News

WIR ZIEHEN UM!

AB DEM 10.10.2024 FINDEN SIE DIE PROFESSUR IN GEBÄUDE A5.4, 2. OG.

 

Forschungssemester

Aufgrund des anstehenden Forschungssemesters von Herrn Prof. Dr. Morana werden im Sommersemester 2025 keine Lehrveranstaltungen angeboten. 
Ausgenommen hiervon sind Seminare und Abschlussarbeiten, diese werden wie gewohnt angeboten.

Sonnige Grüße aus dem schönen Zypern! 

Unser wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Christian Murlowski war vergangene Woche Teil der ECIS 2024. Die Konferenz stand in diesem Jahr unter dem spannenden Motto: „People First: Constructing Digital Futures Together.“.

Im Rahmen der Konferenz wurde das Paper „Investigating the Everyday Use of Individuals with Augmented Reality“ veröffentlicht und vorgestellt, welches Christian gemeinsam mit Maximilian Bach und Prof. Dr. Stefan Morana verfasst hat. 

 

 

Start in das Sommersemester 2024

Mit unserer Vorlesung „Digitalization of the Individual“ sind wir heute erfolgreich in das Sommersemester 2024 gestartet.

Mit dabei waren über 100 Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer vor Ort und online. 

 

Wir wünschen eine frohe und erholsame Weihnachtszeit.

 

Vorlesung Digitalization of the Individual gestartet

Gestern startete unsere Vorlesung Digitalization of the Individual mit vielen Studierenden vor Ort und online. Neben den Live-Sessions und Moodle Aufgaben, beinhaltet die hybride Veranstaltung auch in diesem Jahr wieder ein Capstone Projekt. 

 

Nach 4 Jahren Professur

Nach 4 Jahren wird aus der Juniorprofessur für BWL, insb. Digitale Transformation und Wirtschaftsinformatik an der Universität des Saarlandes eine Professur. Vielen Dank für die zahlreiche Unterstützung in den vergangenen Jahren. Wir freuen uns auf die kommenden Aufgaben.

 

Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI)


Im Nachgang unserer Veranstaltung Human Centered Information Systems aus dem Sommersemester 2022 haben die Studierenden Luisa Barton, Margarete Steudter, Laura Osbild, Cornelius Denninger und Caroline Peters, betreut durch unseren wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiter Christian Murlowski, ihr Capstone Projekt bei der diesjährigen WI 2023 eingereicht. Die Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik ist die größte Tagung der Wirtschaftsinformatikforschung in ganz Deutschland.

Im Student Track wurde das Projekt "Care4U: Human-Centered Development of a Prototype to Assist Ukranian Refugees in Medical Aspects" als Poster angenommen.
 
Der im Rahmen des Projekts entwickelte Prototyp soll Geflüchtete dabei unterstützen, medizinische Hilfe zu erhalten, indem mithilfe von Visualisierungen unter anderem Sprachbarrieren überwunden werden können.

 

Capstone Projekt unserer Vorlesung Human-Centered Information Systems

Gestern fand die finale Präsentation des Capstone Projekts im Scheer Tower statt. Die Studierenden haben Prototypen im Bereich Aquakulturen entwickelt, am Beispiel des saarländischen Start-up SeaWater Cubes GmbH. In ihrer finalen Präsentation präsentierten die Studierenden ihre Ideen und Resultate aus drei Monaten Arbeit.

Vielen Dank an das AWS Institut, für die Kooperation in den vergangenen Monaten.

 

Team of the junior professorship starts at the annual company race

On June 16, the company run took place in Saarbrücken. Saarland University provided the largest team with more than 1000 participants. The junior professorship was represented for the second year in a row by Laura Both, Christine Gagliardi, Christian Murlowski and Saskia Wita.

 

Erweiterung unseres Teams

Wir freuen uns sehr, Laura Both seit Mai 2023, als unsere neue wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft an der Juniorprofessur für BWL, insb. Digitale Transformation und Wirtschaftsinformatik begrüßen zu dürfen.
Laura Both hat bereits ihren Bachelor in dem Studiengang Wirtschaftsinformatik an der Universität des Saarlandes abgelegt und befindet sich nun im Master Wirtschaftsinformatik. 

 

Stefan Morana gewinnt Preis für JAIS Paper

Best Paper Honorable Mention Award

Der Artikel  "On the Design of and Interaction with Conversational Agents: An Organizing and Assessing Review of Human-Computer Interaction Research " von Stephan Dederich, Stefan Morana, Alfred Benedikt Brendel, und Lutz Kolbe gewinnt den "Best Paper Honorable Mention Award" vom Journal of the Assocaition for Information Systems (JAIS)  für das Jahr 2022 (hier https://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/)     

Das JAIS ist das Hauptjournal der Association for Information Systems (AIS), Teil des "AIS Senior Scholars' List of Premier Journals" und nach der VHB Jourqual 3 mit A bewertet.                                                                                                      

 

Examination review „Digitalization of the Individual“

The examination review will take place on Friday, March 17th, 2023, starting at 13:30 h in building C3.1, room 2.12. To participate, please contact Andreas Kilian (andreas.kilian(at)uni-saarland.de) until Friday, March 10th, 2023, 10:00 h. According to the reception of e-mails, we will assign appointments every 10 minutes starting at 13:30 h. Once you‘ve requested participation, we will notify you about the exact time via e-mail shortly. On arrival, please have an ID ready for verification.

 

New article published

Mein Kollege ist ein Roboter - Akzeptanz der kollaborativen Robotik in Lagerhäusern

In a new article in the current issue of Industrie 4.0 management, Frederic Jacob, Eric Grosse, Stefan Morana, and Cornelius J. König present potential barriers to the adoption of collaborative robotics in warehouses and discuss recommendations for action for human-centric, sustainable human-robot collaboration. The article can be accessed here:

Mein Kollege ist ein Roboter - Akzeptanz der kollaborativen Robotik in Lagerhäusern

 

When plush cubes fly through the lecture halls!

In the past three years, teaching at universities has inevitably been "turbodigitized," and Saarland University is no exception. Nevertheless, there is much room for improvement, especially in hybrid teaching formats. What could be improved is now being investigated by business administration junior professors Stefan Morana and Eric Grosse in a kind of field test.

You can find the whole article here.

 

 

We wish you a happy and restful holiday season.

 

 

Today, our event "Digitalization of the Individual" took place in hybrid form for the first time.

With over 100 participants, the lecture "Digitalization of the Individual" is the largest event of the junior professorship to date.

We are very excited about the lively interest and the coming weeks.

 

 

Interested in a stay abroad?
Our Hiwine Caroline Peters took the chance:
As part of the Erasmus program, she is in Sweden this winter semester at our partner university in Luleå.

"The semester abroad is an incredibly educational experience that I can recommend to all students. You learn to think outside the box, get to know many new people and cultures, and also how different the way of teaching at the university can be after all.
I am very grateful that the Erasmus program has allowed me to have this cultural exchange."

Dear Caro, thank you very much for the exciting impressions!

You also feel like a stay abroad? 
On 8.11. is Study Abroad Day, where students report on their experiences and adventures they had during their stay abroad.

 

 

Publication contribution

Our paper on the validity of data collection using chatbots was accepted in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. The collected study shows that survey data collected with a conversational agent is as valid as data collected with classical survey methods, but the effort for patients increases. The study was conducted jointly by Anita Schick, Jasper Feine, Stefan Morana, Alexander Mädche and Ulrich Reininghaus. The paper "Validity of Chatbot Use for Mental Health Assessment: Experimental Study" is open access and can be downloaded here.

 

Expansion of our Team

We are very happy to welcome Laura Osbild as our new student assistant to our Junior Professorship since October 2022. Laura Osbild has already completed her Bachelor's degree in Business Informatics at Saarland University and is now in her Master's degree in Business Informatics.

 

Capstone Project of our lecture „Human-Centered Information Systems“

In this year’s Final Presentation of the Capstone Project, the student teams developed prototypes to help refugees and people in need. During the final presentation, the students presented their ideas and results from 3 full months of work. We’re very proud about the results of the student teams.

 

 

Paper accepted for publication (BISE)

The paper 'Opposing Effects of Response Time in Human–Chatbot Interaction: The Moderating Role of Prior Experience', which was co-authored with Ulrich Gnewuch (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Stefan Morana (Universität des Saarlandes), Marc T. P. Adam (University of Newcastle) and Alexander Maedche (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), was accepted for publication in 'Business & Information Systems Engineering'! The article is already available via ResearchGate!

 

 

Expansion of our team

We are very happy to welcome a new employee at the junior professorship: Since June we are proud to welcome Christine Gagliardi as part of our team.

 

Paper accepted for publication (JMIR)

The paper “Chatbots in Mental Health Screenings: A Validation Study” (joint work with Anita Schick, Jasper Feine, Stefan Morana, Alexander Mädche, and Ulrich Reininghaus) has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR)

 

 

BrownBag seminar will take place again in the Summer Semester

In the BrownBag Seminar, researchers from Saarland University and (inter-) national guests present their current research projects. All members and students of the university are invited to participate physically or virtually. The seminar takes place every two weeks from 12:30 to 13:30 in building B 4 1, room 0.20. 

Further information regarding the BrownBag Seminar: 

BrownBag Seminar

 

University issues new pandemic response plan from 3th of April

The Saarland state government has issued a new Ordinance on Combating the Coronavirus Pandemic (VO-CP), which will come into effect from 3 April 2022 and will no longer contain separate provisions for higher education institutions. It is strongly recommended that people continue to observe the general health and hygiene regulations (AHA+L).

Further information regarding the new pandemic response: 

Covid rules

 

Paper accepted for publication (BISE)

The paper “Opposing Effects of Chronemic Cues in Human-Chatbot Interaction: The Moderating Role of Prior Experience” (joint work by Ulrich Gnewuch, Stefan Morana, Marc T.P. Adam , and Alexander Maedche) has been accepted for publication in the journal Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE) on the 02/08/2022. The paper is available online at:

Opposing Effects of Chronemic Cues in Human-Chatbot Interaction: The Moderating Role of Prior Experience

Paper accepted for publication (CSCW 2022)

The paper “Engage the Unengaged: Designing Interactive Development Systems for QA Chatbot Development” (joint work by Jasper Feine, Stefan Morana, and Alexander Mädche) has been accepted for publication at ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2022). 

 

 

News about digital teaching: "Interactive online class for methods in business informatics"

As part of the project "Digital Teaching Plug-in" funded by the Foundation Innovation in University Teaching, we will support students of economics at the UdS to write a scientific paper (seminar, bachelor thesis, master thesis, etc.) in the context of business informatics, independent of the semester. In the "Interactive Online Course on Methods in Business Informatics" on the Moodle platform, the necessary knowledge is conveyed through videos, further reading and concrete examples and can be independently checked through tests at the end of the chapters. The online course is supplemented by a chatbot in MS Teams, which will be able to answer students' questions about the learning content and examples at any time.

 

The Junior Professorship wishes a Merry Christmas

Christmas atmosphere at our last "Digitalization of the Individual" lecture before the lecture-free period.
We wish you relaxing days with your family. See you next year!

 

 

DOTI goes back to online only

Starting today (11/29/2021), all Digitalization of the Individual (DOTI) sessions will only take place online in Microsoft Teams until further notice. Nothing will change for the Capstone sessions on Mondays. For the Interactive sessions on Tuesdays, it means that we will all meet in the existing MS Teams meeting.

 

Launch of our own YouTube Channel

We finally have our own YouTube channel!
Short videos offer a behind-the-scenes look at our junior professorship and provide information about our research projects and courses. Instead of tediously scrolling through the module handbook in search of course descriptions and analyzing the evaluations of the past years, small lecture trailers now provide an overview of our courses, their content and structure.

To our YouTube channel 

New Research Assistant: Manuel Striebel

We are very happy to have Mr. Manuel Striebel join our junior professorship as our newsest research assistant in July 2021.

Mr. Striebel completed his Bachelor's degree in Educational Science at the University of Tübingen in 2018 and his Master's degree in Educational Technology here at Saarland University in 2021. 

 

Campus-Article: "Auf den Spuren des IKEA-Effekts"

An exciting article about our master course "Collaborative Development of Conversational Agents (CodeCA)" was published in the Saar University's web magazine Campus. The course, which was offered jointly with KIT and TU Dresden, allowed master's students to investigate, among other things, whether the so-called Ikea effect is recognizable when building a chatbot. In this context, for example, a stronger bond with the chatbot is assumed if the users themselves were in some way involved in the development of the bot. Whether this assumption proved true during the course of the event can be read here:

Full Article

Qualis Evaluation on "Human-Centered Information Systems" in the Summer Semester 2021

We are delighted by the positive feedback we received from our Master students on the lecture "Human-Centered Information Systems"! The course was highly rated in all regards and we received some positive comments. Many thanks to all of you for your active participation in the lecture!

 

Evaluation

 

New Research Assistant: Christian Murlowski

We are very happy to have Mr. Christian Murlowski join our junior professorship as our newsest research assistant in July 2021.

Mr. Murlowski completed his Bachelor's degree in Media Informatics at Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences in 2014 and his Master's degree, also in Media Informatics, here at Saarland University in 2018. From 2016 to 2018, he worked as a full stack web developer at anynines GmbH, from 2018 to 2020 he was a research assistant at the Forschungsinstitut Bildung Digital, and most recently he worked for the Ministry of Education and Culture within the unit of pedagogical policy issues and use of educational technologies.

 

New Publication

We are pleased to announce that the paper "Towards a conceptualisation of Order Picking 4.0", co-authored by Sven Winkelhaus, M.Sc. (TU Darmstadt), Jun.-Prof. Dr. Eric Grosse and Jun.-Prof. Dr. Stefan Morana, has been published in the journal Computers & Industrial Engineering (Elsevier, VHB B).

The Paper has Open Access and can be downloaded here

 

 

Talk on the topic"Social Aspects of the Human-Chatbot Interaction"

As part of the Conversational UX Design Meetup yesterday, Stefan Morana gave an exciting talk on the topic of social cues in human-chatbot interaction. Among others, contents covered the "Computers are Social Actors (CASA)" paradigm, the "Taxonomy of Social Cues for Conversational Agents" (see design.chatbotresearch.org), which essentially divides social cues into the four groups verbal, visual, auditory and invisible, as well as various research results on the effects of the different social cues. Due to the strong impact on human-chatbot interactions, especially on user perception, intentions, and behavior, the appropriate design of social cues is very important in the design process of chatbots.

Talk Video

Research Results 

The graphic on the right was created by Yanbo Chen, more of her work can be found on her webpage.

 

Interview with Jun.-Prof. Grosse and Jun.-Prof. Morana with Industry 4.0 Management

Digital transformation is changing the world of work - and some work environments in particular. How does this process succeed in companies? How do you get employees on board? In an Interview with Industry 4.0 Management, Stefan Morana and Eric Grosse answer some of these questions.

Read more in the article "Soziotechnische Systeme: Der Mensch in der Industrie 4.0 – ein Vorgehensmodell zur Analyse" in Industrie 4.0 Management 3/2021. The article has Open Access.

 

New Publications

After the acceptance of the paper "Designing Attentive Information Dashboards", which was co-authored with Peyman Toreini, Moritz Langer, Alexander Mädche (all three KIT) and Tobias Vogel (University of Mannheim & Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences), the paper "On the Design of and Interaction with Conversational Agents: An Organizing and Assessing Review of Human-Computer Interaction Research" was now also accepted for publication in the renowned Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS)! The latter was written in collaboration with Stephan Diederich, Lutz Kolbe (both University of Göttingen) and Alfred Benedikt Brendel (TU Dresden).
Furthermore, we are happy to announce that the joint paper "Soziotechnische Systeme: Der Mensch in der Industrie 4.0 - Ein Vorgehensmodell zur Analyse" with Sven Winkelhaus (TU Darmstadt) as well as Anke Sutter and Eric Grosse (Saarland University), has been published.
All three articles are already available via ResearchGate!

 

Expansion of our Team

We are very happy to welcome Saskia Wita and Caroline Peters as our two new student assistants to our Junior Professorship since May 2021. 
Saskia Wita and Caroline Peters are about to finish their Bachelor's studies in Business & Law and Information Systems and are planning on completing their Master's degree here at Saarland University as well.

 

 

First Thesis Colloqium

Today we held our first virtual thesis colloquium. Together with seven bachelor students we were able to get first insights into the currently ongoing final theses on the topics of Digital Assistants and Conversational Agents. We are looking forward to many more exciting colloquia in the future and wish our students great success with their theses.

 

 

Research Project on the Digitalisation of Medicine

Digital assistance has the potential to support both doctors and patients in the context of consultation as well as treatment and thus to advance the digitalization of the medical field. In an interview with the "Campus" web-magazine of the university, Stefan Morana talked about our latest research project focused on this very digitization of medicine. Together with the working groups around Urban Sester of the University Hospital Homburg and Alfred Benedikt Brendel of the TU Dresden, a digital assistant is to be developed that can provide patients of all ages with information and support during their medical journey in addition to the indispensable in-person medical consultation. We are looking forward to this exciting project and hope to continue to contribute to the digitalization of medicine in the future.

Full Article

Workshop "Digital Assistants in Collaborative, Creative Teams – State of the Art and Future Research Directions"

Together with Eva Bittner of the University of Hamburg and Milad Mirbabaie of the University of Bremen, Stefan Morana held an exciting workshop on the topic "Digital Assistants in Collaborative, Creative Teams - State of the Art and Future Research Directions" at WI 2021. Some provocative questions emerged from the joint exchange and interesting discussions, such as whether the digital assistant should be a "he", "she", or "it", which decisions it can and should make, or whether and how different frameworks influence the human understanding of these agents. We are excited about the joint paper and future joint projects on this topic!

 

 

 

Student Interviews on the topic of "Digital Education at the University"

As part of her research project on the topic of "Digital Teaching at the University", our research assistant Kim Weidner is conducting interviews with students on their experiences with online education and the digital semester. The goal is to find out what experiences students have already had with digital education, particularly in the current virtual winter semester as well. In detail, Ms. Weidner would like to find out what the advantages of digital education are from the students' point of view, but also what difficulties and challenges the students are having and have had to overcome in the online semester. Based on this information, we will then try to derive concepts and ideas on how digital education can be supported with the help of suitable technology and, in particular, how students could be supported with suitable technology.

Therefore, we would like to invite you to participate in the interviews! The approximately hour-long interviews will take place between February 22 and March 5 via MS Teams. If you are interested or have further questions, please contact Kim Weidner directly (kim.weidner@uni-saarland.de). You will then receive more information about the process and a Doodle link to select a date and time for the interview that is suitable for you.

We would be very happy if many of you would participate in the interviews and support Ms. Weidner in her research on digital education at the university!

Thank you in advance!

Qualis Evaluation on "Digitalization of the Individual" in the Winter Semester 2020/21

We are delighted by the positive feedback we received from our Bachelor students on the lecture "Digitalization of the Individual"! The course was highly rated in all regards and we received some positive comments. Many thanks to all of you for your active participation in the lecture!

Evaluation

Launch of our Graduate Lecture "Collaborative Development of Conversational Agents"

With the start of the summer term 2021, we are proud to broaden our curriculum with the Master's lecture "Collaborative Development of Conversational Agents". The course is a joint offering together with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, Dr. Gnewuch) and Technische Universität Dresden (TUD, Prof. Brendel) within the framework of our research project chatbotresearch.org. It focuses on the design, development, deployment, and evaluation of conversational agents (e.g., chatbots or voice assistants) for a given problem domain. For the project, students will work collaboratively in virtual teams with students from the other universities. 

Lecture Page

Happy Holidays

Our first year at the Saarland University is coming to an end! Within the last lecture session of "Digitalization of the Individual" yesterday, we had the pleasure to send off our students into their holiday break! We wish all of you happy holidays and are looking forward to welcome you again next year!

 

 

Launch of our Undergraduate Lecture "Digitalization of the Individual"

With the start of the winter term 2020/21 we are proud to broaden our curriculum with the Bachelor's lecture "Digitalization of the Individual", which deals with the key concepts of digitalization as well as digital transformation and considers their consequences in regarding the human as an individual.

Lecture Page

Expansion of our Team

We are very happy to welcome Andreas Kilian as our latest student assistant to our junior professorship since October 2020. 
Mr. Kilian completed his Bachelor's degree in Business & Law here at Saarland University in 2020.

 

 

New Research Assistant: Kim Weidner

We are very happy to have Ms. Kim Weidner as our first research assistant join our junior professorship in June 2020. 

Ms. Weidner completed her Bachelor's degree in business education here at Saarland University in 2016 and her Master's degree in business education in 2018.
Between 2019 and 2020, she was employed within the business controlling department at Saarland University Clinic.

 

Expansion of our Team

We are delighted to welcome our two first colleagues at the junior professorship: Since April we are proud to call Ms. Stéphanie Tolksdorf in the secretariat and since May also Ms. Anne Przybilla as a student assistant part of our team!

 

Launch of our Graduate Lecture "Human-Centered Information Systems"

„Understanding and designing human-centered information systems is a key challenge in the digital transformation of the individual, organizations, and society.“

With the start of the summer term 2020 we are proud to expand the curriculum by our Master level lecture "Human-Centered Information Systems", which addresses this very key challenge.

Lecture Page 

Beginning with the winter semester 2020/21, our course offerings will additionally include the Bachelor's lecture "Digitization of the Individual".

New Juniorprofessorship for Digital Transformation und Business Informatics

On March 1st, 2020 the Faculty of Empirical Human Sciences and Economics of the Saarland University was expanded by the Junior Professorship for Business Administration, esp. Digital Transformation and Information Systems held by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Stefan Morana.
The research is predominantly concerned with the human-centered design of interactive systems for the digital transformation of individuals, companies and society.
We look forward to broaden the research and teaching offerings at the university in the future and, of course, to future collaborations!

 Further Information