Computer-Supported Scientific Work

The familiarization with and gain of expert knowledge in new knowledge domains is an essential part of life-long learning. Corresponding competencies like information literacy have to be mastered before a learner can cope with the enormous information overload of today’s digital age. These skills are essential in academic contexts, for scientists as well as students, and especially for interdisciplinary, fast moving domains like computer science.

One mayor part of exploitation of and familiarization with knowledge domains is electronic literature research. Which is a particularly difficult and challenging task for unexperienced learners with little domain and process knowledge. Examples from practice (e.g. seminars or thesis) show tremendous problems as well.

Hence, the aim of this project is to improve the electronical literature research process and make it more effective and efficient, especially for beginners in the academic context.

A framework of a computer-supported guide/wizard should help students in the research process. Several focused tools aim at assisting single work steps while the overall framework follows the cognitive apprenticeship model. That means, it leads to a better understanding of the process (according strategies, methods, techniques, etc.) and strengthens learners’ information literacy empowering them to manage similar processes themselves in future. The single developed tools make use of knowledge from computer science and related sciences and use techniques like information retrieval, data mining, and similar to generate and discover helpful information for the learner.

The framework is based and evaluated on current scientific models as well as analyses of the real target group in practice. That is done in proseminars in computer science at RWTH Aachen University. Afterwards, a transfer to other study programs and fields is aspired.