Information Environments

e-teaching Transfer lab

Duration 10/2025 - 12/2026

The project focuses primarily on the prototypical creation and establishment of a consensual metadata standard for educational materials in higher education. The aim is to make university-specific content easier to find on portals, thereby improving teaching and learning. This also involves gaining acceptance for the standard among portal providers and securing their commitment to support and cooperate with the project and to connect their own portals to the infrastructure.

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 05/2025 - 08/2026

Timelines are a common means of making historical processes and developments visually comprehensible. They are based on transforming the chronological sequence of historical events into a spatial juxtaposition. In the case of wall-filling, spatially extended timelines (as are often used in museums), in addition to the overview function, there is also the retranslation into the temporal experience of walking along or running through the timeline. Against the background of the 4E Cognition approach, this interplay between physical movement patterns and cognitive processing will be empirically analysed. In one study, visitors will explore and understand the timeline representation (a) from left to right (chronologically from earlier to later), (b) from right to left (anti-chronologically from later to earlier), (c) not along the timeline, but directly towards it (achronologically). To this end, the resulting mental representations of the depicted historical timeline should be systematically examined (questions on chronological order, simultaneity, individual elements, and duration of excerpts from the presentation).

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 04/2025 - 03/2028

With regard to the communications and learning of scientific information, there has been a growing awareness in the field of formal and informal learning in recent years that the uncertainties inherent in scientific information must be communicated to learners. This is particularly evident in history lessons, where the construct character of history should be taught. But this is also important on the Internet, where we are dealing with a range of information that is characterized by a wide variety of more or less well-founded scientific information and a multitude of more or less reliable sources of information. In order to adequately understand scientific information, participate in informed discussions, form an opinion and make decisions based on the information provided, the nature and degree of uncertainty of the information must be presented, cognitively processed and taken into account when proceeding. It is therefore increasingly important to understand how people cognitively process uncertain information and information sources and how knowledge is created from this in interaction with other factors. Glaser et al. (2022) have already developed and empirically tested a theoretical model for the cognitive processing of uncertain information: the IMPEUV model. In the project, this model is to be supplemented by further influencing factors and supported empirically. These are: the trustworthiness and expertise of the information source, scientific justifications of the uncertainties, the congruence of the information with prior knowledge structures, and epistemic reception goals. This project additionally aims to improve the connectivity of the IMPEUV model to existing similar research areas and its suitability for application to concrete learning situations.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 04/2025 - 03/2028

This dissertation-project examines how climate-change-denial can be effectively countered in video content. The focus is on the question of how proactive strategies (building resilience) and reactive strategies (corrections) can be combined synergistically. The aim is to develop a deeper understanding of the psychological mechanisms that influence the acceptance of corrections. Furthermore, this dissertation project aims to develop evidence-based recommendations for science communication and internet platforms. The dissemination of misinformation about climate change, particularly through online videos, contributes to public skepticism and hinders necessary climate action. To counter these psychological barriers, research has so far mostly pursued two separate paths: proactive strategies that build resilience against misinformation and reactive strategies that correct misinformation after exposure. This project aims to combine both approaches in an integrated model. A central challenge is the so-called “Continued Influence Effect” - the tendency for information that has already been refuted to continue to influence thinking and beliefs. Experimental studies are therefore investigating how video-based misinformation in particular can be optimally corrected. Design principles from the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML) will be applied. The project tests the central assumption that a combination of a proactive message (e.g. about the scientific consensus) and a subsequent reactive correction has a synergistic, i.e. mutually reinforcing, effect. The results should provide a deeper understanding of concrete psychological mechanisms while providing practical, evidence-based guidance for policy makers, video platform operators and science communicators.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 09/2024 - open

Multimodal large language models (LLMs) generate texts based on image inputs. This makes them attractive for a wide range of applications where a large amount of image data needs to be processed. One of these applications is the cataloguing of archival images. ArchiveGPT thus focuses on applying a multimodal LLM to archaeological photo material provided by the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA) in Mainz. We investigate the following questions: How does a multimodal LLM perform when confronted with – for the model, often unfamiliar – archaeological objects and terms? How do archive experts (compared to non-experts) perceive the quality of the model’s image descriptions? Can they at all tell the difference between these AI-generated descriptions and descriptions generated by archive experts? How good are they at estimating their ability to distinguish them beforehand? How important is trust in AI in regard to its use? For the first study on these questions, we generated the experimental material in close collaboration with the LEIZA. Provided with photocards from the image archive, a meta-data template usable in an archival cataloging process was generated for each photocard by the multimodal LLM and LEIZA archivists.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 04/2024 - 03/2027

How can we protect biodiversity and the climate while ensuring a stable and resilient food supply? This central question lies at the heart of a research project that seeks innovative answers to this complex challenge. It aims to develop solutions that respect and sustainably use the planet’s limited resources. By bringing together experts from diverse disciplines, the project strives to identify and address knowledge gaps at the intersections of biodiversity, climate, agriculture, and nutrition. Its interdisciplinary approach fosters a holistic understanding of the complex interconnections among these areas. A key focus of the project is linking scientific research with public discourse. It prioritizes the integration of knowledge and the development of transformative solutions that can be applied at local, regional, and international levels. The overarching goal is to support societal shifts toward comprehensive sustainability through the promotion of innovation and evidence-based decision-making. Another essential component is the development of effective strategies for communicating scientific information to the public. This includes actively addressing misinformation related to sustainability. The project reviews and synthesizes various science communication methods, creates educational materials tailored to different audiences, and designs training programs that treat biodiversity, climate, agriculture, and nutrition as interconnected fields. It also explores new ways of transferring knowledge and technology, aiming to make complex information more accessible and engaging. These tools are intended to support both classroom teaching and self-directed learning. To test and refine its approaches, the project will implement activities at five pilot sites located in both developed and developing countries. These sites will help ensure the applicability and effectiveness of its solutions in real-world contexts.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 04/2024 - 03/2027

The Leibniz Lab is dedicated to enhancing pandemic preparedness by harnessing the interdisciplinary expertise of 41 Leibniz institutions. Its work spans four central domains: exploring how interactions among the environment, animals, and humans contribute to the emergence and spread of pathogens; mitigating the physical and psychological health impacts of pandemics; optimizing pandemic response strategies; and strengthening the resilience of educational systems in crisis contexts. By integrating diverse perspectives, the Lab functions as a dynamic think tank that complements clinical and infection-control efforts, and provides policymakers and civil society with evidence-based guidance. Recognizing the threat posed by emerging respiratory pathogens, the Lab investigates factors such as alternative livestock farming practices to curb zoonotic transmission, population-level immunity, and the biological mechanisms behind severe disease outcomes. These insights inform strategies to reinforce urban infrastructure and healthcare systems, as well as to enhance educational support for students and teachers during pandemic conditions. In addition, the Lab advances frameworks for robust international collaboration on pandemic preparedness and response. At the IWM, researchers contribute to this effort by examining science communication in pandemic contexts—particularly how individuals navigate and make sense of scientific information in environments saturated with conflicting, ambiguous, or misleading messages.

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 01/2024 - open

In the context of this project, a collaborative multi-touch table game is being developed for schools and museum education. Learners navigate through virtual spaces by using GPT-generated sentences or original sentences by an author, e.g. Kafka, as a "literary fingerprint" to progress and thereby learn something about an author's writing style. A dissertation is investigating the means by which such a game can generate curiosity and whether this has a beneficial effect on learning. The first step is to investigate the extent to which players acquire both explicit (declarative) and implicit knowledge about an author's literary style through the game. Furthermore, it will be analyzed whether and to what extent the game arouses curiosity – specifically, whether an authentic interest in the learning content is aroused or whether it merely serves as a means to an end – winning the game. Subsequent studies will examine which specific features or game elements – for example, a narrative or the option of group play as opposed to solo play – generate or intensify curiosity and what effects this has on the learning process. The educational content of the game will be developed in cooperation with the Center for Didactic Computer Game Research at the PH Freiburg and the German Literature Archive Marbach.

Knowledge Construction lab - e-teaching Transfer lab

Duration 01/2024 - 12/2026

Research knowledge can be disseminated in various ways. Nowadays, the focus is often placed on digital media. However, digital media as a source of knowledge come with a number of challenges. In view of these, this project investigates within the framework of the "Metavorhaben Digitalisierung im Bildungsbereich II" examines the question of how to further the ability of users to assess the credibility of digital educational science media.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 10/2023 - 09/2026

Event perception and cognition theories assume dynamic events are segmented into meaningful chunks of sub-actions with partonomic relationships. This allows viewers to process streaming information in units and predict future states of action based on their expectations and event knowledge. Event models store relevant information for events and guide perception using schemas (or scripts). While event models hold immediately accessible representations stored in long-term memory, working event models process perceptual representations of unfolding activity throughout the event. The studies of this project will shed light on whether event processing in working event models and long-term event schemas are modality-dependent. Considering that the grain of action leads to different levels of processing – with fine-grained events being aggregated into coarse-grained events – understanding modal and amodal representations of fine and coarse context will be important to the perceptual and conceptual organization of event comprehension. Furthermore, this project will explore the role of confidence and metacognitive sensitivity in event cognition. Since sensory information is continuously processed at working event models to predict what will happen next, it is important to know if one’s cognition relies on the perception of event boundaries. Results obtained from metacognitive sensitivity measures will provide further evidence for the event models and their interactions with event schemata. Lastly, this project will address whether event schemata influence the processing of events in general and whether repeated exposure to new events changes their cognition. However, the testing of these questions will be applied using visual and verbal events to observe modality-specific effects of different context grains (fine and coarse).

e-teaching Transfer lab

Duration 04/2023 - 03/2026

The IWM’s portal e-teaching.org has been supporting the use of digital media in higher education since 2003 by providing practical and research-based information. A particular strength of the portal is the wide range of information it offers, including more than 1,000 websites. The AuftAkt project addresses two key challenges associated with the portal's extensive knowledge base: finding portal content (1) and keeping it up to date (2).

Multimodal Interaction lab - Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 02/2023 - 02/2027

This dissertation project investigates the use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) as a medium of experience-based learning in museums. Two IVR-applications will be developed and integrated into several exhibitions, in cooperation with the Natural History Museum Stuttgart. The goal is to give visitors an understanding of the importance of biodiversity and its protection. Furthermore, the project will provide new insights into the use of IVR as tools of science communication in museums.

e-teaching Transfer lab

Duration 11/2022 - 10/2024

Within the framework of the project, a problem-oriented connection of the information and qualification portal e-teaching.org for the higher education sector to the National Education Platform (Education Space) is to be created and transferred to productive operation. Building on the results of an already completed project (conception phase), the prototypical connection to the education space started there will be further expanded and various services of e-teaching.org will be extended to make them interoperable with the education space and other connected services.

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 09/2022 - 08/2025

How can the historicity of sounds and noises be integrated into a museum narrative? What role do acoustics play in the transfer of knowledge in connection with the movement of visitors and in the field of tension between analog and digital? In order to answer these questions, the project "Historical Sounds" investigates the influence of different representations of historical sounds on their reception in the context of a presentation using 3D glasses.

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 07/2022 - 03/2026

How do museum visitors remember the spatial-temporal relationships of the exhibits after visiting a museum exhibition? A special exhibition at the German Mining Museum in Bochum with the title “Gras over it – Mining and Environment in a German-German comparison” presents developments and events during the last decades for three different mining regions in Germany. In the exhibition, the exhibits are ordered along different topics. The survey examines how visitors after visiting the exhibition remember the spatial-temporal structure of the presented exhibits. This project is funded by the Leibniz Research Alliance “Value of the Past“.

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 03/2022 - 02/2025

Interacting with technologies and particularly, multitouch devices such as smartphones, tablets, or large-scale monitors (e.g., in museums) has become standard in daily life. To date, however, it is very unclear how manipulating digital objects physically through these devices, influence affective processing (e.g., when encountering potentially pleasant or unpleasant stimuli). • Against this backdrop, the project aims at advancing the understanding of affective processing through the manual interaction with digital objects. Theoretically, it seeks the integration of three pivotal topics discussed in cognition and emotion fields: (a) spatial affective biases linked to space-valence associations (up/right - positive; down/left - negative), (b) situated action-goal representations linked to approach-avoidance mechanisms, and (c) visuo-spatial effects linked to hand-proximity to visual stimuli. Methodologically, the project builds upon own prior exploratory research on manual interactions with digital affective pictures to develop novel experimental paradigms, which will be used to deepen three main research questions: (i) May interaction gestures with affective digital pictures unravel space-valence effects observed in standard experimental research; (ii) Which contextual aspects shape affective action-goal representations during manual interactions? (iii) What is the specific affective contribution of interacting with digital objects directly by hand? The findings will contribute to the field of human-computer interaction and particularly, how multimodal aspects shape together emotional processing during interactions with digital objects.

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 01/2022 - 12/2025

As part of the Leibniz Research Alliance “Advanced Materials Safety”, a dissertation project at the IWM is investigating how immersive video technologies should be designed as a science communication format to convey content on the safety of advanced materials.

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 10/2021 - 12/2024

The BMBF-funded joint project "Educational research at informal learning sites in the interplay between authenticity and digitality" (BILAD) launched in October 2021. Initiated by TUM and the IWM, the international research network is comprised of established researchers and experts from 17 research institutions, museums, science centers, and memorial sites in Europe and the USA. The network deliberately transcends traditional museum types, and the spectrum of participating learning spaces includes natural history museums, technology museums, art museums, and historical memorial sites. Over the course of the project, several thematic areas were conceptually addressed: authenticity, the concept of 4E learning, informal learning, digital media, and research methodological challenges. Overall, the project aimed to address the underlying mechanisms and their sustainability in informal learning spaces. Funding for the project ended in December 2024. However, network participants intend to continue to exchange ideas through online and on-site meetings, and empirical projects involving multiple network participants have also been initiated.

Multimodal Interaction lab - Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 09/2021 - 09/2024

Under National Socialism, discrimination and murder were implemented with frightening efficiency with the help of bureaucratic routines. The crimes of the Nazi era could be presented as necessary and harmless processes with the use of administrative language and euphemistic terms in forms and correspondences. But how can this phenomenon be presented to visitors in an interesting, intuitive and interactive way using exemplary Nazi documents? Can visitors learn to read and assess Nazi documents with the right medium?

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 04/2021 - 08/2024

As part of the "DigiMat" project, scientists from the fields of cultural studies, psychology and materials science are working together to combine digital imaging with physical-chemical analysis of historical museum artifacts in order to create new levels of perception and interaction between museum visitors and the exhibits. The assumption of digital imaging is that it can make new and otherwise hidden information about the respective exhibition objects accessible to the museum visitor.

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 07/2020 - 09/2025

How do we obtain scientific information? Who do we get it from? What if artificial intelligence could provide us with complicated topics and technical information in an easily understandable way? This research project investigates how laypeople perceive and evaluate intelligent language assistants who communicate scientific information. In particular, it will explore how different textual representations of automated content affect the acceptance and reception of scientific knowledge.

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 01/2020 - 09/2024

The project examined the influence of acoustic and semantic audio-text characteristics such as the position of the audio information in the room, speech characteristics, personalization and naming of depicted content on the text-picture processing.

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 06/2018 - open

Information for example in museum contexts often is presented in immersive digital environments. The project examines the influence of these rooms on basic cognitive aspects of perception and information processing: Is there a difference in viewing duration or the subjective flow of time in rooms of varying size? And do the rooms influence the processing of information presented in these environments?

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 01/2018 - open

The technical development in the field of Virtual Reality currently shows a strong dynamic development. The high degree of immersion of this technology makes it possible to create for the user an intense feeling of presence in the virtual world. It is assumed that cognitive processes create a mental model of the self in the virtual world, which generates a feeling of "being in the virtual world". However, it is unclear from a cognitive science and learning psychology perspective in what ways this form of immersion can benefit the user in knowledge contexts.

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 10/2017 - 03/2024

While current theories on learning in multimedia learning environments concentrate on visual and auditory access, this dissertation project focuses on a different sensory approach to learning content: The haptics and haptic exploration of physical objects. Thus, the extent to which this haptic experience - in combination with visual impressions - influences learning and the learning experience in informal learning environments, such as museums and exhibitions, is investigated.

Multimodal Interaction lab - Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 06/2016 - open

The project „Visitors’ view on Obersalzberg“ focuses on two research questions: How can propaganda pictures get deconstructed? And how does the awareness of being in a historic place related to Nazi-history influence the perception, the processing and the judgements about associated pictures? Cooperation partner is the Institute for Contemporary History (Dokumentation Obersalzberg). Empiric findings are meant to flow into the realm of practice, the museum.

Duration 06/2016 - 10/2023

Universities and organizations alike often communicate social norms to their members. These norms imply expected types of behavior. In the last years, ‘excellence’ has become increasingly important: Numerous universities and organizations emphasize, for instance, on their websites or internal communication platforms, the importance of excellent performance and the premium quality of their products. How do members respond to such norms about excellence?

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 01/2016 - 03/2024

In this research project we examined how different forms of presenting factual information influenced people’s knowledge about and attitudes toward foxes. In particular, the project dealt with the impact of different forms of visual and textual representations. It examined whether emotionalization through visual methods has a similar effect as emotionalization mediated by textual representations.

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 01/2013 - open

The use and application of interactive multi-touch displays increase continuously. Therefore, touch-based user interfaces like multi-touch tables, tablets or smartphones can be found in many public facilities and private households today. These user interfaces allow direct manipulation of external representations with the hands without the need for additional and indirect interaction devices (e.g., mouse). Thus, the question arises as to how manual interactions should be designed to support information processing.

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 04/2012 - open

This project investigates the idea that the activation of specific areas in the brain is beneficial for learning about continuous processes with dynamic visualizations. These areas in the brain (the so-called human mirror-neuron-system) are used to understand and imitate actions of other persons. We addressed, whether gestures that correspond or do not correspond to the to-be-learned processes, activate the mirror-neuron-system and enhance learning outcomes.

Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 10/2011 - open

The project 'Learning with 3D reconstructions' examines the influence of visual and auditive types of presentations on cognitive processing of archaeological 3D reconstructions and concentrates, among other things, on the depiction of uncertain information.

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 04/2010 - open

This interdisciplinary project aims at the conception, implementation and optimization of an innovative multimedia guide for museum and exhibitions (EyeVisit). The main concept is to present digital information by utilizing interactive displays. According to interaction with real-world objects, EyeVisit allows the manipulation of digital visual information with intuitive gestures for moving, rotating and scaling.