In jedem Unternehmen gibt es Stellen, an denen es nicht rund läuft. In manchen Organisationseinheiten ist Sand im Getriebe, es knirscht und knackt – schon bereits bei der Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Abteilungen. Was kann man tun? Eine Möglichkeit besteht darin, ein großes Veränderungsprojekt aufzusetzen und alle Mitarbeiter und Führungskräfte ins kalte Wasser zu werfen. Doch viele dieser großen Veränderungsprojekte scheitern. Hauptgrund ist, dass Führungskräfte von der Notwendigkeit der Änderungen nicht überzeugt sind. Die Autoren dieses Buchs haben daher einen anderen Ansatz entwickelt: Veränderung ja, aber in kleinen, nachhaltigen Schritten. In einem solchen kontinuierlichen Veränderungsprozess geht es darum, nach und nach stabil laufende Prozesse einzuführen bzw. bestehende Prozesse zu optimieren. Mit dieser Methode wird die Akzeptanz der Mitarbeiter erreicht. Sie bietet Führungskräften die Möglichkeit, Veränderungen und Prozesse mitzugestalten und sich im Rahmen ihrer Linienverantwortung gezielt einzubringen.

In den letzten Jahren nahm die Nutzung mobiler Geräte stark zu, wasauch zu einer Verbreitung mobiler Geräte in mobilen Lernszenarien geführt hat.Aufgrund der Heterogenität der am Markt befindlichen mobilen Geräte wird zurSoftwareentwicklung häufig ein plattformunabhängiger Ansatz gewählt. Hierzugibt es im Wesentlichen zwei unterschiedliche Ansätze, die beide aufWebtechnologien basieren. Entweder es werden Applikationen mit spezifischen UIFrameworks für mobile Geräte oder mit responsive Ansätzen, parallel für mobileund stationäre Geräte, entwickelt. Um beide Ansätze vergleichen zu können, stelltdieses Papier eine Evaluation der Akzeptanz mobiler Lernszenarien auf Basisplattformunabhängiger Webtechnologien dar.

Since the personal ownership of mobile devices has increased steadily over the last decade, many students own personal mobile devices that can reasonably be integrated into mobile learning scenarios. Besides all the benefits this option brings, there are also drawbacks, such as the heterogeneity of the set of mobile devices that need to be managed and integrated into existing and emerging learning scenarios. In our approach, one key element to address this challenge is an architecture that allows an easy and flexible integration of mobile and non-mobile devices into the same (mobile) learning scenario. We used a well-known group discussion method and an existing tool and extended it based on our approach. A description of this extension is presented in this paper. Finally, the paper reports on a pilot study in which the extended system was evaluated.

CloudServices like Google Drive, Brainstormer, Doodle are meanwhile frequently used as tools for learning in various contexts. They provide storage facilities, production tools and particularly also coordination support. The management of these heterogeneous tools is a challenge for the individual users as well as for the usage in groups. This paper presents a mobile application to support the learners in the formation of informallearninggroups and integrates heterogeneous cloudservices to supportgroupformation and further group work in a campus environment. Furthermore, this paper tackles the ambiguity of the term cloud application and tries to provide a definition and discusses the process of bringing the Brainstormer Web application into the cloud for integration with the mobile application.

The use of Web Services in modern software development is widely accepted and provides (integrated in an according architecture) a fast, flexible and scalable way for the implementation of modern software products. On the other hand, the development of mobile applications, so called apps, becomes more and more important. While using Web Services also from mobile devices is an already accepted scheme in the development of mobile apps, there is not much work done yet for providing Web Services on mobile devices. Therefore, this paper presents a new perspective to Web Services that could be run on mobile devices and, by this, become mobile Web Services.

The term "Cloud Computing" does not primarily specify new types of core technologies but rather addresses features to do with integration, inter-operability and accessibility. Although not new, virtualization and automation are core features that characterize Cloud Computing. In this paper, we intend to explore the possibility of integrating cloud services with educational scenarios without re-defining neither the technology nor the usage scenarios from scratch. Our suggestion is based on certain solutions that have already been implemented and tested for specific cases.

Web Services are today a well-accepted technology. Especially in the area of Cloud Computing, Web Services usually provide one of the building blocks of the used technology. Another driving technology nowadays are mobile devices. Nevertheless, there is not much research conducted yet in bringing these two important technologies together, e.g. with respect to providing Web Services on mobile devices. While there is already some technology that allows to deploy Web Services directly on mobile devices, it seems that there is still a lack of research about use-cases and/or scenarios that benefit from mobile Web Services. Therefore, this paper presents an approach that allows the evaluation of both, the technology for providing Web Service on mobile devices and mobile Web Services themselves.

Mobile devices are nowadays used almost ubiquitously by a large number of users. 2013 was the first year in which the number of sold mobile devices (tablet computers and mobile phones) outperformed the number of PCs' sold. And this trend seems to be continuing in the coming years. Additionally, the scenarios in which these kinds of devices are used, grow almost day by day. Another trend in modern landscapes is the idea of Cloud Computing, that basically allows for a very flexible provision of computational services to customers. Yet, these two trends are not well connected. Of course there exists already quite a large amount of mobile applications (apps) that utilize Cloud Computing based services. The other way round, that mobile devices provide one of the building blocks for the provision of Cloud Computing based services is not well established yet. Therefore, this paper concentrates on an extension of a technology that allows to provide standardized Web Services, as one of the building blocks for Cloud Computing, on mobile devices. The extension hereby consists of a new approach that now also allows to provide asynchronous Web Services on mobile devices, in contrast to synchronous ones. Additionally, this paper also illustrates how the described technology was already used in an app provided by a business partner.

In societies where the demographic change leads to a more and more unbalanced state between the elderly and all other different age groups, there, health management becomes one of the most significant problems, e.g., in order to allow what is often called successful aging. Ubiquitous use of smart mobile devices enables gathering of personalized data enriched with contextual information. This information can ideally be used in modern eHealth scenarios, resulting in mobile health (mHealth) scenarios. This paper describes how highly personalized and sensitive information, such as vital signs enriched with contextual information of a patient, can be stored at mobile devices and provided via modern web technologies for later-on analysis and health monitoring. Therefore, this paper presents a number of different scenarios in which such mobile technology provides certain benefits, discusses benefits, drawbacks and challenges of such an approach and describes an example implementation of an mHealth scenario.

Nowadays, there is a growing variety of mobile devices and online video content that could be used to support a variety of pedagogical strategies used for different cross-context learning scenarios. In order to take advantage of these developments, this paper presents an approach that allows to integrate learning material represented as videos in mobile learning scenarios, mainly by the implementation of a mobile client that allows to consume learning material represented as small chunks of video content. The application of these ideas potentially provides new educational opportunities to support learning across different contexts. Additionally, the videos consumed by the mobile client allow the integration of interactive elements like questions that could be answered by the learner while consuming the video or additional comments that could be provided to the learner. The rationale for the integration of the interactive parts in the video is to increase learners´ engagement and therefore also to increase their involvement and participation in order to generate an active learning experience.

In recent years, hardware for the production and consumption of virtual reality content has reached level of prices that make it affordable to everyone. Accordingly, schools and universities are showing increased interest in implementations of virtual reality technologies for supporting their innovative educational activities. Hence, this paper presents a flexible architecture for supporting the development of virtual reality learning scenarios conveniently deployed for educational purposes. We also suggest an example of such educational scenario for medical purposes deployable with the suggested architecture. In addition, we developed and used a questionnaire answered by 17 medical students in order to derive additional requirements for refining such scenarios. Then, we present these efforts while aiming at deployments usable also for additional domains. Finally, we summarize and mention aspects we will address in our coming efforts while deploying such activities.

In recent years, teachers have increasingly started to conduct pedagogical activitiesto promote different kinds of learning interactions supported by rich media. The deployment ofsuch activities is becoming common practice as teachers and students own technological meanssupporting them along such educational interactions. Such activities could be carried out inindoor settings while using regular computers. In addition, these activities could be alsoconducted from anywhere at any time while using smartphones and tablets. In this paper, wedescribe a multiphase pedagogical activity requiring students to author and later peer- assesseducational interactions incorporated to videos in YouTube. We describe the EDU.Tubeenvironment enabling them to create, share and consume such educational and rich mediaactivities across technological environments. We then detail a plan for the implementation of aneducational strategy taking place in 3 different classes dealing with diverse materials addressingcomputer science related topics. We also provide an evaluation presenting students' insights andfeedbacks resulting from the experienced activity. We discuss and elaborate on these outcomesin order to analyze them as concerns that could be applied to a further deployment of theEDU.Tube environment. Finally, we suggest that these set of concerns could be useful alsowhile designing and developing other technological environments offered for authoringeducational interactions supported by rich media aimed to empower teachers' pedagogicalpractice.

Nowadays, teachers and students utilize different ICT devices for conducting innovative and educational activities from anywhere at any time. The enactment of these activities relies on robust communication and computational infrastructures used for supporting technological devices enabling better accessibility to educational resources and pedagogical scaffolds, wherever and whenever necessary. In this paper, we present EDU.Tube: an interactive environment that relies on web and mobile solutions offered to teachers and students for authoring and incorporating educational interactions at specific moments along the time line of occasional YouTube video-clips. The teachers and students could later experience these authored artefacts while interacting from their stationary or mobile devices. We describe our efforts related to the design, deployment and evaluation of an educational activity supported by the EDU.Tube environment. Furthermore, we illustrate the specific teachers’ and students’ efforts practiced along the different phases of this educational activity. The evaluation of this activity and results are presented, followed by a discussion of these findings, as well as some recommendations for future research efforts further elaborating on EDU.Tube’s aspects in relation to learning analytics.

The development of web based applications gained enormous interests in recent years. Most of formerly desktop based applications nowadays provide at least a web based version or are completely reimplemented as web based applications. Nevertheless, from the development point of view, there are still a lot of strategies for the development of web based applications borrowed from the development strategies for desktop applications. Therefore, this paper concentrates on the description of an approach that allows to re-use a from the development of desktop applications well-known Design Pattern with a distinct enhancement for web based applications.

Social networking sites (SNSs) are an integral part of our daily life. With the evermore increasing appearance of SNSs, their users spend considerable time producing of different forms everyday (e.g. text, videos, photos, links, etc.) or browsing the varieties of contents in different SNSs. In this paper, we propose an architectural perspective on a framework that provides a unified environment through which users can produce and browse different contents of SNSs from one place.

Detection of influential actors in social media plays an important role for increasing the quality and efficiency of work and services in many fields such as education, marketing, etc. This work aims to introduce a new approach for the characterization of influential actors in online social media, such as Twitter. We present on a model of influence of an actor that is based on the attractiveness of the actor in terms of the number of other new actors with which he or she has established relations over time. We have used this concept and measure of influence to determine optimal seeds in a simulation of influence maximization using two empirically collected social networks for the underlying graphs.

In recent years, the development of smart and mobile devices gained more and more attention. Here, embedded systems provide a fast and convenient way for the implementation of new applications that allow for flexible and innovative interaction with our environment. Additionally, the development in the area of embedded systems does not only provide an easy and flexible way for interaction with the environment, but at the same time also a very cost efficient way. This paper presents an approach that utilizes multicopters, equipped with a small embedded system that allows to monitor environmental data like the current CO₂ value and other measures for air quality in realtime. Furthermore, with a multilevel measurement concept, the described system allows for a later on analysis of the gathered data and collected gas probes in more detail. Finally, the system provides the datasets for further analysis and/or visualization.

In recent years, many efforts have been undertaken in order to design and deploy learning activities that make use ofmodern mobile devices, like smartphones and tablet PC’s. Hence, new possibilities for supporting these so-called mobilelearning scenarios have risen. One of the major benefits of these kinds of learning scenarios is the possibility of a learnerto have access to learning content independent of time and place and therefore, enabling learners to learn in very differentsituations. In order to support learning across different settings, this paper discusses an approach that allows identifying abest fitting format of a Learning Object (LO) with respect to the current situation of the learner. This approach allows todelivering learning content in a format that may suit the current context of the learner and therefore, it enables seamlesslearning.

Substantial research in the field of mobile learning has explored aspects related to contextualized learning scenarios. Nevertheless, the current context of a mobile learner has been often limited to his/her current position, neglecting the possibilities offered by modern mobile devices of providing a much richer representation of the current learner´s context. In this paper, we show that a detailed contextualization of the learner may provide benefits in mobile learning scenarios. In order to validate this claim, we implemented a mobile learning scenario based on an approach that allows for a very rich and detailed contextualization of the mobile learner. The scenario that we implemented allowed exchange students to be guided at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden in order to get familiar with the campus and prominent institutions on it. We carried out a study including two groups; one that performed learning activities with contextualization support and one other without it. The results of our evaluation showed significantly better results for the contextualized approach, especially with respect to the acceptance of the Perceived Ease of Use.

Mobile devices, in the form of smartphones, are endowed with rich capabilities in terms of multimedia, sensors and connectivity. The wide adoption of these devices allows using them across different settings and situations. One area in which mobile devices become more and more prominent is within the field of mobile learning. Here, mobile devices provide rich possibilities for the contextualization of the learner, by using the set of sensors available in the device. On the one hand, the usage of mobile devices enables participation in learning activities independent of time and space. Nevertheless, developing mobile learning applications for the heterogeneity of mobile devices available in the market becomes a challenge. Not only this is a problem related to form factor aspects, but also the large number of different operating systems, platforms and app infrastructures (app stores) are aspects to be considered. In this paper we present our initial efforts with regard to the development of cross-platform mobile applications to support the contextualization of learning content. 

Recommender systems have become an important application domain related to the development of personalized mobile services. Thus, various recommender mechanisms have been developed for filtering and delivering relevant information to mobile users. This paper presents a rich context model to provide the relevant content of news to the current context of mobile users. The proposed rich context model allows not only providing relevant news with respect to the user’s current context but, at the same time, also determines a convenient representation format of news suitable for mobile devices.

In this paper we present an approach for People- to-People recommendations based on a Rich Context Model (RCM). We consider personal user information as contextual information used for our recommendations. The evaluation of our recommendation approach was performed on a social network of students. The obtained results do show a significant increase in performance while, at the same time, a slight increase in quality in comparison to a manual matching process. The proposed approach is flexible enough to handle different data types of contextual information and easy adaptable to other recommendation domains. 

In this paper we present an approach for contextual big data analytics in social networks, particularly in Twitter. The combination of a Rich Context Model (RCM) with machine learning is used in order to improve the quality of the data mining techniques. We propose the algorithm and architecture of our approach for real-time contextual analysis of tweets. The proposed approach can be used to enrich and empower the predictive analytics or to provide relevant context-aware recommendations.

This chapter describes our current research efforts related to the contextualization of learners in mobile learning activities. Substantial research in the field of mobile learning has explored aspects related to contextualized learning scenarios. However, new ways of interpretation and consideration of contextual information of mobile learners are necessary. This chapter provides an overview regarding the state of the art of innovative approaches for supporting contextualization in mobile learning. Additionally, we provide the description of the design and implementation of a flexible multi-dimensional vector space model to organize and process contextual data together with visualization tools for further analysis and interpretation. We also present a study with outcomes and insights on the usage of the contextualization support for mobile learners. To conlcude, we discuss the benefits of using contextualization models for learners in different use-cases. Moreover, a description is presented in order to illustrate how the proposed contextual model can easily be adapted and reused for different use-cases in mobile learning scenarios and potentially other mobile fields.

This chapter describes our research efforts related to the design of mobile learning (m-learning) applications in cloud-computing (CC) environments. Many cloud-based services can be used/integrated in m-learning scenarios, hence, there is a rich source of applications that could easily be applied to design and deploy those within the context of cloud-based services. Here, we present two cloud-based approaches—a flexible framework for an easy generation and deployment of mobile learning applications for teachers, and a flexible contextualization service to support personalized learning environment for mobile learners. The framework provides a flexible approach that supports teachers in designing mobile applications and automatically deploys those in order to allow teachers to create their own m-learning activities supported by mobile devices. The contextualization service is proposed to improve the content delivery of learning objects (LOs). This service allows adapting the learning content and the mobile user interface (UI) to the current context of the user. Together, this leads to a powerful and flexible framework for the provisioning of potentially ad hoc mobile learning scenarios. We provide a description of the design and implementation of two proposed cloud-based approaches together with scenario examples. Furthermore, we discuss the benefits of using flexible and contextualized cloud applications in mobile learning scenarios. Hereby, we contribute to this growing field of research by exploring new ways for designing and using flexible and contextualized cloud-based applications that support m-learning.

The wide availability of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets among students as well as the included positioning technologies, high definition cameras and other sensors, together with continuous Internet access bring many new opportunities for developing mobile applications supporting learning activities. However, there is an immense fragmentation of operating systems for mobile devices. HTML5 is a promising approach to tackle this challenge. Mobile web applications run within browsers and nowadays, most mobile devices possess a browser that interprets HTML5. Nevertheless, the educational domain seems to ignore this potential and relies on the development of native applications. In this paper, we analyze the opportunities, advantages and drawbacks of developing mobile applications supporting learning activities with HTML5 compared with developing them natively. To illustrate our ideas, we present a couple of showcases that already rely on HTML5, which allow us to further review the development opportunities for mobile HTML5 applications in general, as well as specifically in educational settings.

This paper describes the design and development stages of a web-based framework, aiming to support the creation of mobile applications within the context of mobile learning. The suggested approach offers the opportunity to deploy and execute these applications on mobile devices. This web-based solution additionally offers the possibility to visualize the data collected by the mobile applications in a web- browser. Despite previous research efforts carried out in this domain, few of the projects have addressed these processes from a purely web-based perspective. Currently, a prototype of an authoring tool for creating mobile data collection applications is already implemented. In order to integrate and validate this solution in everyday educational settings, we are collaborating with a network of high schools. On the basis of workshops with teachers we will carry out, refinements and requirements for further enhancements will be collected and will be used to guide our coming efforts. 

This paper presents a web-based framework that allows the creation and deployment of mobile learning activities. We present an authoring tool that allows not-technically skilled persons to design mobile learning tasks and deploy them as a web-based mobile application. Since the presented approach is based exclusively on web-technologies, the deployed mobile application can be executed via a mobile browser and therefore is platform independent. Despite previous research efforts carried out in this domain, few of the projects have addressed this course of actions from a purely web-based perspective. Through the latest development of web technologies, mobile applications have access to internal sensors like camera, microphone and GPS and therefore allow data collection within web-applications. In order to validate whether the proposed framework can be applied in educational settings, we conducted a pilot study with experienced teachers and present the results of these efforts in this paper.

This paper discusses the efforts carried out related to the design and development of a web-based framework that allows designing, deploying and executing mobile data collecting applications. Furthermore, it also allows analyzing and presenting the data that is generated during the mentioned process. The fact that the framework is completely web-based provides a platform independent execution of the mobile application on any mobile device with a web-browser. As a result that the whole life-cycle of creating, executing and discussing a mobile learning activity is implemented in pure web-based manner separates this work from similar efforts. In the course of this work, the current state of development of two of the components, the authoring tool and the mobile application is presented. This framework was introduced to teachers in an activity to follow up an initial study. On the basis of a workshop with teachers, we performed an explorative study regarding the technology acceptance and usability of two components of the proposed framework. The results are discussed and analyzed in this paper.

The continuous evolution of learning technologies combined with the changes within ubiquitous learning environments in which they operate result in dynamic and complex requirements that are challenging to meet. The fact that these systems evolve over time makes it difficult to adapt to the constant changing requirements. Existing approaches in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) are generally not addressing those issues and they fail to adapt to those dynamic situations. In this chapter, we investigate the notion of an adaptive and adaptable architecture as a possible solution to address these challenges. We conduct a literature survey upon the state of the art and state of practice in this area. The outcomes of those efforts result in an initial model of a Domain-specific architecture to tackle the issues of adaptability and adaptiveness. To illustrate these ideas, we provide a number of scenarios where this architecture can be applied or is already applied. Our proposed approach serves as a foundation for addressing future ubiquitous learning applications where new technologies constantly emerge and new requirements evolve.