CrossWorlds

Impressions from an outstanding and (obviously) extremely well-attended keynote on Open Science by Prof. Brian Nosek

From September 18th to 22nd, the 50th Conference of the German Society for Psychology (DGPs) was held in Leipzig. With talks and posters from all major fields of Psychology, the conference showcased a wide variety of current developments within psychological research.

CrossWorlds alumnus Daniel Pietschmann presented a poster entitled “User Experience, Spatial Cues and Spatial Mapping: When is stereoscopy a good choice for virtual environments?”. In a session on learning with media, CrossWorlds researcher Alexander Skulmowski held a talk describing how “Learning time determines cognitive load in embodied learning tasks.” Additionally, this session featured two talks by researchers from the affiliated chair of E-Learning and New Media: Steve Nebel talked about feedback and competition due to highscores in educational videogames, and Maik Beege introduced his research on the split-attention effect. Within a symposium on social factors and performance in school, Sascha Schneider gave a talk on social cues in multimedia learning. Moreover, he had organized a symposium on emotions in multimedia learning, in which he introduced his work on emotional decorative pictures.

The conference offered fruitful discussions and new perspectives. In particular, talks on Open Science – one of the “Hot Topics” of the conference – as well as a selection of high-profile keynote speakers provided food for thought.

The perfect place to think and talk about language and space.

Combining various methods and perspectives within a research project is an ambitious approach – one that we take very seriously. From September 4th to 9th, CrossWorlds joined the summer school of the URPP “Language and Space” at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Due to the relatively small participant group, we were able to work very productively through each of the three daily sessions. A great selection of invited scholars introduced us to their different angles and methodological approaches in dealing with virtual, social, and physical space. In the end, we wrapped it up into a large picture of relationships and differences between the discussed concepts. In order to give an overview of their current research every participant performed a pecha kucha at Tuesday and Thursday night. These sessions have been highlights of the week.
It seems very likely that this summer school served as a great kickoff for further collaborations and thought processes. Apart from enjoying the sun and the surroundings in Kappel am Albis, the event certainly inspired new insights into our data; reminding us that research is an amazing thing, being demanding and fun at the same time.

Thanks a lot to Prof. Dr. Andreas Jucker and his colleagues who made this event happen.

Maria Wirzberger presenting her poster at ICCM

With over 100 researchers from various countries, the 14th International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM) was held at the amazing campus of PennState University from August 4th to 6th. Besides a schedule enriched with sophisticated keynotes and talks on various theoretical and methodological issues related to modeling and simulating human cognition, the organizers arranged an exciting social program including a mentoring lunch at the first day and a barbecue with sports activities like go-cart, baseball or golf in the evening of the second day.

In particular the poster sessions at the first and last conference day offered various opportunities for lively discussions. Related to this point in schedule, the organizers had invented a new format called “poster boaster”, a short session in which each presenter had to “advertise” his or her poster in advance, to arouse peoples’ curiosity in the presented work. Right within the first poster session, CrossWorlds researcher Maria Wirzberger introduced her project entitled “Examining load-inducing factors in instructional design: An ACT-R approach”, gained rich feedback on her model concept and could discuss current construction yards with experts from the community. Moreover, she had the opportunity to become aquainted with fellow researchers from all over the world and got surprising insights into the American way of life!

The participants of the ICC 2016 © Stadt Fulda

The International Colloquium on Communication (ICC) was founded in 1968 and takes place every other year. It’s general aim is to discuss new results of research on communication. CrossWorlds is glad on having been part of the 2016th edition, wich took place in Fulda last week. This year’s specific focus was ‘communication and tragedy‘. Our fellow Ingmar presented a paper titled “The escape button as the only way out – when human-computer-interaction breaks down” as a spotlight on his current research.

A specific feature of the ICC is it’s small size with only about 25 participants. This year, 20 scholars from the U.S. and Europe met in Fulda from July 24th to 29th. Due to that we had plenty of time for enlightening discussions from various angles.