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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.
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.
Portal Wissen = Learning
(2023)
Changing through learning is one of the most important characteristics we humans have. We are born and can – it seems – do nothing. We have to comprehend, copy, and acquire everything: grasping and walking, eating and speaking. Of course, we also have to read and do number work. In the meantime, we know: We will never be able to finish this. At best, we learn for a lifetime. If we stop, it harms us. The Greek philosopher Plato said more than 2,400 years ago, “There is no shame in not knowing something. The shame is in not being willing to learn.”
As humans we are also capable of learning; thanks to more and more knowledge about the world around us, we have moved from the Stone Age into the digital age. That this development is not a finish line either, but that we still have a long way to go, is shown by man-made climate change – and above all by our inability as a global community to translate what research teaches us into appropriate actions. Let us dare to hope that we also comprehend this.
What we tend to ignore in the intensive discussion about the multi-layered levels of learning: We are by no means the only learners. Many, if not all, living beings on our planet learn, some more in a more purposeful and complex and more cognitive way than others. And for some time now, machines have also been able to learn more or less independently. Artificial intelligence sends its regards.
The significance of learning for human beings can hardly be overestimated. Science has also understood this and has discovered the learning processes and conditions in almost all contexts for itself, no matter whether it is about our own learning processes and conditions or those around us. We have investigated some of these for the current issue of “Portal Wissen”.
Psycholinguist Natalie Boll-Avetisyan has developed a box that can be used to detect language learning disorders already in young children. The behavioral biologists Jana Eccard and Valeria Mazza investigated the behavior of small rodents and found out that they do not only develop different personality traits but they also described how they learn to adapt them different environmental conditions. Computer linguist David Schlangen examines the question what machines have to learn so that our communication with them works even better.
Since research is ultimately always a learning process that strives to understand something yet unknown, this time all texts are somehow along the motto of the title theme: It is about what the history of past centuries reveals about “military cultures of violence” and the question of what lessons we should learn from natural hazards for the future.
We talked with a legal scholar who looks beyond the university’s backyard and wants to make law comprehensible to everyone. We also talked with a philosopher who analyzes why “having an opinion” means something different today than 100 years ago. We report about an AI-based genome analysis that can change healthcare sustainably. Furthermore, it is about the job profile “YouTuber”, minor cosmopolitanisms, and wildlife management in Africa. When you have finished reading, you will have learnt something. Promised! Enjoy your read!
Portal Wissen = Excellence
(2023)
When something is not just good or very good, we often call it excellent. But what does that really mean? Coming from the Latin word “excellere,” it describes things, persons, or actions that are outstanding or superior and distinguish themselves from others. It cannot get any better. Excellence is the top choice for being the first or the best. Research is no exception.
At the university, you will find numerous exceptional researchers, outstanding projects, and, time and again, sensational findings, publications, and results. But is the University of Potsdam also excellent? A question that will certainly create a different stir in 2023 than it did perhaps 20 years ago. Since the launch of the Excellence Initiative in 2005, universities that succeed in winning the most comprehensive funding program for research in Germany have been considered – literally – excellent. Whether in the form of graduate schools, research clusters, or – since the program was continued in 2019 under the title “Excellence Strategy” – entire universities of excellence: Anyone who wants to be among the best research universities needs the seal of excellence.
The University of Potsdam is applying for funding with three cluster proposals in the recently launched new round of the “Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments.” One proposal comes from ecology and biodiversity research. The aim is to paint a comprehensive picture of ecological processes by examining the role of single individuals as well as the interactions among many species in an ecosystem to precisely determine the function of biodiversity. A second proposal has been submitted by the cognitive sciences. Here, the complex coexistence of language and cognition, development and learning, as well as motivation and behavior will be researched as a dynamic interrelation. The projects will include cooperation with the educational sciences to constantly consider linked learning and educational processes. The third proposal from the geo and environmental sciences concentrates on extreme and particularly devastating natural hazards and processes such as floods and droughts. The researchers examine these extreme events, focusing on their interaction with society, to be able to better assess the risks and damages they might involve and to initiate timely measures in the future.
“All three proposals highlight the excellence of our performance,” emphasizes University President Prof. Oliver Günther, Ph.D. “The outlines impressively document our commitment, existing research excellence, and the potential of the University of Potsdam as a whole. The fact that three powerful consortia have come together in different subject areas shows that we have taken a good step forward on our way to becoming one of the top German universities.”
In this issue, we are looking at what is in and behind these proposals: We talked to the researchers who wrote them. We asked them about their plans in case their proposals are successful and they bring a cluster of excellence to the university. But we also looked at the research that has led to the proposals, has long shaped the university’s profile, and earned it national and international recognition. We present a small selection of projects, methods, and researchers to illustrate why there really is excellent research in these proposals!
By the way, “excellence” is also not the end of the flagpole. After all, the adjective “excellent” even has a comparative and a superlative. With this in mind, I wish you the most excellent pleasure reading this issue!
Humboldtian science aims at an empirically supported transdisciplinary and at the same time transareal development of a world consciousness. In the development of this world consciousness, not only Europe and the Americas, but also Central Asia and especially China play an important role. The Humboldt Center for Transdisciplinary Studies (HCTS) in Changsha, is attempting to address the fact that China has been largely left out of international Humboldt studies and that Alexander von Humboldt was intensively engaged with Central Asia and China for decades. Therefore, the Humboldt Center in Changsha sets itself the goal of expanding Humboldt Studies to include this important aspect, to stimulate and coordinate special research work, and to build scientific and cultural bridges between Germany and China, Europe and Asia.
Phenotypic plasticity can increase individual fitness when environmental conditions change over time. Inducible defences are a striking example, allowing species to react to fluctuating predation pressure by only expressing their costly defended phenotype under high predation risk. Previous theoretical investigations have focused on how this affects predator–prey dynamics, but the impact on competitive outcomes and broader community dynamics has received less attention. Here we use a small food web model, consisting of two competing plastic autotrophic species exploited by a shared consumer, to study how the speed of inducible defences across three trade-off constellations affects autotroph coexistence, biomasses across trophic levels, and temporal variability. Contrary to the intuitive idea that faster adaptation increases autotroph fitness, we found that higher switching rates reduced individual fitness as it consistently provoked more maladaptive switching towards undefended phenotypes under high predation pressure. This had an unexpected positive impact on the consumer, increasing consumer biomass and lowering total autotroph biomass. Additionally, maladaptive switching strongly reduced autotroph coexistence through an emerging source-sink dynamic between defended and undefended phenotypes. The striking impact of maladaptive switching on species and food web dynamics indicates that this mechanism may be of more critical importance than previously recognized.
This chapter takes the ongoing conflict in South Sudan as a starting point for assessing the concept of transitional justice as such and its implementation in the country in particular. Following a brief description of the conflict and the peace processes, the author sheds light on the shortcomings of the established concept of transitional justice in the situation at hand. Then, the author outlines the alternate concept of transformational justice und takes a closer look at its implications on the situation in South Sudan. The author highlights existing initiatives of transformative justice and is very much in favour of their victim-centered approach.
Biological invasions may result from multiple introductions, which might compensate for reduced gene pools caused by bottleneck events, but could also dilute adaptive processes. A previous common-garden experiment showed heritable latitudinal clines in fitness-related traits in the invasive goldenrod Solidago canadensis in Central Europe. These latitudinal clines remained stable even in plants chemically treated with zebularine to reduce epigenetic variation. However, despite the heritability of traits investigated, genetic isolation-by-distance was non-significant. Utilizing the same specimens, we applied a molecular analysis of (epi)genetic differentiation with standard and methylation-sensitive (MSAP) AFLPs. We tested whether this variation was spatially structured among populations and whether zebularine had altered epigenetic variation. Additionally, we used genome scans to mine for putative outlier loci susceptible to selection processes in the invaded range. Despite the absence of isolation-by-distance, we found spatial genetic neighborhoods among populations and two AFLP clusters differentiating northern and southern Solidago populations. Genetic and epigenetic diversity were significantly correlated, but not linked to phenotypic variation. Hence, no spatial epigenetic patterns were detected along the latitudinal gradient sampled. Applying genome-scan approaches (BAYESCAN, BAYESCENV, RDA, and LFMM), we found 51 genetic and epigenetic loci putatively responding to selection. One of these genetic loci was significantly more frequent in populations at the northern range. Also, one epigenetic locus was more frequent in populations in the southern range, but this pattern was lost under zebularine treatment. Our results point to some genetic, but not epigenetic adaptation processes along a large-scale latitudinal gradient of S. canadensis in its invasive range.
Semi-natural habitats (SNHs) are becoming increasingly scarce in modern agricultural landscapes. This may reduce natural ecosystem services such as pest control with its putatively positive effect on crop production. In agreement with other studies, we recently reported wheat yield reductions at field borders which were linked to the type of SNH and the distance to the border. In this experimental landscape-wide study, we asked whether these yield losses have a biotic origin while analyzing fungal seed and fungal leaf pathogens, herbivory of cereal leaf beetles, and weed cover as hypothesized mediators between SNHs and yield. We established experimental winter wheat plots of a single variety within conventionally managed wheat fields at fixed distances either to a hedgerow or to an in-field kettle hole. For each plot, we recorded the fungal infection rate on seeds, fungal infection and herbivory rates on leaves, and weed cover. Using several generalized linear mixed-effects models as well as a structural equation model, we tested the effects of SNHs at a field scale (SNH type and distance to SNH) and at a landscape scale (percentage and diversity of SNHs within a 1000-m radius). In the dry year of 2016, we detected one putative biotic culprit: Weed cover was negatively associated with yield values at a 1-m and 5-m distance from the field border with a SNH. None of the fungal and insect pests, however, significantly affected yield, neither solely nor depending on type of or distance to a SNH. However, the pest groups themselves responded differently to SNH at the field scale and at the landscape scale. Our findings highlight that crop losses at field borders may be caused by biotic culprits; however, their negative impact seems weak and is putatively reduced by conventional farming practices.
When he founded Schocken Books in 1945, department store magnate, philanthropist, and publisher Salman Schocken (1877–1959) called his new American publishing business an imitation of its German predecessor, which had functioned from 1931 until 1938. He intended it to replicate the success of the Berlin Schocken Verlag by spiritually fortifying a Jewish community uncertain in its identity. The new company reflected the transnational transfer of people, ideas, and texts between Germany, Palestine/Israel, and the United States. Its success and near-failure raise questions about transnationalism and American Jewish culture: Can a culture be imposed on a population which has its own organs and agencies of cultural production? Had American Jewish culture developed organically to the specific place where several million Jews found themselves and according to uniquely American cultural patterns? The answers suggest that the concepts of transnationalism and cultural transfer complement each other as tools to analyze American Jewry in its American and Jewish contexts.
Foreign Entanglements
(2021)
“Why,” Francisca Isidro wonders, “did we have to leave our families and move so far away, only to come back as cooks, waitresses, sales assistants, and the like?” And she recalls: “We came back from our time in East Germany with professions that were not held in particu-larly high regard in Mozambique. Nobody understood why we didn’t return as engineers, doctors and teachers. ‘A waitress?,’ they would wonder. ‘Why, they could have become a waitress in Mozambique. Nobody needs to spend so many years in school for that.’”2And with that, Ms. Isidro puts her fi nger right on a misapprehension at the heart of an ambitious state-led education migration program that saw 900 Mozambican children attend the School of Friendship (Schule der Freundschaft , SdF) in Staßfurt in the district of Magdeburg, in what today is Saxony-Anhalt, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) from 1982 to 1988.3 Ms. Isidro returned to Mozambique as a trained salesperson for clothing, a profession she neither chose nor ever worked in again subsequently. Like her, these 900 children had to navigate the diverging values that particular environments bestowed upon knowledge. What they learned was interpreted diff erently in their home communities, at the SdF, and in their German host families
The article introduces the efforts exerted to initiate multiplication of the DIES training courses to a wider audience of higher education managers and academics in the target regions. The DIES ‘National Multiplication Trainings’ Programme has supported three cohorts of alumni teams so far to implement national training courses in the area of higher education leadership and management. The article sets the context of this publication and reflects on the main evaluation results of the programme implementation itself.
Introduction
(2020)
In 1924, the Berlin ophthalmologist Arthur Czellitzer (1871–1943) and like-minded members of the local Jewish community founded the Society for Jewish Family Research. A year later, the Society launched the journal Jüdische Familienforschung (Jewish Family Research), edited by Czellitzer. The Society was an outstanding platform of professional academic and amateur researchers and promoted a type of Jewish genealogy and family history that was shaped by the historical-medical discourse of the time. The concepts and methods of both the biological sciences and Wissenschaft des Judentums shaped and defined the academic approach to family research and history in Czellitzer’s and the Society’s work. The Society soon became the leading international association for the academic Jewish genealogical research. Despite of its brutal end in 1938, Arthur Czellitzer’s and the Society’s works, the issues raised, and the methods they created shape Jewish family research and genealogy until today.
The present paper is concerned with the phenomenon of reporting on the speakers’ thinking when both the reporting and the reported clauses originate in one and the same speaker, i.e. the performative uses of the verbs sp. creer and pt. achar (‘think’). The data are retrieved from the CdE-NOW and CdP-NOW. Adopting both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective, I concentrate on reporting on thinking with and without the overt expression of the subject pronouns sp. yo and pt. eu. In doing so, the constructions (yo) creo (que) and (eu) acho (que) as well as parenthetic and right-peripheral creo yo and acho eu are studied. According to the corpus data and compared to other possible constructions with creo and acho, creo que and acho que represent the most frequent constructions if searching for the ‘node’ creo or acho, that is, if the non-use of the subject pronoun exceeds its explicit expression.
This paper addresses issues of translating both words and rituals as Muslim cemetery keepers care for Jewish graves and recite traditional prayers for the dead in Morocco. Several issues of translation must be dealt with while considering these rare and disappearing practices. The first issue to be discussed is the translation of Hebrew inscriptions into French by cemetery keepers. One cemetery keeper in Meknes has tried to compile an exhaustive index of the names and dates represented on the gravestones under her care. The Muslim guard of the Jewish cemetery in Sefrou, on the other hand, has somewhat famously told visitors differing stories about his ability and willingness to pray the Kaddish over the graves of emigrated relatives who cannot return to mark an anniversary death. These practices provide the context for considering how the act of Muslims caring for Jewish graves creates linguistic and ritual translations of traditional Jewish ancestor care.
Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac of Yanova (d. 1623) is best known as the author of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah; the Melits Yosher (“Intercessor before God”) is one of his lesser known works. It was first published in Lublin in 1622 and reprinted once in Amsterdam in 1688. Like the Ze’enah U-Re’enah, it was a Torah commentary, but composed for men who had some yeshivah education, but who could not continue their studies. The commentary on the Song of Songs by Isaac Sulkes is another Yiddish work that addresses the same audience as the Melits Yosher. The purpose of this article is to bring to scholarly attention an audience that has not been noticed or studied in the previous scholarship on early modern Yiddish literature.
Recently, interest in collecting and mining large sets of educational data on student background and performance to conduct research on learning and instruction has developed as an area generally referred to as learning analytics. Higher education leaders are recognising the value of learning analytics for improving not only learning and teaching but also the entire educational arena. However, theoretical concepts and empirical evidence need to be generated within the fast evolving field of learning analytics. In this paper, we introduce a holistic learning analytics framework. Based on this framework, student, learning, and curriculum profiles have been developed which include relevant static and dynamic parameters for facilitating the learning analytics framework. Based on the theoretical model, an empirical study was conducted to empirically validate the parameters included in the student profile. The paper concludes with practical implications and issues for future research.
Experimenting with Lurchi
(2019)
A form-function mismatch?
(2019)
“I mean, no soy psicóloga”
(2019)
This paper is concerned with the qualitative analysis of the use of the English discourse marker I mean in Spanish and Portuguese online discourses (in online fora, blogs or user comments on websites). The examples are retrieved from the Corpus del Español (Web/ Dialects) as well as the Corpus do Português (Web/ Dialects).
The Forgotten War: Yemen
(2019)
The conflict in Yemen seems forgotten considering the worldwide severe humanitarian catastrophes. Nevertheless, since the conflict escalated around four years ago, it became one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history and has no end in sight. Thousands of people were killed even more displaced and the country is facing tremendous food insecurity as well as the world’s largest cholera outbreak. It is no longer just a civil war between the Houthi- and Hadi-Faction. International interests play a major role and made it a proxy war between Saudi Arabia (and its allies) on one side and Iran on the other. This all happens at the expense of the civilian population. Therefore, it is urgent to analyse the actors involved, their interests within the conflict and furthermore searching for possibilities to overcome it.
Preface
(2019)
In this paper evidential and modal adverbs will be studied, such as French apparemment, évidemment, visiblement, Italian apparentemente, evidentemente, ovviamente, and Spanish aparentemente, evidentemente and visiblemente. The development of their signification will be discussed, including German adverbs like offensichtlich. In these means of expression, the functional-semantic categories evidentiality and epistemic modality seem to overlap: on the one hand, they are used if the state of affairs talked about cannot be verified, that is, if there is still a moment of insecurity concerning the transmitted information. Then adverbials with a special structure (preposition + article + nominal form of a verb) will be analysed, and we will examine if they behave in the same way.
Languages about Languages
(2018)
In the history of Humboldt research both brothers have been traditionally seen as representing the dichotomy between the humanities and the natural sciences. Today however, their similar approach to using and forming scientific language could be used as a starting point for conceiving a university, museum and even forum under one single Humboldtian science.
This study adopts a cognitive approach to the analysis of the use of the Spanish imperfecto as a construal form for the conceptualization of state of affairs in certain journalistic texts. In doing so, the main focus of the study is to investigate cognitive processes like modalization and subjectivization, which are related to the speaker’s standpoint and to his subjective, not grammatically motivated, decision to use the imperfective instead of the perfective form. By the help of the corpus programmes GlossaNet and CREA (corpus of the Real Academia Española) we analyze the imperfective use of some Spanish verbs, which are semantically perfective in nature so that the normative use would require a perfective form. In other words, we investigate how the speaker/journalist construes a reality or situation to be expressed by means of the imperfecto and show that this use of the imperfect is typical for journalistic discourse.
The present paper discusses the relationship between evidentiality and (inter-) subjectivity and argues that the two semantic-functional categories need not be mutually exclusive. In the use of certain means of expression and in certain contexts, both evidentiality and (inter-) subjectivity may be conveyed simultaneously. I thereby differentiate between two meanings of intersubjectivity, namely ‘intersubjectivity1’ and ‘intersubjectivity2’. Intersubjectivity1 refers to the notion of common or general knowledge: certain means of expression are seen as being intersubjectively used when the speaker shares or assumes sharing knowledge with the interlocutor. Intersubjectivity2 is related to particular discourse functions of certain means of expression in interactional settings, paying attention to the speaker-hearer constellation.
In order to substantiate the theoretical part of the paper, I then present a qualitative analysis of Portuguese, Spanish and English examples, which are taken from the Corpus do Português, Corpus del Español and the Corpus of Contemporary American English.
Preface
(2018)
Rethinking Music Education
(2017)
It has been long agreed by formal and functional researchers (primarily based on English data) that contrastive topic marking, namely marking a constituent as a contrastive topic via the B-accent/the rising intonation contour) requires the co-occurrence of focus marking via the A-accent/the falling intonation contour (see Sturgeon 2006, and references therein). However, this consensus has recently been disputed by new findings indicating the occurrence of utterances with only B-accent, dubbed as lone contrastive topic (Büring 2003, Constant 2014). In this paper, I argue, based on the data in Vietnamese, that the presence of lone contrastive topic is just apparent, and that the focus that co-occurs with the seemingly lone contrastive topic is a verum focus.
Theses
(2016)