TY - JOUR A1 - Hermanns, Jolanda A1 - Keller, David T1 - The development, use, and evaluation of digital games and quizzes in an introductory course on organic chemistry for preservice chemistry teachers JF - Journal of chemical education / Division of Chemical Education, Inc., American Chemical Society N2 - Due to the COVID pandemic, the introductory course on organic chemistry was developed and conducted as anonline course. To ensure methodical variety in this course,educational games and quizzes have been developed, used, and evaluated. The attendance of the course, and therefore also the use of the quizzes and games, was voluntary. The quizzes'main goalwas to give the students the opportunity to check whether they had memorized the knowledge needed in the course. Another goal was to make transparent which knowledge the students shouldmemorize by rote. The evaluation shows that the students hadnot internalized all knowledge which they should apply in severaltasks on organic chemistry. They answered multiselect questions in general less well than single-select questions. The games shouldcombine fun with learning. The evaluation of the games shows that the students rated them very well. The students used thosegames again for their exam preparation, as the monitoring of accessing the games showed. Students'experiences with usingelectronic devices in general or for quizzes and games have also been evaluated, because their experience could influence thestudents'assessment of the quizzes and games used in our study. However, the students used electronic devices regularly and shouldtherefore be technically competent to use our quizzes and games. The evaluation showed that the use of digital games for learningpurposes is not very common, neither at school nor at university, although the students had worked with such tools before. Thestudents are also very interested in using and developing such digital games not only for their own study, but also for their future work at school KW - Organic Chemistry KW - Second-Year Undergraduate KW - Humor KW - Puzzles KW - Games; KW - Internet KW - Web-Based Learning KW - Distance Learning KW - Self Instruction Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00058 SN - 0021-9584 SN - 1938-1328 VL - 99 IS - 4 SP - 1715 EP - 1724 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fabian, Benjamin A1 - Baumann, Annika A1 - Ehlert, Mathias A1 - Ververis, Vasilis A1 - Ermakova, Tatiana T1 - CORIA - Analyzing internet connectivity risks using network graphs T2 - 2017 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) N2 - The Internet can be considered as the most important infrastructure for modern society and businesses. A loss of Internet connectivity has strong negative financial impacts for businesses and economies. Therefore, assessing Internet connectivity, in particular beyond their own premises and area of direct control, is of growing importance in the face of potential failures, accidents, and malicious attacks. This paper presents CORIA, a software framework for an easy analysis of connectivity risks based on large network graphs. It provides researchers, risk analysts, network managers and security consultants with a tool to assess an organization's connectivity and paths options through the Internet backbone, including a user-friendly and insightful visual representation of results. CORIA is flexibly extensible in terms of novel data sets, graph metrics, and risk scores that enable further use cases. The performance of CORIA is evaluated by several experiments on the Internet graph and further randomly generated networks. KW - risk analysis KW - connectivity KW - graph analysis KW - complex networks KW - Internet Y1 - 2017 SN - 978-1-4673-8999-0 SN - 978-1-4673-9000-2 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2017.7996828 SN - 1550-3607 PB - IEEE CY - Piscataway ER - TY - GEN A1 - Renz, Jan A1 - Shams, Ahmed A1 - Meinel, Christoph T1 - Offline-Enabled Web-based E-Learning for Improved User Experience in Africa T2 - 2017 IEEE Africon N2 - Web-based E-Learning uses Internet technologies and digital media to deliver education content to learners. Many universities in recent years apply their capacity in producing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). They have been offering MOOCs with an expectation of rendering a comprehensive online apprenticeship. Typically, an online content delivery process requires an Internet connection. However, access to the broadband has never been a readily available resource in many regions. In Africa, poor and no networks are yet predominantly experienced by Internet users, frequently causing offline each moment a digital device disconnect from a network. As a result, a learning process is always disrupted, delayed and terminated in such regions. This paper raises the concern of E-Learning in poor and low bandwidths, in fact, it highlights the needs for an Offline-Enabled mode. The paper also explores technical approaches beamed to enhance the user experience inWeb-based E-Learning, particular in Africa. KW - Educational Technology KW - E-Learning KW - Internet KW - Bandwidth KW - Mobile Learning KW - Mobiles KW - MOOC KW - Offline-Enabled KW - Ubiquitous Y1 - 2017 SN - 978-1-5386-2775-4 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/AFRCON.2017.8095574 SN - 2153-0025 SP - 736 EP - 742 PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Erdmann, Julius T1 - Semiotics of Pictorial Signs on Social Networking Sites BT - Remarks on a Neglected Field of Study JF - Punctum : international journal of semiotics N2 - The paper aims at considering characteristics from one field of contemporary visual studies that has for a long time been neglected in academic research: Pictorial signs on Social Network Sites (SNS) are an outstanding class of semiotic resources that is greatly shaped by processes of technological and collective sign production and distribution. A brief examination of the scholarly research on the pragmatics and semiotics of pictorial signs on SNS shows that the heterogeneity of visual signs is often neglected and that it mostly concentrates on one aspect of these pictorial signs: their technological production or their purpose for individual self-disclosure. The paper therefore considers the semiosis of pictorial signs on SNS in a holistic perspective as one the one hand produced by individual and collective meaning making as well as on the other hand a product of technological framing. It therefore develops a techno-semiotic pragmatic account that takes into consideration both processes. Starting from a prominent class of pictorial signs on SNS during Tunisian Revolution, the Tunisian Flag graphics, the paper than shows that communicative and social interaction functions on the graphic interface of SNS (‘like’-function, sharing and commenting option) are not only directly inscribed into the pictorial frame, but also greatly influence the reading of a pictorial sign. The location of images on the SNS’ interface has an impact on its meaning and on the social functions of a pictorial sign, as profile pictures are directly linked to the online identity of the user. Through technological sign processing, the polysemy of the image is reduced. We therefore consider the images on the one hand as individual self-narratives and on the other as instances of SNS’ visual culture that brings out dominant visual codes but also allows social and political movements to spread. KW - Internet KW - Social Networking Sites KW - visual culture KW - socio-semiotics KW - Tunisian Revolution Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18680/hss.2015.0003 SN - 2459-2943 VL - 1 IS - 1 SP - 26 EP - 42 PB - Hellenic Semiotic Society CY - Thessaloniki ER -