Doctorates

Brief Description:

The doctoral project is structured as a cumulative dissertation and focuses on the empirical study of AI-supported teaching and learning processes in higher education. The aim is to develop, analyze, and evaluate the effectiveness of didactically sound scenarios for implementing generative AI, such as chatbots. The first study, already conducted, is titled "Transforming higher education with AI chatbots: University educators’ perspectives on opportunities, competencies, curriculum adaptation, and ethical considerations" and is based on expert interviews from four countries. The current study examines the use of AI throughout the semester, focusing on the Matthew effect, cognitive load, motivation, and prompt behavior. As there is currently a lack of well-founded empirical evidence on effective deployment scenarios, the doctoral project and the associated studies make a particularly valuable contribution to current AI education research.

Research Questions:

• "What goals, opportunities, and potential benefits, as well as challenges, risks, and concerns, arise from implementing AI chatbot technologies in higher education?"
• "How can AI chatbots be effectively utilized in higher education teaching? What specific applications can be identified, and how do they influence learning success?"
• "How can universities develop an AI roadmap to achieve the didactically meaningful implementation of AI-supported teaching and learning methods in various academic fields, including the establishment of AI competencies, learning objectives, and successful deployment scenarios?"

These three overarching research questions form the framework of the doctoral project and lead to the three empirical studies. Each study is based on specifically derived sub-questions tailored to address the respective research perspective.

Methodology:

The doctoral project adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative procedures. In the first completed study, relevant deployment scenarios and variables were identified through expert interviews. Building on this, an experimental intervention study with multiple measurement points is currently being conducted to investigate how various didactical concepts impact learning success, motivation, and cognitive load when using AI. Standardized pre- and post-measurements, performance assessments, surveys, and qualitative analyses of prompt behavior are being employed. The analysis is based, among other things, on the Cognitive Process Framework (CoDiL) by Reinhold et al. (2024), which models learning mechanisms in the context of digital tools.

Duration: 2023-2027

Supervisors:

• Jun. Prof. Dr. Maik Beege
• Prof. Dr. Martin Kimmig

Partner University: PH Freiburg

Short Description of Content:

This dissertation project examines the extent to which young people with a so-called 'migration background' experience belonging and difference in the context of residential care. The theoretical approach of racism criticism and thus the assumption that racism is understood as a social (power) structure and that both professionals and recipients within social work are entangled in it form the theoretical framework of this empirical study. This brings a field of tension into view, since on the one hand it is the goal and self-imposed claim of the social work profession to eliminate social inequalities, but on the other hand hegemonic orders are at work in which constructions of difference are constantly (re-)produced and in which social work also operates. Based on grounded theory methodology, individual help processes of young people with a so-called 'migration background' in the context of residential care are traced using semi-narrative interviews.

Research Questions:

• How do young people with a so-called 'migration background' experience residential child and youth services?
• How do recipients of inpatient child and youth welfare services experience racism during the course of their care?
• How do the young people articulate their experiences and how do they categorize them?
• How do they cope with their experiences and what consequences do these experiences have for young people with a so-called 'migration background'?
  
  

Method:

• qualitative/partial narrative interviews/ based on Grounded Theory Methodology

Duration: since 04/2020

Doctoral Adviser:

• Prof. Dr. Barbara Schramkowski (DHBW Villingen-Schwenningen)
• Prof. Dr. Rudolf Leiprecht (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg)

Partner University: Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg