KW - micro-credential KW - online course creation KW - online course design KW - online teaching Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-624701 SP - 263 EP - 270 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hagedorn, Christiane A1 - Serth, Sebastian A1 - Meinel, Christoph T1 - The mysterious adventures of Detective Duke BT - how storified programming MOOCs support learners in achieving their learning goals JF - Frontiers in education N2 - About 15 years ago, the first Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) appeared and revolutionized online education with more interactive and engaging course designs. Yet, keeping learners motivated and ensuring high satisfaction is one of the challenges today's course designers face. Therefore, many MOOC providers employed gamification elements that only boost extrinsic motivation briefly and are limited to platform support. In this article, we introduce and evaluate a gameful learning design we used in several iterations on computer science education courses. For each of the courses on the fundamentals of the Java programming language, we developed a self-contained, continuous story that accompanies learners through their learning journey and helps visualize key concepts. Furthermore, we share our approach to creating the surrounding story in our MOOCs and provide a guideline for educators to develop their own stories. Our data and the long-term evaluation spanning over four Java courses between 2017 and 2021 indicates the openness of learners toward storified programming courses in general and highlights those elements that had the highest impact. While only a few learners did not like the story at all, most learners consumed the additional story elements we provided. However, learners' interest in influencing the story through majority voting was negligible and did not show a considerable positive impact, so we continued with a fixed story instead. We did not find evidence that learners just participated in the narrative because they worked on all materials. Instead, for 10-16% of learners, the story was their main course motivation. We also investigated differences in the presentation format and concluded that several longer audio-book style videos were most preferred by learners in comparison to animated videos or different textual formats. Surprisingly, the availability of a coherent story embedding examples and providing a context for the practical programming exercises also led to a slightly higher ranking in the perceived quality of the learning material (by 4%). With our research in the context of storified MOOCs, we advance gameful learning designs, foster learner engagement and satisfaction in online courses, and help educators ease knowledge transfer for their learners. KW - gameful learning KW - storytelling KW - programming KW - learner engagement KW - course design KW - MOOCs KW - content gamification KW - narrative Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.1016401 SN - 2504-284X VL - 7 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Puri, Manish A1 - Varde, Aparna S. A1 - Melo, Gerard de T1 - Commonsense based text mining on urban policy JF - Language resources and evaluation N2 - Local laws on urban policy, i.e., ordinances directly affect our daily life in various ways (health, business etc.), yet in practice, for many citizens they remain impervious and complex. This article focuses on an approach to make urban policy more accessible and comprehensible to the general public and to government officials, while also addressing pertinent social media postings. Due to the intricacies of the natural language, ranging from complex legalese in ordinances to informal lingo in tweets, it is practical to harness human judgment here. To this end, we mine ordinances and tweets via reasoning based on commonsense knowledge so as to better account for pragmatics and semantics in the text. Ours is pioneering work in ordinance mining, and thus there is no prior labeled training data available for learning. This gap is filled by commonsense knowledge, a prudent choice in situations involving a lack of adequate training data. The ordinance mining can be beneficial to the public in fathoming policies and to officials in assessing policy effectiveness based on public reactions. This work contributes to smart governance, leveraging transparency in governing processes via public involvement. We focus significantly on ordinances contributing to smart cities, hence an important goal is to assess how well an urban region heads towards a smart city as per its policies mapping with smart city characteristics, and the corresponding public satisfaction. KW - Commonsense reasoning KW - Opinion mining KW - Ordinances KW - Smart cities KW - Social KW - media KW - Text mining Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-022-09584-6 SN - 1574-020X SN - 1574-0218 VL - 57 SP - 733 EP - 763 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Piro, Vitor C. A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. T1 - Contamination detection and microbiome exploration with GRIMER JF - GigaScience N2 - Background: Contamination detection is a important step that should be carefully considered in early stages when designing and performing microbiome studies to avoid biased outcomes. Detecting and removing true contaminants is challenging, especially in low-biomass samples or in studies lacking proper controls. Interactive visualizations and analysis platforms are crucial to better guide this step, to help to identify and detect noisy patterns that could potentially be contamination. Additionally, external evidence, like aggregation of several contamination detection methods and the use of common contaminants reported in the literature, could help to discover and mitigate contamination. Results: We propose GRIMER, a tool that performs automated analyses and generates a portable and interactive dashboard integrating annotation, taxonomy, and metadata. It unifies several sources of evidence to help detect contamination. GRIMER is independent of quantification methods and directly analyzes contingency tables to create an interactive and offline report. Reports can be created in seconds and are accessible for nonspecialists, providing an intuitive set of charts to explore data distribution among observations and samples and its connections with external sources. Further, we compiled and used an extensive list of possible external contaminant taxa and common contaminants with 210 genera and 627 species reported in 22 published articles. Conclusion: GRIMER enables visual data exploration and analysis, supporting contamination detection in microbiome studies. The tool and data presented are open source and available at https://gitlab.com/dacs-hpi/grimer. KW - Contamination KW - Microbiome KW - Visualization KW - Taxonomy Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giad017 SN - 2047-217X VL - 12 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cohen, Sarel A1 - Hershcovitch, Moshik A1 - Taraz, Martin A1 - Kissig, Otto A1 - Issac, Davis A1 - Wood, Andrew A1 - Waddington, Daniel A1 - Chin, Peter A1 - Friedrich, Tobias T1 - Improved and optimized drug repurposing for the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic JF - PLoS one N2 - The active global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic caused more than 426 million cases and 5.8 million deaths worldwide. The development of completely new drugs for such a novel disease is a challenging, time intensive process. Despite researchers around the world working on this task, no effective treatments have been developed yet. This emphasizes the importance of drug repurposing, where treatments are found among existing drugs that are meant for different diseases. A common approach to this is based on knowledge graphs, that condense relationships between entities like drugs, diseases and genes. Graph neural networks (GNNs) can then be used for the task at hand by predicting links in such knowledge graphs. Expanding on state-of-the-art GNN research, Doshi et al. recently developed the Dr-COVID model. We further extend their work using additional output interpretation strategies. The best aggregation strategy derives a top-100 ranking of 8,070 candidate drugs, 32 of which are currently being tested in COVID-19-related clinical trials. Moreover, we present an alternative application for the model, the generation of additional candidates based on a given pre-selection of drug candidates using collaborative filtering. In addition, we improved the implementation of the Dr-COVID model by significantly shortening the inference and pre-processing time by exploiting data-parallelism. As drug repurposing is a task that requires high computation and memory resources, we further accelerate the post-processing phase using a new emerging hardware-we propose a new approach to leverage the use of high-capacity Non-Volatile Memory for aggregate drug ranking. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266572 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 18 IS - 3 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kappattanavar, Arpita Mallikarjuna A1 - Hecker, Pascal A1 - Moontaha, Sidratul A1 - Steckhan, Nico A1 - Arnrich, Bert T1 - Food choices after cognitive load BT - an affective computing approach JF - Sensors N2 - Psychology and nutritional science research has highlighted the impact of negative emotions and cognitive load on calorie consumption behaviour using subjective questionnaires. Isolated studies in other domains objectively assess cognitive load without considering its effects on eating behaviour. This study aims to explore the potential for developing an integrated eating behaviour assistant system that incorporates cognitive load factors. Two experimental sessions were conducted using custom-developed experimentation software to induce different stimuli. During these sessions, we collected 30 h of physiological, food consumption, and affective states questionnaires data to automatically detect cognitive load and analyse its effect on food choice. Utilising grid search optimisation and leave-one-subject-out cross-validation, a support vector machine model achieved a mean classification accuracy of 85.12% for the two cognitive load tasks using eight relevant features. Statistical analysis was performed on calorie consumption and questionnaire data. Furthermore, 75% of the subjects with higher negative affect significantly increased consumption of specific foods after high-cognitive-load tasks. These findings offer insights into the intricate relationship between cognitive load, affective states, and food choice, paving the way for an eating behaviour assistant system to manage food choices during cognitive load. Future research should enhance system capabilities and explore real-world applications. KW - cognitive load KW - eating behaviour KW - machine learning KW - physiological signals KW - photoplethysmography KW - electrodermal activity KW - sensors Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/s23146597 SN - 1424-8220 VL - 23 IS - 14 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Garrels, Tim A1 - Khodabakhsh, Athar A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. A1 - Baum, Katharina T1 - LazyFox: fast and parallelized overlapping community detection in large graphs JF - PEERJ Computer Science N2 - The detection of communities in graph datasets provides insight about a graph's underlying structure and is an important tool for various domains such as social sciences, marketing, traffic forecast, and drug discovery. While most existing algorithms provide fast approaches for community detection, their results usually contain strictly separated communities. However, most datasets would semantically allow for or even require overlapping communities that can only be determined at much higher computational cost. We build on an efficient algorithm, FOX, that detects such overlapping communities. FOX measures the closeness of a node to a community by approximating the count of triangles which that node forms with that community. We propose LAZYFOX, a multi-threaded adaptation of the FOX algorithm, which provides even faster detection without an impact on community quality. This allows for the analyses of significantly larger and more complex datasets. LAZYFOX enables overlapping community detection on complex graph datasets with millions of nodes and billions of edges in days instead of weeks. As part of this work, LAZYFOX's implementation was published and is available as a tool under an MIT licence at https://github.com/TimGarrels/LazyFox. KW - Overlapping community detection KW - Large networks KW - Weighted clustering coefficient KW - Heuristic triangle estimation KW - Parallelized algorithm KW - C++ tool KW - Runtime improvement KW - Open source KW - Graph algorithm KW - Community analysis Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.1291 SN - 2376-5992 VL - 9 PB - PeerJ Inc. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gärtner, Thomas A1 - Schneider, Juliana A1 - Arnrich, Bert A1 - Konigorski, Stefan T1 - Comparison of Bayesian Networks, G-estimation and linear models to estimate causal treatment effects in aggregated N-of-1 trials with carry-over effects JF - BMC Medical Research Methodology N2 - Background The aggregation of a series of N-of-1 trials presents an innovative and efficient study design, as an alternative to traditional randomized clinical trials. Challenges for the statistical analysis arise when there is carry-over or complex dependencies of the treatment effect of interest. Methods In this study, we evaluate and compare methods for the analysis of aggregated N-of-1 trials in different scenarios with carry-over and complex dependencies of treatment effects on covariates. For this, we simulate data of a series of N-of-1 trials for Chronic Nonspecific Low Back Pain based on assumed causal relationships parameterized by directed acyclic graphs. In addition to existing statistical methods such as regression models, Bayesian Networks, and G-estimation, we introduce a carry-over adjusted parametric model (COAPM). Results The results show that all evaluated existing models have a good performance when there is no carry-over and no treatment dependence. When there is carry-over, COAPM yields unbiased and more efficient estimates while all other methods show some bias in the estimation. When there is known treatment dependence, all approaches that are capable to model it yield unbiased estimates. Finally, the efficiency of all methods decreases slightly when there are missing values, and the bias in the estimates can also increase. Conclusions This study presents a systematic evaluation of existing and novel approaches for the statistical analysis of a series of N-of-1 trials. We derive practical recommendations which methods may be best in which scenarios. KW - N-of-1 trials KW - Randomized clinical trials KW - Bayesian Networks; KW - G-estimation KW - Linear model KW - Simulation study KW - Chronic Nonspecific Low KW - Back Pain Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-023-02012-5 SN - 1471-2288 VL - 23 IS - 1 PB - BMC CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Moontaha, Sidratul A1 - Schumann, Franziska Elisabeth Friederike A1 - Arnrich, Bert T1 - Online learning for wearable EEG-Based emotion classification JF - Sensors N2 - Giving emotional intelligence to machines can facilitate the early detection and prediction of mental diseases and symptoms. Electroencephalography (EEG)-based emotion recognition is widely applied because it measures electrical correlates directly from the brain rather than indirect measurement of other physiological responses initiated by the brain. Therefore, we used non-invasive and portable EEG sensors to develop a real-time emotion classification pipeline. The pipeline trains different binary classifiers for Valence and Arousal dimensions from an incoming EEG data stream achieving a 23.9% (Arousal) and 25.8% (Valence) higher F1-Score on the state-of-art AMIGOS dataset than previous work. Afterward, the pipeline was applied to the curated dataset from 15 participants using two consumer-grade EEG devices while watching 16 short emotional videos in a controlled environment. Mean F1-Scores of 87% (Arousal) and 82% (Valence) were achieved for an immediate label setting. Additionally, the pipeline proved to be fast enough to achieve predictions in real-time in a live scenario with delayed labels while continuously being updated. The significant discrepancy from the readily available labels on the classification scores leads to future work to include more data. Thereafter, the pipeline is ready to be used for real-time applications of emotion classification. KW - online learning KW - real-time KW - emotion classification KW - AMIGOS dataset KW - wearable EEG (muse and neurosity crown) KW - psychopy experiments Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/s23052387 SN - 1424-8220 VL - 23 IS - 5 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lewkowicz, Daniel A1 - Böttinger, Erwin A1 - Siegel, Martin T1 - Economic evaluation of digital therapeutic care apps for unsupervised treatment of low back pain BT - Monte Carlo Simulation JF - JMIR mhealth and uhealth N2 - Background: Digital therapeutic care (DTC) programs are unsupervised app-based treatments that provide video exercises and educational material to patients with nonspecific low back pain during episodes of pain and functional disability. German statutory health insurance can reimburse DTC programs since 2019, but evidence on efficacy and reasonable pricing remains scarce. This paper presents a probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) to evaluate the efficacy and cost-utility of a DTC app against treatment as usual (TAU) in Germany. Objective: The aim of this study was to perform a PSA in the form of a Monte Carlo simulation based on the deterministic base case analysis to account for model assumptions and parameter uncertainty. We also intend to explore to what extent the results in this probabilistic analysis differ from the results in the base case analysis and to what extent a shortage of outcome data concerning quality-of-life (QoL) metrics impacts the overall results. Methods: The PSA builds upon a state-transition Markov chain with a 4-week cycle length over a model time horizon of 3 years from a recently published deterministic cost-utility analysis. A Monte Carlo simulation with 10,000 iterations and a cohort size of 10,000 was employed to evaluate the cost-utility from a societal perspective. Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) were derived from Veterans RAND 6-Dimension (VR-6D) and Short-Form 6-Dimension (SF-6D) single utility scores. Finally, we also simulated reducing the price for a 3-month app prescription to analyze at which price threshold DTC would result in being the dominant strategy over TAU in Germany. Results: The Monte Carlo simulation yielded on average a euro135.97 (a currency exchange rate of EUR euro1=US $1.069 is applicable) incremental cost and 0.004 incremental QALYs per person and year for the unsupervised DTC app strategy compared to in-person physiotherapy in Germany. The corresponding incremental cost-utility ratio (ICUR) amounts to an additional euro34,315.19 per additional QALY. DTC yielded more QALYs in 54.96% of the iterations. DTC dominates TAU in 24.04% of the iterations for QALYs. Reducing the app price in the simulation from currently euro239.96 to euro164.61 for a 3-month prescription could yield a negative ICUR and thus make DTC the dominant strategy, even though the estimated probability of DTC being more effective than TAU is only 54.96%. Conclusions: Decision-makers should be cautious when considering the reimbursement of DTC apps since no significant treatment effect was found, and the probability of cost-effectiveness remains below 60% even for an infinite willingness-to-pay threshold. More app-based studies involving the utilization of QoL outcome parameters are urgently needed to account for the low and limited precision of the available QoL input parameters, which are crucial to making profound recommendations concerning the cost-utility of novel apps. KW - cost-utility analysis KW - cost KW - probabilistic sensitivity analysis KW - Monte Carlo simulation KW - low back pain KW - pain KW - economic KW - cost-effectiveness KW - Markov model KW - digital therapy KW - digital health app KW - mHealth KW - mobile health KW - health app KW - mobile app KW - orthopedic KW - QUALY KW - DALY KW - quality-adjusted life years KW - disability-adjusted life years KW - time horizon KW - veteran KW - statistics Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.2196/44585 SN - 2291-5222 VL - 11 PB - JMIR Publications CY - Toronto ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ehrig, Lukas A1 - Wagner, Ann-Christin A1 - Wolter, Heike A1 - Correll, Christoph U. A1 - Geisel, Olga A1 - Konigorski, Stefan T1 - FASDetect as a machine learning-based screening app for FASD in youth with ADHD JF - npj Digital Medicine N2 - Fetal alcohol-spectrum disorder (FASD) is underdiagnosed and often misdiagnosed as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Here, we develop a screening tool for FASD in youth with ADHD symptoms. To develop the prediction model, medical record data from a German University outpatient unit are assessed including 275 patients aged 0-19 years old with FASD with or without ADHD and 170 patients with ADHD without FASD aged 0-19 years old. We train 6 machine learning models based on 13 selected variables and evaluate their performance. Random forest models yield the best prediction models with a cross-validated AUC of 0.92 (95% confidence interval [0.84, 0.99]). Follow-up analyses indicate that a random forest model with 6 variables - body length and head circumference at birth, IQ, socially intrusive behaviour, poor memory and sleep disturbance - yields equivalent predictive accuracy. We implement the prediction model in a web-based app called FASDetect - a user-friendly, clinically scalable FASD risk calculator that is freely available at https://fasdetect.dhc-lab.hpi.de. KW - Medical research KW - Psychiatric disorders Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-023-00864-1 SN - 2398-6352 VL - 6 IS - 1 PB - Macmillan Publishers Limited CY - Basingstoke ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Slosarek, Tamara A1 - Ibing, Susanne A1 - Schormair, Barbara A1 - Heyne, Henrike A1 - Böttinger, Erwin A1 - Andlauer, Till A1 - Schurmann, Claudia T1 - Implementation and evaluation of personal genetic testing as part of genomics analysis courses in German universities JF - BMC Medical Genomics N2 - Purpose Due to the increasing application of genome analysis and interpretation in medical disciplines, professionals require adequate education. Here, we present the implementation of personal genotyping as an educational tool in two genomics courses targeting Digital Health students at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) and medical students at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Methods We compared and evaluated the courses and the students ' perceptions on the course setup using questionnaires. Results During the course, students changed their attitudes towards genotyping (HPI: 79% [15 of 19], TUM: 47% [25 of 53]). Predominantly, students became more critical of personal genotyping (HPI: 73% [11 of 15], TUM: 72% [18 of 25]) and most students stated that genetic analyses should not be allowed without genetic counseling (HPI: 79% [15 of 19], TUM: 70% [37 of 53]). Students found the personal genotyping component useful (HPI: 89% [17 of 19], TUM: 92% [49 of 53]) and recommended its inclusion in future courses (HPI: 95% [18 of 19], TUM: 98% [52 of 53]). Conclusion Students perceived the personal genotyping component as valuable in the described genomics courses. The implementation described here can serve as an example for future courses in Europe. KW - Genomics education KW - Personal genotyping KW - Personalized medicine Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12920-023-01503-0 SN - 1755-8794 VL - 16 IS - 1 PB - BMC CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thienen, Julia von A1 - Weinstein, Theresa Julia A1 - Meinel, Christoph T1 - Creative metacognition in design thinking BT - exploring theories, educational practices, and their implications for measurement JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Design thinking is a well-established practical and educational approach to fostering high-level creativity and innovation, which has been refined since the 1950s with the participation of experts like Joy Paul Guilford and Abraham Maslow. Through real-world projects, trainees learn to optimize their creative outcomes by developing and practicing creative cognition and metacognition. This paper provides a holistic perspective on creativity, enabling the formulation of a comprehensive theoretical framework of creative metacognition. It focuses on the design thinking approach to creativity and explores the role of metacognition in four areas of creativity expertise: Products, Processes, People, and Places. The analysis includes task-outcome relationships (product metacognition), the monitoring of strategy effectiveness (process metacognition), an understanding of individual or group strengths and weaknesses (people metacognition), and an examination of the mutual impact between environments and creativity (place metacognition). It also reviews measures taken in design thinking education, including a distribution of cognition and metacognition, to support students in their development of creative mastery. On these grounds, we propose extended methods for measuring creative metacognition with the goal of enhancing comprehensive assessments of the phenomenon. Proposed methodological advancements include accuracy sub-scales, experimental tasks where examinees explore problem and solution spaces, combinations of naturalistic observations with capability testing, as well as physiological assessments as indirect measures of creative metacognition. KW - accuracy KW - creativity KW - design thinking KW - education KW - measurement KW - metacognition KW - innovation KW - framework Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1157001 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 14 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vitagliano, Gerardo A1 - Hameed, Mazhar A1 - Jiang, Lan A1 - Reisener, Lucas A1 - Wu, Eugene A1 - Naumann, Felix T1 - Pollock: a data loading benchmark JF - Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment N2 - Any system at play in a data-driven project has a fundamental requirement: the ability to load data. The de-facto standard format to distribute and consume raw data is CSV. Yet, the plain text and flexible nature of this format make such files often difficult to parse and correctly load their content, requiring cumbersome data preparation steps. We propose a benchmark to assess the robustness of systems in loading data from non-standard CSV formats and with structural inconsistencies. First, we formalize a model to describe the issues that affect real-world files and use it to derive a systematic lpollutionz process to generate dialects for any given grammar. Our benchmark leverages the pollution framework for the csv format. To guide pollution, we have surveyed thousands of real-world, publicly available csv files, recording the problems we encountered. We demonstrate the applicability of our benchmark by testing and scoring 16 different systems: popular csv parsing frameworks, relational database tools, spreadsheet systems, and a data visualization tool. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.14778/3594512.3594518 SN - 2150-8097 VL - 16 IS - 8 SP - 1870 EP - 1882 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fehr, Jana A1 - Piccininni, Marco A1 - Kurth, Tobias A1 - Konigorski, Stefan T1 - Assessing the transportability of clinical prediction models for cognitive impairment using causal models JF - BMC medical research methodology N2 - Background Machine learning models promise to support diagnostic predictions, but may not perform well in new settings. Selecting the best model for a new setting without available data is challenging. We aimed to investigate the transportability by calibration and discrimination of prediction models for cognitive impairment in simulated external settings with different distributions of demographic and clinical characteristics. Methods We mapped and quantified relationships between variables associated with cognitive impairment using causal graphs, structural equation models, and data from the ADNI study. These estimates were then used to generate datasets and evaluate prediction models with different sets of predictors. We measured transportability to external settings under guided interventions on age, APOE & epsilon;4, and tau-protein, using performance differences between internal and external settings measured by calibration metrics and area under the receiver operating curve (AUC). Results Calibration differences indicated that models predicting with causes of the outcome were more transportable than those predicting with consequences. AUC differences indicated inconsistent trends of transportability between the different external settings. Models predicting with consequences tended to show higher AUC in the external settings compared to internal settings, while models predicting with parents or all variables showed similar AUC. Conclusions We demonstrated with a practical prediction task example that predicting with causes of the outcome results in better transportability compared to anti-causal predictions when considering calibration differences. We conclude that calibration performance is crucial when assessing model transportability to external settings. KW - Alzheimer's Disease KW - Clinical risk prediction KW - DAG KW - Causality; KW - Transportability Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-023-02003-6 SN - 1471-2288 VL - 23 IS - 1 PB - BMC CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Konak, Orhan A1 - Döring, Valentin A1 - Fiedler, Tobias A1 - Liebe, Lucas A1 - Masopust, Leander A1 - Postnov, Kirill A1 - Sauerwald, Franz A1 - Treykorn, Felix A1 - Wischmann, Alexander A1 - Kalabakov, Stefan A1 - Gjoreski, Hristijan A1 - Luštrek, Mitja A1 - Arnrich, Bert T1 - SONAR BT - a nursing activity dataset with inertial sensors JF - Scientific data N2 - Accurate and comprehensive nursing documentation is essential to ensure quality patient care. To streamline this process, we present SONAR, a publicly available dataset of nursing activities recorded using inertial sensors in a nursing home. The dataset includes 14 sensor streams, such as acceleration and angular velocity, and 23 activities recorded by 14 caregivers using five sensors for 61.7 hours. The caregivers wore the sensors as they performed their daily tasks, allowing for continuous monitoring of their activities. We additionally provide machine learning models that recognize the nursing activities given the sensor data. In particular, we present benchmarks for three deep learning model architectures and evaluate their performance using different metrics and sensor locations. Our dataset, which can be used for research on sensor-based human activity recognition in real-world settings, has the potential to improve nursing care by providing valuable insights that can identify areas for improvement, facilitate accurate documentation, and tailor care to specific patient conditions. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02620-2 SN - 2052-4463 VL - 10 IS - 1 PB - Nature Publ. Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Omolaoye, Temidayo S. A1 - Omolaoye, Victor Adelakun A1 - Kandasamy, Richard K. A1 - Hachim, Mahmood Yaseen A1 - Du Plessis, Stefan S. T1 - Omics and male infertility BT - highlighting the application of transcriptomic data JF - Life : open access journal N2 - Male infertility is a multifaceted disorder affecting approximately 50% of male partners in infertile couples. Over the years, male infertility has been diagnosed mainly through semen analysis, hormone evaluations, medical records and physical examinations, which of course are fundamental, but yet inefficient, because 30% of male infertility cases remain idiopathic. This dilemmatic status of the unknown needs to be addressed with more sophisticated and result-driven technologies and/or techniques. Genetic alterations have been linked with male infertility, thereby unveiling the practicality of investigating this disorder from the "omics" perspective. Omics aims at analyzing the structure and functions of a whole constituent of a given biological function at different levels, including the molecular gene level (genomics), transcript level (transcriptomics), protein level (proteomics) and metabolites level (metabolomics). In the current study, an overview of the four branches of omics and their roles in male infertility are briefly discussed; the potential usefulness of assessing transcriptomic data to understand this pathology is also elucidated. After assessing the publicly obtainable transcriptomic data for datasets on male infertility, a total of 1385 datasets were retrieved, of which 10 datasets met the inclusion criteria and were used for further analysis. These datasets were classified into groups according to the disease or cause of male infertility. The groups include non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA), obstructive azoospermia (OA), non-obstructive and obstructive azoospermia (NOA and OA), spermatogenic dysfunction, sperm dysfunction, and Y chromosome microdeletion. Findings revealed that 8 genes (LDHC, PDHA2, TNP1, TNP2, ODF1, ODF2, SPINK2, PCDHB3) were commonly differentially expressed between all disease groups. Likewise, 56 genes were common between NOA versus NOA and OA (ADAD1, BANF2, BCL2L14, C12orf50, C20orf173, C22orf23, C6orf99, C9orf131, C9orf24, CABS1, CAPZA3, CCDC187, CCDC54, CDKN3, CEP170, CFAP206, CRISP2, CT83, CXorf65, FAM209A, FAM71F1, FAM81B, GALNTL5, GTSF1, H1FNT, HEMGN, HMGB4, KIF2B, LDHC, LOC441601, LYZL2, ODF1, ODF2, PCDHB3, PDHA2, PGK2, PIH1D2, PLCZ1, PROCA1, RIMBP3, ROPN1L, SHCBP1L, SMCP, SPATA16, SPATA19, SPINK2, TEX33, TKTL2, TMCO2, TMCO5A, TNP1, TNP2, TSPAN16, TSSK1B, TTLL2, UBQLN3). These genes, particularly the above-mentioned 8 genes, are involved in diverse biological processes such as germ cell development, spermatid development, spermatid differentiation, regulation of proteolysis, spermatogenesis and metabolic processes. Owing to the stage-specific expression of these genes, any mal-expression can ultimately lead to male infertility. Therefore, currently available data on all branches of omics relating to male fertility can be used to identify biomarkers for diagnosing male infertility, which can potentially help in unravelling some idiopathic cases. KW - male infertility KW - omics KW - genomics KW - transcriptomics KW - proteomics KW - metabolomics Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/life12020280 SN - 2075-1729 VL - 12 IS - 2 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bläsius, Thomas A1 - Friedrich, Tobias A1 - Lischeid, Julius A1 - Meeks, Kitty A1 - Schirneck, Friedrich Martin T1 - Efficiently enumerating hitting sets of hypergraphs arising in data profiling JF - Journal of computer and system sciences : JCSS N2 - The transversal hypergraph problem asks to enumerate the minimal hitting sets of a hypergraph. If the solutions have bounded size, Eiter and Gottlob [SICOMP'95] gave an algorithm running in output-polynomial time, but whose space requirement also scales with the output. We improve this to polynomial delay and space. Central to our approach is the extension problem, deciding for a set X of vertices whether it is contained in any minimal hitting set. We show that this is one of the first natural problems to be W[3]-complete. We give an algorithm for the extension problem running in time O(m(vertical bar X vertical bar+1) n) and prove a SETH-lower bound showing that this is close to optimal. We apply our enumeration method to the discovery problem of minimal unique column combinations from data profiling. Our empirical evaluation suggests that the algorithm outperforms its worst-case guarantees on hypergraphs stemming from real-world databases. KW - Data profiling KW - Enumeration algorithm KW - Minimal hitting set KW - Transversal hypergraph KW - Unique column combination KW - W[3]-Completeness Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcss.2021.10.002 SN - 0022-0000 SN - 1090-2724 VL - 124 SP - 192 EP - 213 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Serth, Sebastian A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - van Elten, Martin A1 - Meinel, Christoph ED - Gamage, Dilrukshi T1 - Measuring the effects of course modularizations in online courses for life-long learners JF - Frontiers in Education N2 - Many participants in Massive Open Online Courses are full-time employees seeking greater flexibility in their time commitment and the available learning paths. We recently addressed these requirements by splitting up our 6-week courses into three 2-week modules followed by a separate exam. Modularizing courses offers many advantages: Shorter modules are more sustainable and can be combined, reused, and incorporated into learning paths more easily. Time flexibility for learners is also improved as exams can now be offered multiple times per year, while the learning content is available independently. In this article, we answer the question of which impact this modularization has on key learning metrics, such as course completion rates, learning success, and no-show rates. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of longer breaks between modules on these metrics. According to our analysis, course modules facilitate more selective learning behaviors that encourage learners to focus on topics they are the most interested in. At the same time, participation in overarching exams across all modules seems to be less appealing compared to an integrated exam of a 6-week course. While breaks between the modules increase the distinctive appearance of individual modules, a break before the final exam further reduces initial interest in the exams. We further reveal that participation in self-paced courses as a preparation for the final exam is unlikely to attract new learners to the course offerings, even though learners' performance is comparable to instructor-paced courses. The results of our long-term study on course modularization provide a solid foundation for future research and enable educators to make informed decisions about the design of their courses. KW - Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) KW - course design KW - modularization KW - learning path KW - flexibility KW - e-learning KW - assignments KW - self-paced learning Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.1008545 SN - 2504-284X VL - 7 PB - Frontiers CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ihde, Sven A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Völker, Maximilian A1 - Goel, Asvin A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - A framework for modeling and executing task BT - specific resource allocations in business processes JF - Computing : archives for informatics and numerical computation N2 - As resources are valuable assets, organizations have to decide which resources to allocate to business process tasks in a way that the process is executed not only effectively but also efficiently. Traditional role-based resource allocation leads to effective process executions, since each task is performed by a resource that has the required skills and competencies to do so. However, the resulting allocations are typically not as efficient as they could be, since optimization techniques have yet to find their way in traditional business process management scenarios. On the other hand, operations research provides a rich set of analytical methods for supporting problem-specific decisions on resource allocation. This paper provides a novel framework for creating transparency on existing tasks and resources, supporting individualized allocations for each activity in a process, and the possibility to integrate problem-specific analytical methods of the operations research domain. To validate the framework, the paper reports on the design and prototypical implementation of a software architecture, which extends a traditional process engine with a dedicated resource management component. This component allows us to define specific resource allocation problems at design time, and it also facilitates optimized resource allocation at run time. The framework is evaluated using a real-world parcel delivery process. The evaluation shows that the quality of the allocation results increase significantly with a technique from operations research in contrast to the traditional applied rule-based approach. KW - Process Execution KW - Business Process Management KW - Resource Allocation KW - Resource Management KW - Activity-oriented Optimization Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-022-01093-2 SN - 0010-485X SN - 1436-5057 VL - 104 SP - 2405 EP - 2429 PB - Springer CY - Wien ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koorn, Jelmer Jan A1 - Lu, Xixi A1 - Leopold, Henrik A1 - Reijers, Hajo A. T1 - From action to response to effect BT - mining statistical relations in work processes JF - Information systems : IS ; an international journal ; data bases N2 - Process mining techniques are valuable to gain insights into and help improve (work) processes. Many of these techniques focus on the sequential order in which activities are performed. Few of these techniques consider the statistical relations within processes. In particular, existing techniques do not allow insights into how responses to an event (action) result in desired or undesired outcomes (effects). We propose and formalize the ARE miner, a novel technique that allows us to analyze and understand these action-response-effect patterns. We take a statistical approach to uncover potential dependency relations in these patterns. The goal of this research is to generate processes that are: (1) appropriately represented, and (2) effectively filtered to show meaningful relations. We evaluate the ARE miner in two ways. First, we use an artificial data set to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ARE miner compared to two traditional process-oriented approaches. Second, we apply the ARE miner to a real-world data set from a Dutch healthcare institution. We show that the ARE miner generates comprehensible representations that lead to informative insights into statistical relations between actions, responses, and effects. KW - Process discovery KW - Statistical process mining KW - Effect measurement Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2022.102035 SN - 0306-4379 SN - 0094-453X VL - 109 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - de Paula, Danielly A1 - Marx, Carolin A1 - Wolf, Ella A1 - Dremel, Christian A1 - Cormican, Kathryn A1 - Uebernickel, Falk T1 - A managerial mental model to drive innovation in the context of digital transformation JF - Industry and innovation N2 - Industry 4.0 is transforming how businesses innovate and, as a result, companies are spearheading the movement towards 'Digital Transformation'. While some scholars advocate the use of design thinking to identify new innovative behaviours, cognition experts emphasise the importance of top managers in supporting employees to develop these behaviours. However, there is a dearth of research in this domain and companies are struggling to implement the required behaviours. To address this gap, this study aims to identify and prioritise behavioural strategies conducive to design thinking to inform the creation of a managerial mental model. We identify 20 behavioural strategies from 45 interviewees with practitioners and educators and combine them with the concepts of 'paradigm-mindset-mental model' from cognition theory. The paper contributes to the body of knowledge by identifying and prioritising specific behavioural strategies to form a novel set of survival conditions aligned to the new industrial paradigm of Industry 4.0. KW - Strategic cognition KW - mental models KW - industry 4.0 KW - digital transformation KW - design thinking Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2022.2072711 SN - 1366-2716 SN - 1469-8390 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cseh, Agnes A1 - Faenza, Yuri A1 - Kavitha, Telikepalli A1 - Powers, Vladlena T1 - Understanding popular matchings via stable matchings JF - SIAM journal on discrete mathematics N2 - An instance of the marriage problem is given by a graph G = (A boolean OR B, E), together with, for each vertex of G, a strict preference order over its neighbors. A matching M of G is popular in the marriage instance if M does not lose a head-to-head election against any matching where vertices are voters. Every stable matching is a min-size popular matching; another subclass of popular matchings that always exists and can be easily computed is the set of dominant matchings. A popular matching M is dominant if M wins the head-to-head election against any larger matching. Thus, every dominant matching is a max-size popular matching, and it is known that the set of dominant matchings is the linear image of the set of stable matchings in an auxiliary graph. Results from the literature seem to suggest that stable and dominant matchings behave, from a complexity theory point of view, in a very similar manner within the class of popular matchings. The goal of this paper is to show that there are instead differences in the tractability of stable and dominant matchings and to investigate further their importance for popular matchings. First, we show that it is easy to check if all popular matchings are also stable; however, it is co-NP hard to check if all popular matchings are also dominant. Second, we show how some new and recent hardness results on popular matching problems can be deduced from the NP-hardness of certain problems on stable matchings, also studied in this paper, thus showing that stable matchings can be employed to show not only positive results on popular matchings (as is known) but also most negative ones. Problems for which we show new hardness results include finding a min-size (resp., max-size) popular matching that is not stable (resp., dominant). A known result for which we give a new and simple proof is the NP-hardness of finding a popular matching when G is nonbipartite. KW - popular matching KW - stable matching KW - complexity KW - dominant matching Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1137/19M124770X SN - 0895-4801 SN - 1095-7146 VL - 36 IS - 1 SP - 188 EP - 213 PB - Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics CY - Philadelphia ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Coupette, Corinna A1 - Hartung, Dirk A1 - Beckedorf, Janis A1 - Böther, Maximilian A1 - Katz, Daniel Martin T1 - Law smells BT - defining and detecting problematic patterns in legal drafting JF - Artificial intelligence and law N2 - Building on the computer science concept of code smells, we initiate the study of law smells, i.e., patterns in legal texts that pose threats to the comprehensibility and maintainability of the law. With five intuitive law smells as running examples-namely, duplicated phrase, long element, large reference tree, ambiguous syntax, and natural language obsession-, we develop a comprehensive law smell taxonomy. This taxonomy classifies law smells by when they can be detected, which aspects of law they relate to, and how they can be discovered. We introduce text-based and graph-based methods to identify instances of law smells, confirming their utility in practice using the United States Code as a test case. Our work demonstrates how ideas from software engineering can be leveraged to assess and improve the quality of legal code, thus drawing attention to an understudied area in the intersection of law and computer science and highlighting the potential of computational legal drafting. KW - Refactoring KW - Software engineering KW - Law KW - Natural language processing KW - Network analysis Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-022-09315-w SN - 0924-8463 SN - 1572-8382 VL - 31 SP - 335 EP - 368 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tang, Mitchell A1 - Nakamoto, Carter H. A1 - Stern, Ariel Dora A1 - Mehrotra, Ateev T1 - Trends in remote patient monitoring use in traditional Medicare JF - JAMA Internal Medicine N2 - This cross-sectional study uses traditional Medicare claims data to assess trends in general remote patient monitoring from January 2018 through September 2021. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.3043 SN - 2168-6106 SN - 2168-6114 VL - 182 IS - 9 SP - 1005 EP - 1006 PB - American Veterinary Medical Association CY - Chicago ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Casel, Katrin A1 - Fernau, Henning A1 - Ghadikolaei, Mehdi Khosravian A1 - Monnot, Jerome A1 - Sikora, Florian T1 - On the complexity of solution extension of optimization problems JF - Theoretical computer science : the journal of the EATCS N2 - The question if a given partial solution to a problem can be extended reasonably occurs in many algorithmic approaches for optimization problems. For instance, when enumerating minimal vertex covers of a graph G = (V, E), one usually arrives at the problem to decide for a vertex set U subset of V (pre-solution), if there exists a minimal vertex cover S (i.e., a vertex cover S subset of V such that no proper subset of S is a vertex cover) with U subset of S (minimal extension of U). We propose a general, partial-order based formulation of such extension problems which allows to model parameterization and approximation aspects of extension, and also highlights relationships between extension tasks for different specific problems. As examples, we study a number of specific problems which can be expressed and related in this framework. In particular, we discuss extension variants of the problems dominating set and feedback vertex/edge set. All these problems are shown to be NP-complete even when restricted to bipartite graphs of bounded degree, with the exception of our extension version of feedback edge set on undirected graphs which is shown to be solvable in polynomial time. For the extension variants of dominating and feedback vertex set, we also show NP-completeness for the restriction to planar graphs of bounded degree. As non-graph problem, we also study an extension version of the bin packing problem. We further consider the parameterized complexity of all these extension variants, where the parameter is a measure of the pre-solution as defined by our framework. KW - extension problems KW - NP-hardness KW - parameterized complexity Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2021.10.017 SN - 0304-3975 SN - 1879-2294 VL - 904 SP - 48 EP - 65 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genske, Ulrich A1 - Jahnke, Paul T1 - Human observer net BT - a platform tool for human observer studies of image data JF - Radiology N2 - Background: Current software applications for human observer studies of images lack flexibility in study design, platform independence, multicenter use, and assessment methods and are not open source, limiting accessibility and expandability. Purpose: To develop a user-friendly software platform that enables efficient human observer studies in medical imaging with flexibility of study design. Materials and Methods: Software for human observer imaging studies was designed as an open-source web application to facilitate access, platform-independent usability, and multicenter studies. Different interfaces for study creation, participation, and management of results were implemented. The software was evaluated in human observer experiments between May 2019 and March 2021, in which duration of observer responses was tracked. Fourteen radiologists evaluated and graded software usability using the 100-point system usability scale. The application was tested in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge browsers. Results: Software function was designed to allow visual grading analysis (VGA), multiple-alternative forced-choice (m-AFC), receiver operating characteristic (ROC), localization ROC, free-response ROC, and customized designs. The mean duration of reader responses per image or per image set was 6.2 seconds 6 4.8 (standard deviation), 5.8 seconds 6 4.7, 8.7 seconds 6 5.7, and 6.0 seconds 6 4.5 in four-AFC with 160 image quartets per reader, four-AFC with 640 image quartets per reader, localization ROC, and experimental studies, respectively. The mean system usability scale score was 83 6 11 (out of 100). The documented code and a demonstration of the application are available online (https://github.com/genskeu/HON, https://hondemo.pythonanywhere.com/). Conclusion: A user-friendly and efficient open-source application was developed for human reader experiments that enables study design versatility, as well as platform-independent and multicenter usability. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.211832 SN - 0033-8419 SN - 1527-1315 VL - 303 IS - 3 SP - 524 EP - 530 PB - Radiological Society of North America CY - Oak Brook, Ill. ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bartoszewicz, Jakub M. A1 - Nasri, Ferdous A1 - Nowicka, Melania A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. T1 - Detecting DNA of novel fungal pathogens using ResNets and a curated fungi-hosts data collection JF - Bioinformatics N2 - Background: Emerging pathogens are a growing threat, but large data collections and approaches for predicting the risk associated with novel agents are limited to bacteria and viruses. Pathogenic fungi, which also pose a constant threat to public health, remain understudied. Relevant data remain comparatively scarce and scattered among many different sources, hindering the development of sequencing-based detection workflows for novel fungal pathogens. No prediction method working for agents across all three groups is available, even though the cause of an infection is often difficult to identify from symptoms alone. Results: We present a curated collection of fungal host range data, comprising records on human, animal and plant pathogens, as well as other plant-associated fungi, linked to publicly available genomes. We show that it can be used to predict the pathogenic potential of novel fungal species directly from DNA sequences with either sequence homology or deep learning. We develop learned, numerical representations of the collected genomes and visualize the landscape of fungal pathogenicity. Finally, we train multi-class models predicting if next-generation sequencing reads originate from novel fungal, bacterial or viral threats. Conclusions: The neural networks trained using our data collection enable accurate detection of novel fungal pathogens. A curated set of over 1400 genomes with host and pathogenicity metadata supports training of machine-learning models and sequence comparison, not limited to the pathogen detection task. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btac495 SN - 1367-4803 SN - 1367-4811 VL - 38 SP - ii168 EP - ii174 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Perscheid, Michael A1 - Plattner, Hasso A1 - Ritter, Daniel A1 - Schlosser, Rainer A1 - Teusner, Ralf T1 - Enterprise platform and integration concepts research at HPI JF - SIGMOD record N2 - The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), academically structured as the independent Faculty of Digital Engineering at the University of Potsdam, unites computer science research and teaching with the advantages of a privately financed institute and a tuition-free study program. Founder and namesake of the institute is the SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, who also heads the Enterprise Platform and Integration Concepts (EPIC) research center which focuses on the technical aspects of business software with a vision to provide the fastest way to get insights out of enterprise data. Founded in 2006, the EPIC combines three research groups comprising autonomous data management, enterprise software engineering, and data-driven decision support. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3582302.3582322 SN - 0163-5808 SN - 1943-5835 VL - 51 IS - 4 SP - 68 EP - 73 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Casel, Katrin A1 - Fischbeck, Philipp A1 - Friedrich, Tobias A1 - Göbel, Andreas A1 - Lagodzinski, Julius Albert Gregor T1 - Zeros and approximations of Holant polynomials on the complex plane JF - Computational complexity : CC N2 - We present fully polynomial time approximation schemes for a broad class of Holant problems with complex edge weights, which we call Holant polynomials. We transform these problems into partition functions of abstract combinatorial structures known as polymers in statistical physics. Our method involves establishing zero-free regions for the partition functions of polymer models and using the most significant terms of the cluster expansion to approximate them. Results of our technique include new approximation and sampling algorithms for a diverse class of Holant polynomials in the low-temperature regime (i.e. small external field) and approximation algorithms for general Holant problems with small signature weights. Additionally, we give randomised approximation and sampling algorithms with faster running times for more restrictive classes. Finally, we improve the known zero-free regions for a perfect matching polynomial. KW - Holant problems KW - approximate counting KW - partition functions KW - graph KW - polynomials Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00037-022-00226-5 SN - 1016-3328 SN - 1420-8954 VL - 31 IS - 2 PB - Springer CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hecker, Pascal A1 - Steckhan, Nico A1 - Eyben, Florian A1 - Schuller, Björn Wolfgang A1 - Arnrich, Bert T1 - Voice Analysis for Neurological Disorder Recognition – A Systematic Review and Perspective on Emerging Trends JF - Frontiers in Digital Health N2 - Quantifying neurological disorders from voice is a rapidly growing field of research and holds promise for unobtrusive and large-scale disorder monitoring. The data recording setup and data analysis pipelines are both crucial aspects to effectively obtain relevant information from participants. Therefore, we performed a systematic review to provide a high-level overview of practices across various neurological disorders and highlight emerging trends. PRISMA-based literature searches were conducted through PubMed, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore to identify publications in which original (i.e., newly recorded) datasets were collected. Disorders of interest were psychiatric as well as neurodegenerative disorders, such as bipolar disorder, depression, and stress, as well as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease, and speech impairments (aphasia, dysarthria, and dysphonia). Of the 43 retrieved studies, Parkinson's disease is represented most prominently with 19 discovered datasets. Free speech and read speech tasks are most commonly used across disorders. Besides popular feature extraction toolkits, many studies utilise custom-built feature sets. Correlations of acoustic features with psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders are presented. In terms of analysis, statistical analysis for significance of individual features is commonly used, as well as predictive modeling approaches, especially with support vector machines and a small number of artificial neural networks. An emerging trend and recommendation for future studies is to collect data in everyday life to facilitate longitudinal data collection and to capture the behavior of participants more naturally. Another emerging trend is to record additional modalities to voice, which can potentially increase analytical performance. KW - neurological disorders KW - voice KW - speech KW - everyday life KW - multiple modalities KW - machine learning KW - disorder recognition Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2022.842301 SN - 2673-253X PB - Frontiers Media SA CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fehr, Jana A1 - Jaramillo-Gutierrez, Giovanna A1 - Oala, Luis A1 - Gröschel, Matthias I. A1 - Bierwirth, Manuel A1 - Balachandran, Pradeep A1 - Werneck-Leite, Alixandro A1 - Lippert, Christoph T1 - Piloting a Survey-Based Assessment of Transparency and Trustworthiness with Three Medical AI Tools JF - Healthcare N2 - Artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential to support healthcare delivery, but poorly trained or validated algorithms bear risks of harm. Ethical guidelines stated transparency about model development and validation as a requirement for trustworthy AI. Abundant guidance exists to provide transparency through reporting, but poorly reported medical AI tools are common. To close this transparency gap, we developed and piloted a framework to quantify the transparency of medical AI tools with three use cases. Our framework comprises a survey to report on the intended use, training and validation data and processes, ethical considerations, and deployment recommendations. The transparency of each response was scored with either 0, 0.5, or 1 to reflect if the requested information was not, partially, or fully provided. Additionally, we assessed on an analogous three-point scale if the provided responses fulfilled the transparency requirement for a set of trustworthiness criteria from ethical guidelines. The degree of transparency and trustworthiness was calculated on a scale from 0% to 100%. Our assessment of three medical AI use cases pin-pointed reporting gaps and resulted in transparency scores of 67% for two use cases and one with 59%. We report anecdotal evidence that business constraints and limited information from external datasets were major obstacles to providing transparency for the three use cases. The observed transparency gaps also lowered the degree of trustworthiness, indicating compliance gaps with ethical guidelines. All three pilot use cases faced challenges to provide transparency about medical AI tools, but more studies are needed to investigate those in the wider medical AI sector. Applying this framework for an external assessment of transparency may be infeasible if business constraints prevent the disclosure of information. New strategies may be necessary to enable audits of medical AI tools while preserving business secrets. KW - artificial intelligence for health KW - quality assessment KW - transparency KW - trustworthiness Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10101923 SN - 2227-9032 VL - 10 IS - 10 PB - MDPI CY - Basel, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirchler, Matthias A1 - Konigorski, Stefan A1 - Norden, Matthias A1 - Meltendorf, Christian A1 - Kloft, Marius A1 - Schurmann, Claudia A1 - Lippert, Christoph T1 - transferGWAS BT - GWAS of images using deep transfer learning JF - Bioinformatics N2 - Motivation: Medical images can provide rich information about diseases and their biology. However, investigating their association with genetic variation requires non-standard methods. We propose transferGWAS, a novel approach to perform genome-wide association studies directly on full medical images. First, we learn semantically meaningful representations of the images based on a transfer learning task, during which a deep neural network is trained on independent but similar data. Then, we perform genetic association tests with these representations. Results: We validate the type I error rates and power of transferGWAS in simulation studies of synthetic images. Then we apply transferGWAS in a genome-wide association study of retinal fundus images from the UK Biobank. This first-of-a-kind GWAS of full imaging data yielded 60 genomic regions associated with retinal fundus images, of which 7 are novel candidate loci for eye-related traits and diseases. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btac369 SN - 1367-4803 SN - 1460-2059 VL - 38 IS - 14 SP - 3621 EP - 3628 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zenner, Alexander M. A1 - Böttinger, Erwin A1 - Konigorski, Stefan T1 - StudyMe BT - a new mobile app for user-centric N-of-1 trials JF - Trials N2 - N-of-1 trials are multi-crossover self-experiments that allow individuals to systematically evaluate the effect of interventions on their personal health goals. Although several tools for N-of-1 trials exist, there is a gap in supporting non-experts in conducting their own user-centric trials. In this study, we present StudyMe, an open-source mobile application that is freely available from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=health.studyu.me and offers users flexibility and guidance in configuring every component of their trials. We also present research that informed the development of StudyMe, focusing on trial creation. Through an initial survey with 272 participants, we learned that individuals are interested in a variety of personal health aspects and have unique ideas on how to improve them. In an iterative, user-centered development process with intermediate user tests, we developed StudyMe that features an educational part to communicate N-of-1 trial concepts. A final empirical evaluation of StudyMe showed that all participants were able to create their own trials successfully using StudyMe and the app achieved a very good usability rating. Our findings suggest that StudyMe provides a significant step towards enabling individuals to apply a systematic science-oriented approach to personalize health-related interventions and behavior modifications in their everyday lives. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-022-06893-7 SN - 1745-6215 VL - 23 PB - BioMed Central CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Shams, Boshra A1 - Wang, Ziqian A1 - Roine, Timo A1 - Aydogan, Dogu Baran A1 - Vajkoczy, Peter A1 - Lippert, Christoph A1 - Picht, Thomas A1 - Fekonja, Lucius Samo T1 - Machine learning-based prediction of motor status in glioma patients using diffusion MRI metrics along the corticospinal tract JF - Brain communications N2 - Shams et al. report that glioma patients' motor status is predicted accurately by diffusion MRI metrics along the corticospinal tract based on support vector machine method, reaching an overall accuracy of 77%. They show that these metrics are more effective than demographic and clinical variables. Along tract statistics enables white matter characterization using various diffusion MRI metrics. These diffusion models reveal detailed insights into white matter microstructural changes with development, pathology and function. Here, we aim at assessing the clinical utility of diffusion MRI metrics along the corticospinal tract, investigating whether motor glioma patients can be classified with respect to their motor status. We retrospectively included 116 brain tumour patients suffering from either left or right supratentorial, unilateral World Health Organization Grades II, III and IV gliomas with a mean age of 53.51 +/- 16.32 years. Around 37% of patients presented with preoperative motor function deficits according to the Medical Research Council scale. At group level comparison, the highest non-overlapping diffusion MRI differences were detected in the superior portion of the tracts' profiles. Fractional anisotropy and fibre density decrease, apparent diffusion coefficient axial diffusivity and radial diffusivity increase. To predict motor deficits, we developed a method based on a support vector machine using histogram-based features of diffusion MRI tract profiles (e.g. mean, standard deviation, kurtosis and skewness), following a recursive feature elimination method. Our model achieved high performance (74% sensitivity, 75% specificity, 74% overall accuracy and 77% area under the curve). We found that apparent diffusion coefficient, fractional anisotropy and radial diffusivity contributed more than other features to the model. Incorporating the patient demographics and clinical features such as age, tumour World Health Organization grade, tumour location, gender and resting motor threshold did not affect the model's performance, revealing that these features were not as effective as microstructural measures. These results shed light on the potential patterns of tumour-related microstructural white matter changes in the prediction of functional deficits. KW - machine learning KW - support vector machine KW - tractography KW - diffusion MRI; KW - corticospinal tract Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcac141 SN - 2632-1297 VL - 4 IS - 3 PB - Oxford University Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bilo, Davide A1 - Bilo, Vittorio A1 - Lenzner, Pascal A1 - Molitor, Louise T1 - Topological influence and locality in swap schelling games JF - Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems N2 - Residential segregation is a wide-spread phenomenon that can be observed in almost every major city. In these urban areas residents with different racial or socioeconomic background tend to form homogeneous clusters. Schelling's famous agent-based model for residential segregation explains how such clusters can form even if all agents are tolerant, i.e., if they agree to live in mixed neighborhoods. For segregation to occur, all it needs is a slight bias towards agents preferring similar neighbors. Very recently, Schelling's model has been investigated from a game-theoretic point of view with selfish agents that strategically select their residential location. In these games, agents can improve on their current location by performing a location swap with another agent who is willing to swap. We significantly deepen these investigations by studying the influence of the underlying topology modeling the residential area on the existence of equilibria, the Price of Anarchy and on the dynamic properties of the resulting strategic multi-agent system. Moreover, as a new conceptual contribution, we also consider the influence of locality, i.e., if the location swaps are restricted to swaps of neighboring agents. We give improved almost tight bounds on the Price of Anarchy for arbitrary underlying graphs and we present (almost) tight bounds for regular graphs, paths and cycles. Moreover, we give almost tight bounds for grids, which are commonly used in empirical studies. For grids we also show that locality has a severe impact on the game dynamics. KW - residential segregation KW - Schelling's segregation model KW - non-cooperative games KW - price of anarchy KW - game dynamics Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-022-09573-7 SN - 1387-2532 SN - 1573-7454 VL - 36 IS - 2 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ziegler, Joceline A1 - Pfitzner, Bjarne A1 - Schulz, Heinrich A1 - Saalbach, Axel A1 - Arnrich, Bert T1 - Defending against Reconstruction Attacks through Differentially Private Federated Learning for Classification of Heterogeneous Chest X-ray Data JF - Sensors N2 - Privacy regulations and the physical distribution of heterogeneous data are often primary concerns for the development of deep learning models in a medical context. This paper evaluates the feasibility of differentially private federated learning for chest X-ray classification as a defense against data privacy attacks. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to directly compare the impact of differentially private training on two different neural network architectures, DenseNet121 and ResNet50. Extending the federated learning environments previously analyzed in terms of privacy, we simulated a heterogeneous and imbalanced federated setting by distributing images from the public CheXpert and Mendeley chest X-ray datasets unevenly among 36 clients. Both non-private baseline models achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.940.94 on the binary classification task of detecting the presence of a medical finding. We demonstrate that both model architectures are vulnerable to privacy violation by applying image reconstruction attacks to local model updates from individual clients. The attack was particularly successful during later training stages. To mitigate the risk of a privacy breach, we integrated Rényi differential privacy with a Gaussian noise mechanism into local model training. We evaluate model performance and attack vulnerability for privacy budgets ε∈{1,3,6,10}�∈{1,3,6,10}. The DenseNet121 achieved the best utility-privacy trade-off with an AUC of 0.940.94 for ε=6�=6. Model performance deteriorated slightly for individual clients compared to the non-private baseline. The ResNet50 only reached an AUC of 0.760.76 in the same privacy setting. Its performance was inferior to that of the DenseNet121 for all considered privacy constraints, suggesting that the DenseNet121 architecture is more robust to differentially private training. KW - federated learning KW - privacy and security KW - privacy attack KW - X-ray Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/s22145195 SN - 1424-8220 VL - 22 PB - MDPI CY - Basel, Schweiz ET - 14 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chandran, Sunil L. A1 - Issac, Davis A1 - Lauri, Juho A1 - van Leeuwen, Erik Jan T1 - Upper bounding rainbow connection number by forest number JF - Discrete mathematics N2 - A path in an edge-colored graph is rainbow if no two edges of it are colored the same, and the graph is rainbow-connected if there is a rainbow path between each pair of its vertices. The minimum number of colors needed to rainbow-connect a graph G is the rainbow connection number of G, denoted by rc(G).& nbsp;A simple way to rainbow-connect a graph G is to color the edges of a spanning tree with distinct colors and then re-use any of these colors to color the remaining edges of G. This proves that rc(G) <= |V (G)|-1. We ask whether there is a stronger connection between tree-like structures and rainbow coloring than that is implied by the above trivial argument. For instance, is it possible to find an upper bound of t(G)-1 for rc(G), where t(G) is the number of vertices in the largest induced tree of G? The answer turns out to be negative, as there are counter-examples that show that even c .t(G) is not an upper bound for rc(G) for any given constant c.& nbsp;In this work we show that if we consider the forest number f(G), the number of vertices in a maximum induced forest of G, instead of t(G), then surprisingly we do get an upper bound. More specifically, we prove that rc(G) <= f(G) + 2. Our result indicates a stronger connection between rainbow connection and tree-like structures than that was suggested by the simple spanning tree based upper bound. KW - rainbow connection KW - forest number KW - upper bound Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.disc.2022.112829 SN - 0012-365X SN - 1872-681X VL - 345 IS - 7 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rosin, Paul L. A1 - Lai, Yu-Kun A1 - Mould, David A1 - Yi, Ran A1 - Berger, Itamar A1 - Doyle, Lars A1 - Lee, Seungyong A1 - Li, Chuan A1 - Liu, Yong-Jin A1 - Semmo, Amir A1 - Shamir, Ariel A1 - Son, Minjung A1 - Winnemöller, Holger T1 - NPRportrait 1.0: A three-level benchmark for non-photorealistic rendering of portraits JF - Computational visual media N2 - Recently, there has been an upsurge of activity in image-based non-photorealistic rendering (NPR), and in particular portrait image stylisation, due to the advent of neural style transfer (NST). However, the state of performance evaluation in this field is poor, especially compared to the norms in the computer vision and machine learning communities. Unfortunately, the task of evaluating image stylisation is thus far not well defined, since it involves subjective, perceptual, and aesthetic aspects. To make progress towards a solution, this paper proposes a new structured, three-level, benchmark dataset for the evaluation of stylised portrait images. Rigorous criteria were used for its construction, and its consistency was validated by user studies. Moreover, a new methodology has been developed for evaluating portrait stylisation algorithms, which makes use of the different benchmark levels as well as annotations provided by user studies regarding the characteristics of the faces. We perform evaluation for a wide variety of image stylisation methods (both portrait-specific and general purpose, and also both traditional NPR approaches and NST) using the new benchmark dataset. KW - non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) KW - image stylization KW - style transfer KW - portrait KW - evaluation KW - benchmark Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s41095-021-0255-3 SN - 2096-0433 SN - 2096-0662 VL - 8 IS - 3 SP - 445 EP - 465 PB - Springer Nature CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ruipérez-Valiente, José A. A1 - Staubitz, Thomas A1 - Jenner, Matt A1 - Halawa, Sherif A1 - Zhang, Jiayin A1 - Despujol, Ignacio A1 - Maldonado-Mahauad, Jorge A1 - Montoro, German A1 - Peffer, Melanie A1 - Rohloff, Tobias A1 - Lane, Jenny A1 - Turro, Carlos A1 - Li, Xitong A1 - Pérez-Sanagustín, Mar A1 - Reich, Justin T1 - Large scale analytics of global and regional MOOC providers: Differences in learners' demographics, preferences, and perceptions JF - Computers & education N2 - Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) remarkably attracted global media attention, but the spotlight has been concentrated on a handful of English-language providers. While Coursera, edX, Udacity, and FutureLearn received most of the attention and scrutiny, an entirely new ecosystem of local MOOC providers was growing in parallel. This ecosystem is harder to study than the major players: they are spread around the world, have less staff devoted to maintaining research data, and operate in multiple languages with university and corporate regional partners. To better understand how online learning opportunities are expanding through this regional MOOC ecosystem, we created a research partnership among 15 different MOOC providers from nine countries. We gathered data from over eight million learners in six thousand MOOCs, and we conducted a large-scale survey with more than 10 thousand participants. From our analysis, we argue that these regional providers may be better positioned to meet the goals of expanding access to higher education in their regions than the better-known global providers. To make this claim we highlight three trends: first, regional providers attract a larger local population with more inclusive demographic profiles; second, students predominantly choose their courses based on topical interest, and regional providers do a better job at catering to those needs; and third, many students feel more at ease learning from institutions they already know and have references from. Our work raises the importance of local education in the global MOOC ecosystem, while calling for additional research and conversations across the diversity of MOOC providers. KW - Learning analytics KW - Educational data mining KW - Massive open online courses KW - Large scale analytics KW - Cultural factors KW - Equity KW - Distance learning Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104426 SN - 0360-1315 SN - 1873-782X VL - 180 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bläsius, Thomas A1 - Friedrich, Tobias A1 - Krejca, Martin S. A1 - Molitor, Louise T1 - The impact of geometry on monochrome regions in the flip Schelling process JF - Computational geometry N2 - Schelling's classical segregation model gives a coherent explanation for the wide-spread phenomenon of residential segregation. We introduce an agent-based saturated open-city variant, the Flip Schelling Process (FSP), in which agents, placed on a graph, have one out of two types and, based on the predominant type in their neighborhood, decide whether to change their types; similar to a new agent arriving as soon as another agent leaves the vertex. We investigate the probability that an edge {u,v} is monochrome, i.e., that both vertices u and v have the same type in the FSP, and we provide a general framework for analyzing the influence of the underlying graph topology on residential segregation. In particular, for two adjacent vertices, we show that a highly decisive common neighborhood, i.e., a common neighborhood where the absolute value of the difference between the number of vertices with different types is high, supports segregation and, moreover, that large common neighborhoods are more decisive. As an application, we study the expected behavior of the FSP on two common random graph models with and without geometry: (1) For random geometric graphs, we show that the existence of an edge {u,v} makes a highly decisive common neighborhood for u and v more likely. Based on this, we prove the existence of a constant c>0 such that the expected fraction of monochrome edges after the FSP is at least 1/2+c. (2) For Erdős–Rényi graphs we show that large common neighborhoods are unlikely and that the expected fraction of monochrome edges after the FSP is at most 1/2+o(1). Our results indicate that the cluster structure of the underlying graph has a significant impact on the obtained segregation strength. KW - Agent-based model KW - Schelling segregation KW - Spin system Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comgeo.2022.101902 SN - 0925-7721 SN - 1879-081X VL - 108 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dressler, Falko A1 - Chiasserini, Carla Fabiana A1 - Fitzek, Frank H. P. A1 - Karl, Holger A1 - Cigno, Renato Lo A1 - Capone, Antonio A1 - Casetti, Claudio A1 - Malandrino, Francesco A1 - Mancuso, Vincenzo A1 - Klingler, Florian A1 - Rizzo, Gianluca T1 - V-Edge BT - virtual edge computing as an enabler for novel microservices and cooperative computing JF - IEEE network N2 - As we move from 5G to 6G, edge computing is one of the concepts that needs revisiting. Its core idea is still intriguing: Instead of sending all data and tasks from an end user's device to the cloud, possibly covering thousands of kilometers and introducing delays lower-bounded by propagation speed, edge servers deployed in close proximity to the user (e.g., at some base station) serve as proxy for the cloud. This is particularly interesting for upcoming machine-learning-based intelligent services, which require substantial computational and networking performance for continuous model training. However, this promising idea is hampered by the limited number of such edge servers. In this article, we discuss a way forward, namely the V-Edge concept. V-Edge helps bridge the gap between cloud, edge, and fog by virtualizing all available resources including the end users' devices and making these resources widely available. Thus, V-Edge acts as an enabler for novel microservices as well as cooperative computing solutions in next-generation networks. We introduce the general V-Edge architecture, and we characterize some of the key research challenges to overcome in order to enable wide-spread and intelligent edge services. KW - Training KW - Performance evaluation KW - Cloud computing KW - Microservice KW - architectures KW - Computer architecture KW - Delays KW - Servers Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/MNET.001.2100491 SN - 0890-8044 SN - 1558-156X VL - 36 IS - 3 SP - 24 EP - 31 PB - Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers CY - Piscataway ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ring, Raphaela M. A1 - Eisenmann, Clemens A1 - Kandil, Farid A1 - Steckhan, Nico A1 - Demmrich, Sarah A1 - Klatte, Caroline A1 - Kessler, Christian S. A1 - Jeitler, Michael A1 - Boschmann, Michael A1 - Michalsen, Andreas A1 - Blakeslee, Sarah B. A1 - Stöckigt, Barbara A1 - Stritter, Wiebke A1 - Koppold-Liebscher, Daniela A. T1 - Mental and behavioural responses to Bahá’í fasting: Looking behind the scenes of a religiously motivated intermittent fast using a mixed methods approach JF - Nutrients N2 - Background/Objective: Historically, fasting has been practiced not only for medical but also for religious reasons. Baha'is follow an annual religious intermittent dry fast of 19 days. We inquired into motivation behind and subjective health impacts of Baha'i fasting. Methods: A convergent parallel mixed methods design was embedded in a clinical single arm observational study. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted before (n = 7), during (n = 8), and after fasting (n = 8). Three months after the fasting period, two focus group interviews were conducted (n = 5/n = 3). A total of 146 Baha'i volunteers answered an online survey at five time points before, during, and after fasting. Results: Fasting was found to play a central role for the religiosity of interviewees, implying changes in daily structures, spending time alone, engaging in religious practices, and experiencing social belonging. Results show an increase in mindfulness and well-being, which were accompanied by behavioural changes and experiences of self-efficacy and inner freedom. Survey scores point to an increase in mindfulness and well-being during fasting, while stress, anxiety, and fatigue decreased. Mindfulness remained elevated even three months after the fast. Conclusion: Baha'i fasting seems to enhance participants' mindfulness and well-being, lowering stress levels and reducing fatigue. Some of these effects lasted more than three months after fasting. KW - intermittent food restriction KW - mindfulness KW - self-efficacy KW - well-being KW - mixed methods KW - health behaviour KW - coping ability KW - religiously motivated KW - dry fasting Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14051038 SN - 2072-6643 VL - 14 IS - 5 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiemker, Veronika A1 - Bunova, Anna A1 - Neufeld, Maria A1 - Gornyi, Boris A1 - Yurasova, Elena A1 - Konigorski, Stefan A1 - Kalinina, Anna A1 - Kontsevaya, Anna A1 - Ferreira-Borges, Carina A1 - Probst, Charlotte T1 - Pilot study to evaluate usability and acceptability of the 'Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool' in Russian primary healthcare JF - Digital health N2 - Background and aims: Accurate and user-friendly assessment tools quantifying alcohol consumption are a prerequisite to effective prevention and treatment programmes, including Screening and Brief Intervention. Digital tools offer new potential in this field. We developed the ‘Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool’ (AAA-Tool), a mobile app providing an interactive version of the World Health Organization's Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) that facilitates the description of individual alcohol consumption via culturally informed animation features. This pilot study evaluated the Russia-specific version of the Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool with regard to (1) its usability and acceptability in a primary healthcare setting, (2) the plausibility of its alcohol consumption assessment results and (3) the adequacy of its Russia-specific vessel and beverage selection. Methods: Convenience samples of 55 patients (47% female) and 15 healthcare practitioners (80% female) in 2 Russian primary healthcare facilities self-administered the Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool and rated their experience on the Mobile Application Rating Scale – User Version. Usage data was automatically collected during app usage, and additional feedback on regional content was elicited in semi-structured interviews. Results: On average, patients completed the Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool in 6:38 min (SD = 2.49, range = 3.00–17.16). User satisfaction was good, with all subscale Mobile Application Rating Scale – User Version scores averaging >3 out of 5 points. A majority of patients (53%) and practitioners (93%) would recommend the tool to ‘many people’ or ‘everyone’. Assessed alcohol consumption was plausible, with a low number (14%) of logically impossible entries. Most patients reported the Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool to reflect all vessels (78%) and all beverages (71%) they typically used. Conclusion: High acceptability ratings by patients and healthcare practitioners, acceptable completion time, plausible alcohol usage assessment results and perceived adequacy of region-specific content underline the Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool's potential to provide a novel approach to alcohol assessment in primary healthcare. After its validation, the Animated Alcohol Assessment Tool might contribute to reducing alcohol-related harm by facilitating Screening and Brief Intervention implementation in Russia and beyond. KW - Alcohol use assessment KW - Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test KW - screening tools KW - digital health KW - mobile applications KW - Russia KW - primary healthcare KW - usability KW - acceptability Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076211074491 SN - 2055-2076 VL - 8 PB - Sage Publications CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Essen, Anna A1 - Stern, Ariel Dora A1 - Haase, Christoffer Bjerre A1 - Car, Josip A1 - Greaves, Felix A1 - Paparova, Dragana A1 - Vandeput, Steven A1 - Wehrens, Rik A1 - Bates, David W. T1 - Health app policy BT - international comparison of nine countries' approaches JF - npj digital medicine N2 - An abundant and growing supply of digital health applications (apps) exists in the commercial tech-sector, which can be bewildering for clinicians, patients, and payers. A growing challenge for the health care system is therefore to facilitate the identification of safe and effective apps for health care practitioners and patients to generate the most health benefit as well as guide payer coverage decisions. Nearly all developed countries are attempting to define policy frameworks to improve decision-making, patient care, and health outcomes in this context. This study compares the national policy approaches currently in development/use for health apps in nine countries. We used secondary data, combined with a detailed review of policy and regulatory documents, and interviews with key individuals and experts in the field of digital health policy to collect data about implemented and planned policies and initiatives. We found that most approaches aim for centralized pipelines for health app approvals, although some countries are adding decentralized elements. While the countries studied are taking diverse paths, there is nevertheless broad, international convergence in terms of requirements in the areas of transparency, health content, interoperability, and privacy and security. The sheer number of apps on the market in most countries represents a challenge for clinicians and patients. Our analyses of the relevant policies identified challenges in areas such as reimbursement, safety, and privacy and suggest that more regulatory work is needed in the areas of operationalization, implementation and international transferability of approvals. Cross-national efforts are needed around regulation and for countries to realize the benefits of these technologies. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-022-00573-1 SN - 2398-6352 VL - 5 IS - 1 PB - Macmillan Publishers Limited CY - Basingstoke ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hagedorn, Christopher A1 - Huegle, Johannes A1 - Schlosser, Rainer T1 - Understanding unforeseen production downtimes in manufacturing processes using log data-driven causal reasoning JF - Journal of intelligent manufacturing N2 - In discrete manufacturing, the knowledge about causal relationships makes it possible to avoid unforeseen production downtimes by identifying their root causes. Learning causal structures from real-world settings remains challenging due to high-dimensional data, a mix of discrete and continuous variables, and requirements for preprocessing log data under the causal perspective. In our work, we address these challenges proposing a process for causal reasoning based on raw machine log data from production monitoring. Within this process, we define a set of transformation rules to extract independent and identically distributed observations. Further, we incorporate a variable selection step to handle high-dimensionality and a discretization step to include continuous variables. We enrich a commonly used causal structure learning algorithm with domain-related orientation rules, which provides a basis for causal reasoning. We demonstrate the process on a real-world dataset from a globally operating precision mechanical engineering company. The dataset contains over 40 million log data entries from production monitoring of a single machine. In this context, we determine the causal structures embedded in operational processes. Further, we examine causal effects to support machine operators in avoiding unforeseen production stops, i.e., by detaining machine operators from drawing false conclusions on impacting factors of unforeseen production stops based on experience. KW - Causal structure learning KW - Log data KW - Causal inference KW - Manufacturing KW - industry Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-022-01952-x SN - 0956-5515 SN - 1572-8145 VL - 33 IS - 7 SP - 2027 EP - 2043 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ulrich, Jens-Uwe A1 - Lutfi, Ahmad A1 - Rutzen, Kilian A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. T1 - ReadBouncer BT - precise and scalable adaptive sampling for nanopore sequencing JF - Bioinformatics N2 - Motivation: Nanopore sequencers allow targeted sequencing of interesting nucleotide sequences by rejecting other sequences from individual pores. This feature facilitates the enrichment of low-abundant sequences by depleting overrepresented ones in-silico. Existing tools for adaptive sampling either apply signal alignment, which cannot handle human-sized reference sequences, or apply read mapping in sequence space relying on fast graphical processing units (GPU) base callers for real-time read rejection. Using nanopore long-read mapping tools is also not optimal when mapping shorter reads as usually analyzed in adaptive sampling applications. Results: Here, we present a new approach for nanopore adaptive sampling that combines fast CPU and GPU base calling with read classification based on Interleaved Bloom Filters. ReadBouncer improves the potential enrichment of low abundance sequences by its high read classification sensitivity and specificity, outperforming existing tools in the field. It robustly removes even reads belonging to large reference sequences while running on commodity hardware without GPUs, making adaptive sampling accessible for in-field researchers. Readbouncer also provides a user-friendly interface and installer files for end-users without a bioinformatics background. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btac223 SN - 1367-4803 SN - 1367-4811 VL - 38 IS - SUPPL 1 SP - 153 EP - 160 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hiort, Pauline A1 - Schlaffner, Christoph N. A1 - Steen, Judith A. A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. A1 - Steen, Hanno T1 - multiFLEX-LF: a computational approach to quantify the modification stoichiometries in label-free proteomics data sets JF - Journal of proteome research N2 - In liquid-chromatography-tandem-mass-spectrometry-based proteomics, information about the presence and stoichiometry ofprotein modifications is not readily available. To overcome this problem,we developed multiFLEX-LF, a computational tool that builds uponFLEXIQuant, which detects modified peptide precursors and quantifiestheir modification extent by monitoring the differences between observedand expected intensities of the unmodified precursors. multiFLEX-LFrelies on robust linear regression to calculate the modification extent of agiven precursor relative to a within-study reference. multiFLEX-LF cananalyze entire label-free discovery proteomics data sets in a precursor-centric manner without preselecting a protein of interest. To analyzemodification dynamics and coregulated modifications, we hierarchicallyclustered the precursors of all proteins based on their computed relativemodification scores. We applied multiFLEX-LF to a data-independent-acquisition-based data set acquired using the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) isolated at various time pointsduring mitosis. The clustering of the precursors allows for identifying varying modification dynamics and ordering the modificationevents. Overall, multiFLEX-LF enables the fast identification of potentially differentially modified peptide precursors and thequantification of their differential modification extent in large data sets using a personal computer. Additionally, multiFLEX-LF candrive the large-scale investigation of the modification dynamics of peptide precursors in time-series and case-control studies.multiFLEX-LF is available athttps://gitlab.com/SteenOmicsLab/multiflex-lf. KW - bioinformatics tool KW - label-free quantification KW - LC-MS KW - MS KW - post-translational modification KW - modification stoichiometry KW - PTM KW - quantification Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jproteome.1c00669 SN - 1535-3893 SN - 1535-3907 VL - 21 IS - 4 SP - 899 EP - 909 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wittig, Alice A1 - Miranda, Fabio Malcher A1 - Hölzer, Martin A1 - Altenburg, Tom A1 - Bartoszewicz, Jakub Maciej A1 - Beyvers, Sebastian A1 - Dieckmann, Marius Alfred A1 - Genske, Ulrich A1 - Giese, Sven Hans-Joachim A1 - Nowicka, Melania A1 - Richard, Hugues A1 - Schiebenhoefer, Henning A1 - Schmachtenberg, Anna-Juliane A1 - Sieben, Paul A1 - Tang, Ming A1 - Tembrockhaus, Julius A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. A1 - Fuchs, Stephan T1 - CovRadar BT - continuously tracking and filtering SARS-CoV-2 mutations for genomic surveillance JF - Bioinformatics N2 - The ongoing pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 emphasizes the importance of genomic surveillance to understand the evolution of the virus, to monitor the viral population, and plan epidemiological responses. Detailed analysis, easy visualization and intuitive filtering of the latest viral sequences are powerful for this purpose. We present CovRadar, a tool for genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. CovRadar consists of an analytical pipeline and a web application that enable the analysis and visualization of hundreds of thousand sequences. First, CovRadar extracts the regions of interest using local alignment, then builds a multiple sequence alignment, infers variants and consensus and finally presents the results in an interactive app, making accessing and reporting simple, flexible and fast. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btac411 SN - 1367-4803 SN - 1367-4811 VL - 38 IS - 17 SP - 4223 EP - 4225 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pawlitzki, Marc A1 - Acar, Laura A1 - Masanneck, Lars A1 - Willison, Alice A1 - Regner-Nelke, Liesa A1 - Nelke, Christopher A1 - L'hoest, Helmut A1 - Marschall, Ursula A1 - Schmidt, Jens A1 - Meuth, Sven G. A1 - Ruck, Tobias T1 - Myositis in Germany: epidemiological insights over 15 years from 2005 to 2019 JF - Neurological research and practice : official journal of the German Neurological Society N2 - Background: The medical care of patients with myositis is a great challenge in clinical practice. This is due to the rarity of these disease, the complexity of diagnosis and management as well as the lack of systematic analyses. Objectives: Therefore, the aim of this project was to obtain an overview of the current care of myositis patients in Germany and to evaluate epidemiological trends in recent years. Methods: In collaboration with BARMER Insurance, retrospective analysis of outpatient and inpatient data from an average of approximately 8.7 million insured patients between January 2005 and December 2019 was performed using ICD-10 codes for myositis for identification of relevant data. In addition, a comparative analysis was performed between myositis patients and an age-matched comparison group from other populations insured by BARMER. Results: 45,800 BARMER-insured individuals received a diagnosis of myositis during the observation period, with a relatively stable prevalence throughout. With regard to comorbidities, a significantly higher rate of cardiovascular disease as well as neoplasm was observed compared to the control group within the BARMER-insured population. In addition, myositis patients suffer more frequently from psychiatric disorders, such as depression and somatoform disorders. However, the ICD-10 catalogue only includes the specific coding of "dermatomyositis" and "polymyositis" and thus does not allow for a sufficient analysis of all idiopathic inflammatory myopathies subtypes. Conclusion: The current data provide a comprehensive epidemiological analysis of myositis in Germany, highlighting the multimorbidity of myositis patients. This underlines the need for multidisciplinary management. However, the ICD-10 codes currently still in use do not allow for specific analysis of the subtypes of myositis. The upcoming ICD-11 coding may improve future analyses in this regard. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s42466-022-00226-4 SN - 2524-3489 VL - 4 IS - 1 PB - BioMed Central CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Graf, Martin A1 - Laskowski, Lukas A1 - Papsdorf, Florian A1 - Sold, Florian A1 - Gremmelspacher, Roland A1 - Naumann, Felix A1 - Panse, Fabian T1 - Frost: a platform for benchmarking and exploring data matching results JF - Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment N2 - "Bad" data has a direct impact on 88% of companies, with the average company losing 12% of its revenue due to it. Duplicates - multiple but different representations of the same real-world entities are among the main reasons for poor data quality, so finding and configuring the right deduplication solution is essential. Existing data matching benchmarks focus on the quality of matching results and neglect other important factors, such as business requirements. Additionally, they often do not support the exploration of data matching results. To address this gap between the mere counting of record pairs vs. a comprehensive means to evaluate data matching solutions, we present the Frost platform. It combines existing benchmarks, established quality metrics, cost and effort metrics, and exploration techniques, making it the first platform to allow systematic exploration to understand matching results. Frost is implemented and published in the open-source application Snowman, which includes the visual exploration of matching results, as shown in Figure 1. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.14778/3554821.3554823 SN - 2150-8097 VL - 15 IS - 12 SP - 3292 EP - 3305 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Monti, Remo A1 - Rautenstrauch, Pia A1 - Ghanbari, Mahsa A1 - James, Alva Rani A1 - Kirchler, Matthias A1 - Ohler, Uwe A1 - Konigorski, Stefan A1 - Lippert, Christoph T1 - Identifying interpretable gene-biomarker associations with functionally informed kernel-based tests in 190,000 exomes JF - Nature Communications N2 - Here we present an exome-wide rare genetic variant association study for 30 blood biomarkers in 191,971 individuals in the UK Biobank. We compare gene- based association tests for separate functional variant categories to increase interpretability and identify 193 significant gene-biomarker associations. Genes associated with biomarkers were ~ 4.5-fold enriched for conferring Mendelian disorders. In addition to performing weighted gene-based variant collapsing tests, we design and apply variant-category-specific kernel-based tests that integrate quantitative functional variant effect predictions for mis- sense variants, splicing and the binding of RNA-binding proteins. For these tests, we present a computationally efficient combination of the likelihood- ratio and score tests that found 36% more associations than the score test alone while also controlling the type-1 error. Kernel-based tests identified 13% more associations than their gene-based collapsing counterparts and had advantages in the presence of gain of function missense variants. We introduce local collapsing by amino acid position for missense variants and use it to interpret associations and identify potential novel gain of function variants in PIEZO1. Our results show the benefits of investigating different functional mechanisms when performing rare-variant association tests, and demonstrate pervasive rare-variant contribution to biomarker variability. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32864-2 SN - 2041-1723 VL - 13 PB - Nature Publishing Group UK CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hacker, Philipp A1 - Naumann, Felix A1 - Friedrich, Tobias A1 - Grundmann, Stefan A1 - Lehmann, Anja A1 - Zech, Herbert T1 - AI compliance - challenges of bridging data science and law JF - Journal of Data and Information Quality (JDIQ) N2 - This vision article outlines the main building blocks of what we term AI Compliance, an effort to bridge two complementary research areas: computer science and the law. Such research has the goal to model, measure, and affect the quality of AI artifacts, such as data, models, and applications, to then facilitate adherence to legal standards. KW - AI Act KW - compliance KW - liability KW - privacy KW - transparency KW - information quality Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3531532 SN - 1936-1955 SN - 1936-1963 VL - 14 IS - 3 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Richly, Keven A1 - Schlosser, Rainer A1 - Boissier, Martin T1 - Budget-conscious fine-grained configuration optimization for spatio-temporal applications JF - Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment N2 - Based on the performance requirements of modern spatio-temporal data mining applications, in-memory database systems are often used to store and process the data. To efficiently utilize the scarce DRAM capacities, modern database systems support various tuning possibilities to reduce the memory footprint (e.g., data compression) or increase performance (e.g., additional indexes). However, the selection of cost and performance balancing configurations is challenging due to the vast number of possible setups consisting of mutually dependent individual decisions. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to jointly optimize the compression, sorting, indexing, and tiering configuration for spatio-temporal workloads. Further, we consider horizontal data partitioning, which enables the independent application of different tuning options on a fine-grained level. We propose different linear programming (LP) models addressing cost dependencies at different levels of accuracy to compute optimized tuning configurations for a given workload and memory budgets. To yield maintainable and robust configurations, we extend our LP-based approach to incorporate reconfiguration costs as well as a worst-case optimization for potential workload scenarios. Further, we demonstrate on a real-world dataset that our models allow to significantly reduce the memory footprint with equal performance or increase the performance with equal memory size compared to existing tuning heuristics. KW - General Earth and Planetary Sciences KW - Water Science and Technology KW - Geography, Planning and Development Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.14778/3565838.3565858 SN - 2150-8097 VL - 15 IS - 13 SP - 4079 EP - 4092 PB - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) CY - [New York] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tausch, Simon H. A1 - Loka, Tobias P. A1 - Schulze, Jakob M. A1 - Andrusch, Andreas A1 - Klenner, Jeanette A1 - Dabrowski, Piotr Wojciech A1 - Lindner, Martin S. A1 - Nitsche, Andreas A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. T1 - PathoLive-real-time pathogen identification from metagenomic illumina datasets JF - Life N2 - Over the past years, NGS has become a crucial workhorse for open-view pathogen diagnostics. Yet, long turnaround times result from using massively parallel high-throughput technologies as the analysis can only be performed after sequencing has finished. The interpretation of results can further be challenged by contaminations, clinically irrelevant sequences, and the sheer amount and complexity of the data. We implemented PathoLive, a real-time diagnostics pipeline for the detection of pathogens from clinical samples hours before sequencing has finished. Based on real-time alignment with HiLive2, mappings are scored with respect to common contaminations, low-entropy areas, and sequences of widespread, non-pathogenic organisms. The results are visualized using an interactive taxonomic tree that provides an easily interpretable overview of the relevance of hits. For a human plasma sample that was spiked in vitro with six pathogenic viruses, all agents were clearly detected after only 40 of 200 sequencing cycles. For a real-world sample from Sudan, the results correctly indicated the presence of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus. In a second real-world dataset from the 2019 SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Wuhan, we found the presence of a SARS coronavirus as the most relevant hit without the novel virus reference genome being included in the database. For all samples, clinically irrelevant hits were correctly de-emphasized. Our approach is valuable to obtain fast and accurate NGS-based pathogen identifications and correctly prioritize and visualize them based on their clinical significance: PathoLive is open source and available on GitLab and BioConda. KW - NGS KW - metagenomics KW - viruses KW - infectious diseases KW - diagnostics KW - live sequencing Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/life12091345 SN - 2075-1729 VL - 12 IS - 9 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Masanneck, Lars A1 - Rolfes, Leoni A1 - Regner-Nelke, Liesa A1 - Willison, Alice A1 - Räuber, Saskia A1 - Steffen, Falk A1 - Bittner, Stefan A1 - Zipp, Frauke A1 - Albrecht, Philipp A1 - Ruck, Tobias A1 - Hartung, Hans-Peter A1 - Meuth, Sven G. A1 - Pawlitzki, Marc T1 - Detecting ongoing disease activity in mildly affected multiple sclerosis patients under first-line therapies JF - Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders N2 - Background: The current range of disease-modifying treatments (DMTs) for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) has placed more importance on the accurate monitoring of disease progression for timely and appropriate treatment decisions. With a rising number of measurements for disease progression, it is currently unclear how well these measurements or combinations of them can monitor more mildly affected RRMS patients. Objectives: To investigate several composite measures for monitoring disease activity and their potential relation to the biomarker neurofilament light chain (NfL) in a clearly defined early RRMS patient cohort with a milder disease course. Methods: From a total of 301 RRMS patients, a subset of 46 patients being treated with a continuous first-line therapy was analyzed for loss of no evidence of disease activity (lo-NEDA-3) status, relapse-associated worsening (RAW) and progression independent of relapse activity (PIRA), up to seven years after treatment initialization. Kaplan-Meier estimates were used for time-to-event analysis. Additionally, a Cox regression model was used to analyze the effect of NIL levels on outcome measures in this cohort. Results: In this mildly affected cohort, both lo-NEDA-3 and PIRA frequently occurred over a median observational period of 67.2 months and were observed in 39 (84.8%) and 23 (50.0%) patients, respectively. Additionally, 12 out of 26 PIRA manifestations (46.2%) were observed without a corresponding lo-NEDA-3 status. Jointly, either PIRA or lo-NEDA-3 showed disease activity in all patients followed-up for at least the median duration (67.2 months). NfL values demonstrated an association with the occurrence of relapses and RAW. Conclusion: The complementary use of different disease progression measures helps mirror ongoing disease activity in mildly affected early RRMS patients being treated with continuous first-line therapy. KW - relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis KW - neurofilament light chain KW - PIRA KW - NEDA KW - RAW KW - early MS KW - disease activity measurements KW - biomarker Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msard.2022.103927 SN - 2211-0348 SN - 2211-0356 VL - 63 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Heyne, Henrike O. T1 - Polygenic risk scores in epilepsy JF - Medizinische Genetik N2 - An epilepsy diagnosis has large consequences for an individual but is often difficult to make in clinical practice. Novel biomarkers are thus greatly needed. Here, we give an overview of how thousands of common genetic factors that increase the risk for epilepsy can be summarized as epilepsy polygenic risk scores (PRS). We discuss the current state of research on how epilepsy PRS can serve as a biomarker for the risk for epilepsy. The high heritability of common forms of epilepsy, particularly genetic generalized epilepsy, indicates a promising potential for epilepsy PRS in diagnosis and risk prediction. Small sample sizes and low ancestral diversity of current epilepsy genome-wide association studies show, however, a need for larger and more diverse studies before epilepsy PRS could be properly implemented in the clinic. KW - epilepsy KW - genome-wide association study KW - complex disease KW - polygenic score KW - risk prediction Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/medgen-2022-2146 SN - 0936-5931 SN - 1863-5490 VL - 34 IS - 3 SP - 225 EP - 230 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Torous, John A1 - Stern, Ariel D. A1 - Bourgeois, Florence T. T1 - Regulatory considerations to keep pace with innovation in digital health products JF - npj digital medicine N2 - Rapid innovation and proliferation of software as a medical device have accelerated the clinical use of digital technologies across a wide array of medical conditions. Current regulatory pathways were developed for traditional (hardware) medical devices and offer a useful structure, but the evolution of digital devices requires concomitant innovation in regulatory approaches to maximize the potential benefits of these emerging technologies. A number of specific adaptations could strengthen current regulatory oversight while promoting ongoing innovation. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-022-00668-9 SN - 2398-6352 VL - 5 IS - 1 PB - Macmillan Publishers Limited CY - Basingstoke ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Figge, Frank A1 - Dimitrov, Stanko A1 - Schlosser, Rainer A1 - Chenavaz, Regis T1 - Does the circular economy fuel the throwaway society? The role of opportunity costs for products that lose value over time JF - Journal of cleaner production N2 - The efficient use of natural resources is considered a necessary condition for their sustainable use. Extending the lifetime of products and using resources circularly are two popular strategies to increase the efficiency of resource use. Both strategies are usually assumed to contribute to the eco-efficiency of resource use independently. We argue that a move to a circular economy creates opportunity costs for consumers holding on to their products, due to the resource embedded in the product. Assuming rational consumers, we develop a model that determines optimal replacement times for products subject to minimizing average costs over time. We find that in a perfectly circular economy, consumers are incentivized to discard their products more quickly than in a perfectly linear economy. A direct consequence of our finding is that extending product use is in direct conflict with closing resource loops in the circular economy. We identify the salvage value of discarded products and technical progress as two factors that determine the impact that closing resource loops has on the duration of product use. The article highlights the risk that closing resource loops and moving to a more circular economy incentivizes more unsustainable behavior. KW - circular economy KW - opportunity cost KW - eco-efficiency KW - obsolescence KW - economic obsolescence Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.133207 SN - 0959-6526 SN - 1879-1786 VL - 368 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hartmann, Anika M. A1 - Dell'Oro, Melanie A1 - Spoo, Michaela A1 - Fischer, Jan Moritz A1 - Steckhan, Nico A1 - Jeitler, Michael A1 - Häupl, Thomas A1 - Kandil, Farid A1 - Michalsen, Andreas A1 - Koppold-Liebscher, Daniela A. A1 - Kessler, Christian S. T1 - To eat or not to eat-an exploratory randomized controlled trial on fasting and plant-based diet in rheumatoid arthritis (NutriFast-Study) JF - Frontiers in nutrition N2 - Background: Fasting is beneficial in many diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), with lasting effects for up to 1 year. However, existing data dates back several decades before the introduction of modern therapeutic modalities. Objective: This exploratory RCT compares the effects of a 7-day fast followed by a plant-based diet (PBD) to the effects of the dietary recommendations of the German society for nutrition (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung, DGE) on RA disease activity, cardiovascular (CV) risk factors, and well-being. Methods: In this RCT we randomly assigned 53 RA patients to either a 7-day fast followed by an 11-week PBD or a 12-week standard DGE diet. The primary endpoint was the group change from baseline to 12 weeks on the Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index (HAQ-DI). Further outcomes included other disease activity scores, body composition, and quality of life. Results: Of 53 RA patients enrolled, 50 participants (25 per group) completed the trial and were included into the per-protocol analysis. The primary endpoint was not statistically significant. However, HAQ-DI improved rapidly in the fasting group by day 7 and remained stable over 12 weeks (Δ-0.29, p = 0.001), while the DGE group improved later at 6 and 12 weeks (Δ-0.23, p = 0.032). DAS28 ameliorated in both groups by week 12 (Δ-0.97, p < 0.001 and Δ-1.14, p < 0.001; respectively), with 9 patients in the fasting but only 3 in the DGE group achieving ACR50 or higher. CV risk factors including weight improved stronger in the fasting group than in the DGE group (Δ-3.9 kg, p < 0.001 and Δ-0.7 kg, p = 0.146). Conclusions: Compared with a guideline-based anti-inflammatory diet, fasting followed by a plant-based diet showed no benefit in terms of function and disability after 12 weeks. Both dietary approaches had a positive effect on RA disease activity and cardiovascular risk factors in patients with RA. Clinical trial registration: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03856190, identifier: NCT03856190. KW - rheumatoid arthritis KW - fasting KW - caloric restriction KW - plant-based diet KW - inflammation Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.1030380 SN - 2296-861X VL - 9 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schneider, Sven A1 - Maximova, Maria A1 - Sakizloglou, Lucas A1 - Giese, Holger T1 - Formal testing of timed graph transformation systems using metric temporal graph logic JF - International journal on software tools for technology transfer N2 - Embedded real-time systems generate state sequences where time elapses between state changes. Ensuring that such systems adhere to a provided specification of admissible or desired behavior is essential. Formal model-based testing is often a suitable cost-effective approach. We introduce an extended version of the formalism of symbolic graphs, which encompasses types as well as attributes, for representing states of dynamic systems. Relying on this extension of symbolic graphs, we present a novel formalism of timed graph transformation systems (TGTSs) that supports the model-based development of dynamic real-time systems at an abstract level where possible state changes and delays are specified by graph transformation rules. We then introduce an extended form of the metric temporal graph logic (MTGL) with increased expressiveness to improve the applicability of MTGL for the specification of timed graph sequences generated by a TGTS. Based on the metric temporal operators of MTGL and its built-in graph binding mechanics, we express properties on the structure and attributes of graphs as well as on the occurrence of graphs over time that are related by their inner structure. We provide formal support for checking whether a single generated timed graph sequence adheres to a provided MTGL specification. Relying on this logical foundation, we develop a testing framework for TGTSs that are specified using MTGL. Lastly, we apply this testing framework to a running example by using our prototypical implementation in the tool AutoGraph. KW - formal testing KW - typed attributed symbolic graphs KW - timed graph KW - transformation KW - graph conditions KW - metric temporal graph logic Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-020-00585-w SN - 1433-2779 SN - 1433-2787 VL - 23 IS - 3 SP - 411 EP - 488 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ladleif, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Which event happened first? BT - Deferred choice on blockchain using oracles JF - Frontiers in blockchain N2 - First come, first served: Critical choices between alternative actions are often made based on events external to an organization, and reacting promptly to their occurrence can be a major advantage over the competition. In Business Process Management (BPM), such deferred choices can be expressed in process models, and they are an important aspect of process engines. Blockchain-based process execution approaches are no exception to this, but are severely limited by the inherent properties of the platform: The isolated environment prevents direct access to external entities and data, and the non-continual runtime based entirely on atomic transactions impedes the monitoring and detection of events. In this paper we provide an in-depth examination of the semantics of deferred choice, and transfer them to environments such as the blockchain. We introduce and compare several oracle architectures able to satisfy certain requirements, and show that they can be implemented using state-of-the-art blockchain technology. KW - business processes KW - business process management KW - deferred choice KW - workflow patterns KW - blockchain KW - smart contracts KW - oracles KW - formal semantics Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2021.758169 SN - 2624-7852 VL - 4 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Frontiers in Blockchain CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Buchem, Ilona A1 - Okatan, Ebru T1 - Using the Addie Model to Produce MOOCs BT - Experiences from the Oberred Project JF - EMOOCs 2021 N2 - MOOCs have been produced using a variety of instructional design approaches and frameworks. This paper presents experiences from the instructional approach based on the ADDIE model applied to designing and producing MOOCs in the Erasmus+ strategic partnership on Open Badge Ecosystem for Research Data Management (OBERRED). Specifically, this paper describes the case study of the production of the MOOC “Open Badges for Open Science”, delivered on the European MOOC platform EMMA. The key goal of this MOOC is to help learners develop a capacity to use Open Badges in the field of Research Data Management (RDM). To produce the MOOC, the ADDIE model was applied as a generic instructional design model and a systematic approach to the design and development following the five design phases: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation. This paper outlines the MOOC production including methods, templates and tools used in this process including the interactive micro-content created with H5P in form of Open Educational Resources and digital credentials created with Open Badges and issued to MOOC participants upon successful completion of MOOC levels. The paper also outlines the results from qualitative evaluation, which applied the cognitive walkthrough methodology to elicit user requirements. The paper ends with conclusions about pros and cons of using the ADDIE model in MOOC production and formulates recommendations for further work in this area. Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517274 SN - 978-3-86956-512-5 VL - 2021 SP - 249 EP - 258 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Khalil, Mohammad T1 - Who Are the Students of MOOCs? BT - Experience from Learning Analytics Clustering Techniques JF - EMOOCs 2021 N2 - Clustering in education is important in identifying groups of objects in order to find linked patterns of correlations in educational datasets. As such, MOOCs provide a rich source of educational datasets which enable a wide selection of options to carry out clustering and an opportunity for cohort analyses. In this experience paper, five research studies on clustering in MOOCs are reviewed, drawing out several reasonings, methods, and students’ clusters that reflect certain kinds of learning behaviours. The collection of the varied clusters shows that each study identifies and defines clusters according to distinctive engagement patterns. Implications and a summary are provided at the end of the paper. Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517298 SN - 978-3-86956-512-5 VL - 2021 SP - 259 EP - 269 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Casiraghi, Daniela A1 - Sancassani, Susanna A1 - Brambilla, Federica T1 - The Role of MOOCs in the New Educational Scenario BT - An Integrated Strategy for Faculty Development JF - EMOOCs 2021 N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic emergency has forced a profound reshape of our lives. Our way of working and studying has been disrupted with the result of an acceleration of the shift to the digital world. To properly adapt to this change, we need to outline and implement new urgent strategies and approaches which put learning at the center, supporting workers and students to further develop “future proof” skills. In the last period, universities and educational institutions have demonstrated that they can play an important role in this context, also leveraging on the potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which proved to be an important vehicle of flexibility and adaptation in a general context characterised by several constraints. From March 2020 till now, we have witnessed an exponential growth of MOOCs enrollments numbers, with “traditional” students interested in different topics not necessarily integrated to their curricular studies. To support students and faculty development during the spreading of the pandemic, Politecnico di Milano focused on one main dimension: faculty development for a better integration of digital tools and contents in the e-learning experience. The current discussion focuses on how to improve the integration of MOOCs in the in-presence activities to create meaningful learning and teaching experiences, thereby leveraging blended learning approaches to engage both students and external stakeholders to equip them with future job relevance skills. Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517315 SN - 978-3-86956-512-5 VL - 2021 SP - 271 EP - 274 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hense, Julia A1 - Bernd, Mike T1 - Podcasts, Microcontent & MOOCs BT - The Integration of Digital Learning Formats into HEI Lectures JF - EMOOCs 2021 Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517363 SN - 978-3-86956-512-5 VL - 2021 SP - 289 EP - 295 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mihaescu, Vlad A1 - Andone, Diana A1 - Vasiu, Radu T1 - DigiCulture MOOC Courses Piloting with Students JF - EMOOCs 2021 Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517339 SN - 978-3-86956-512-5 VL - 2021 SP - 275 EP - 279 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Langseth, Inger A1 - Jacobsen, Dan Yngve A1 - Haugsbakken, Halvdan T1 - MOOCs for Flexible and Lifelong Learning in Higher Education BT - The Struggle from within Loosely Coupled Organizations? JF - EMOOCs 2021 N2 - In this paper, we take a closer look at the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) in Norway. We want to contribute to nuancing the image of a sound and sustainable policy for flexible and lifelong learning at national and institutional levels and point to some critical areas of improvement in higher education institutions (HEI). 10 semistructured qualitative interviews were carried out in the autumn 2020 at ten different HE institutions across Norway. The informants were strategically selected among employees involved in MOOC-technology, MOOCproduction and MOOC-support over a period of time stretching from 2010–2020. A main finding is that academics engaged in MOOCs find that their entrepreneurial ideas and results, to a large extent, are overlooked at higher institutional levels, and that progress is frustratingly slow. So far, there seems to be little common understanding of the MOOC-concept and the disruptive and transformative effect that MOOC-technology may have at HEIs. At national levels, digital strategies, funding and digital infrastructure are mainly provided in governmental silos. We suggest that governmental bodies and institutional stake holders pay more attention to entrepreneurial MOOC-initiatives to develop sustainability in flexible and lifelong learning in HEIs. This involves connecting the generous funding of digital projects to the provision of a national portal and platform for Open Access to education. To facilitate sustainable lifelong learning in and across HEIs, more quality control to enhance the legitimacy of MOOC certificates and micro-credentials is also a necessary measure. Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516930 SN - 978-3-86956-512-5 VL - 2021 SP - 63 EP - 78 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER -