Out Institut performs research in the following areas:

"How people work is one of the best kept secrets in America." The location-independent validity of this statement by Wellman (cited in Suchman, 1995) has been underlined in various contexts, e.g., by Polyani (1958) when referring to "ineffable knowledge" that does not allow workers to reflect about their work without becoming conscious about work structures. Nonaka et al. (1995) even referred to the problems caused by changing those structures.
  
Strauss has pointed out the importance of Articulation Work (Strauss, 1985) in that context. This term is dichotomous and has always to be considered in both of its meanings: Articulation Work is talking about one's work in order to be able to work together with others. Articulation Work is an integral part of work in general, particularly in the sense that it takes effort to realize it. Articulation Work is a considered as a conceptual complement to "Production Work", i.e. the work dedicated to achieve organizational goals (Fujimura, 1987).

eLearning needs to tackle cognitive and social processes besides emotional aspects. Our research focuses on intertwining the cognitive learning management and acquisition processes with social activities. Baseline technologies are content management systems and social media. Particular interests of our researchers are the content preparation in terms of individualized learning objects and didactically tagged information elements. Learners should also be qualified to contract their learning steps, in order to increase meta-cognitive capabilities. In this context view management is of central concern. The exchange of views estabishes learning communities and empowers learners for informed knowledge sharing.

Organizational learning is the capability of socio-economic systems or communities of practice to trigger, structure, guide, and implement system-relevant change or creation processes. All research addresses the articulation and elicitation of knowledge, designing a organizational memory for indivudual and group learning purposes, prototyping and simulating process and production behavior.

Our newest research domain is concerned with adaptive software systems, that is with the possibilities of adaptive user support. We focus on the intergration of findings in cognitive science and usability engineering to generate suitable and supportive user models.