Contributions published at Information Management (Gerhard Schwabe)

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Nowadays the usage of collaborative learning in e-Learning environments is becoming very popular. Even so, there is a lack of web-based assignment systems supporting collaborative learning. In this work, I report on a novel assignment system for organizing and realizing web-based exercises. This new flexible assignment system makes it possible to design and perform different exercises in various collaborative learning-settings. For example, exercises can be arranged as tutorials as well as peer assessments. For an effective implementation of collaborative learning environments, the learning process must be structured. That can be done through so-called collaboration scripts and statechart diagrams.

The paper reports on the experiences of designing the interface of a mobile learning game. Three system versions were presented to discuss design issues and the results of three trials (the largest with more than 100 users). Eight design implications resulted from those trials: 1. Base the navigation interface on maps designed for walking. 2. Precise zooming is adequate for standing use only; button based coarse zooming is adequate for walking. 3. Good navigation support does not only cover the current situation, but also captures the past and supports planning. 4. Visualise imprecision of location information appropriately. 5. Chat-based communication is inadequate for many game situations. Carefully designed oral communication would be more appropriate in many situations. 6. Embed competitive awareness into the other channels. 7. Design explicitly for standing and walking use. 8. Design systems for user pairs. The design approaches discussed in this paper can also be applied to other mobile applications such as mobile learning in museums, emergency support or tourism.

Im Tourismus erschließen mobile Kommunikationsgeräte das Potential, „flüchtige Communities“ bei der Kommunikation und bei der Organisation von Reisen mit mobilen Geräten zu unterstützen. In diesem Artikel werden der FlashTourism-Prototyp vorgestellt und die Ergebnisse der Nutzerevaluation diskutiert. Die Unterstützung der profilbasierten Suche nach anderen interessanten Reisenden und die abgestuften Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten wurden gut akzeptiert. Die Publikation von Reiseplanungsinformationen wurde zurückhaltender beurteilt, weil sie die Akteure zu stark bindet. Wir schließen daraus, dass bei flüchtigen Reise-Communities die abgestufte, teilweise unscharfe Bereitstellung von persönlichen Daten eine wesentliche Voraussetzung für die Akzeptanz ist.

It is of a great importance for financial institutions to achieve business and IT alignment. It allows the business to focus on its core function and gives IT department an opportunity to concentrate on providing insights on how technology can help business in developing new capabilities. Achieving such alignment will require IT management and IT employees to possess sufficient business understanding of their core operations and business managers to acquire certain level of technical proficiency of IT solutions used in their organizations. This approach requires that the organization develops and fosters communication platform between business and IT as well as among different IT departments. We believe that such communication approach based on a four-level framework is the most versatile and also the most promising one. This paper defines such communication framework for financial institutions by determining the elements of the communication process and drawing relations between this process, organizational culture and other existing, best-practice Information Management frameworks. Additionally, we stress the importance of the visual representation in communicating complex strategic, organizational and technologically oriented subjects. As an important part of the framework, based on our experience, we define guidelines which address general communication and visualization problems faced by an organization when bridging business and IT perspectives on the alignment challenge. This paper concludes with a presentation of a successful implementation of such a framework at a financial institution.

In diesem Artikel, der im Anwendungsbereich der Patentrecherche und Patentinformation angesiedelt ist, soll das automatische Gruppieren von Patentdokumenten - das so genannte Clustering - als ein Werkzeug zur Aufbereitung der Ergebnismenge einer Datenbankanfrage untersucht werden. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf der Evaluierung von drei Clustering-Verfahren mittels Nutzerbewertungen.

Most mobile learning applications support individual users, although experience with similar conventional learning games indicates that teams may be more appropriate. This paper reports on tests of the MobileGame to see whether individual users, teams of two, teams of three or teams of four are more successful. The test was conducted with over 100 natural users. The significantly increased activity level and team-building show that a preference for teams of two rather than individual players would be justified. There is little significant evidence to prefer teams of two to teams of three. However, the data shows that teams of four are suboptimal: this team size decreases fun and immersion as well as (maybe) learning. There is no evidence that these negative effects are balanced by improved team-building. The relatively high success of teams of two leads to a need for more research on dyadic users not only for mobile learning games, but also for other areas such as tourism, health, museum visitors, and entertainment.

This work is based on the hypothesis that the advisory process of a bank is affected by various inefficiencies. Starting from this affirmation, we are first going to research actual trends within the literature and possible innovative concepts for bank advisory services aiming to improve the advisory process and increase its effectiveness and profitability. In a second step, we are going to explore and examine the real situa tion of the Swiss banking industry by means of several interviews. The result of the interviews should confirm or refute the real potential of the gathered concepts for the advisory process. The result of our research shows that at present, the interest of Swiss banks for new front-end concepts is pretty low, although the here developed concepts have shown to be potentially interesting in future application that will allow to increase efficiency and profitability of the advisory process

Largely ignored by research, online travel communities have already changed the travel behavior of the younger generation. They retrieve and exchange information prior to travelling and share their experiences afterwards. This paper presents some empirical evidence that the quality of the information retrieved justifies their behavior. The evidence is embedded in a larger framework and a set of hypotheses that establish a relationship between the choice of a travel information system and attributes of information quality. The paper argues that relevant attributes of information quality are timeliness, completeness, structure and personalization. Three studies support our proposition that a traditional discussion-based online tourism community provides more timely, more complete and more personalized information than a commercial guidebook. A major deficiency is particularly their lack of structure, but also the other attributes of information quality can be improved by more advanced online tourism communities. A second section thus proposes that a) Wiki communities improve timeliness, completeness and structure of online communities b) personal spaces improve the structure and the personalization of traditional online tourist communities and c) Mobile communities provide higher quality information than traditional online tourist communities.

Der Artikel beschreibt Virtual Communities als Informationssysteme im Tourismus und präsentiert empirische Messungen im Vergleich mit Reiseführern. Es wird am Beispiel einer Tourismus-Community gezeigt, dass sie als Informationssystem leistungsfähiger ist als ein Reiseführer. Dies lässt auf einen kommenden Umbruch in der Tourismusinformation schliessen, sobald der Zugriff auf Communityinformationen so einfach wie der Zugriff zu einem Reiseführer ist. Tourismus-Communities sind aber bisher schlecht auf diesen Umbruch vorbereitet. Es werden deshalb anhand von Feld-Prototypen Ansätze vorgestellt, die die Informationsverarbeitungsleistung von Communities verbessern und sie auf die mobile Nutzung vorbereiten.

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