1. Collide Research Group University Duisburg-Essen (UDE)

2. Collide Facts  COLLIDE (Collaborative Learning in Intelligent Distributed Environments) founded in 1995  Interdisciplinary team of 10 Researchers and 9 student assistants (at moment)  Current projects: – EU: SISOB and SCY (“Science Created by You”) – German ministry of research and education: Foodweb 2.0, KoPIWA, KOLLEGEA (starting 03/11)  Context: Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science with focus on human oriented computing: 13 computer science groups and 3 psychology groups working and teaching together.

3. Related ongoing work  Current lines of research: * Collaborative learning environments (interaction analysis, architectures, agent support, mobiles) * Social network analysis and data mining applied to online communities * Competence modelling (using ontologies) for innovation and human resource management  SNA-related tools: Data-Multiplexer-Demultiplexer (DMD), CoNaVi - Community Navigation and Visualization  Master course on Electronic Communities and Networks (focus on SNA)  Contributions to ASONAM and SUNBELT conferences; Co-organisation (with D. Suthers) of CSCL 2011 workshop on “Connecting Levels of Learning / Multi-vocality in Interaction Analysis”

4. Expectations and challenges  Further develop mixed (multi-vocational) approaches to analysing e-communities including advanced SNA methods in a realistic context  time dependency of measurements (window size, progression)  detection of cohesive subgroups (e.g. “group percolation”)  Setting up of an innovative multi-agent architecture for SISOB (crawlers, multiple post-processing agents)  Scaffolding mechanisms to improve scientific production