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E‑Learning-Strategie 2023 – 2028
No full textDie Universität Potsdam positioniert sich als Hochschule im digitalen Zeitalter mit dem Ziel, den umfassenden Einsatz von digitalen Medien in Lehre und Studium als gelebte Lehr-, Lern- und Prüfungskultur für alle Studierenden, Lehrenden und Mitarbeitenden zu verwirklichen.
Aufbauend auf den Erfahrungen und Vorarbeiten der letzten Jahre, wie der Bestandsaufnahme E-Learning sowie von früheren Strategien und Leitbildern, mit denen digitale Medien zunehmend in Lehre und Studium integriert wurden, verfügt die Universität Potsdam über eine starke Ausgangsposition im Bereich der digitalen Lehre. Daher zielt die aktuelle E-Learning-Strategie (2023–2028) auf die Weiterentwicklung und Verstetigung dieser Ansätze. Sie identifiziert dabei sechs zentrale Handlungsfelder: "Austausch und Vernetzung", "Content", "Innovation und Verstetigung", "Medienkompetenz", "Qualitätsentwicklung" und "UP und die Welt".
Die Strategie wurde im Rahmen eines partizipativen Prozesses entwickelt, der von der E-Learning-Steuerungsgruppe koordiniert und von Vertreter*innen aus allen Bereichen und allen Statusgruppen der Universität unterstützt wurde. Sie wurde in der 319. Sitzung des Senats am 5. Juli 2023 beschlossen und mit redaktionellen Änderungen 2024 veröffentlicht
Mehr als eine einzelne Facette der Biodiversität: Auswirkungen auf die Verbindungen zwischen Biodiversität, Umweltveränderungen und der Funktionalität von Ökosystemen
No full textHuman activities modify nature worldwide via changes in the environment, biodiversity and the functioning of ecosystems, which in turn disrupt ecosystem services and feed back negatively on humans. A pressing challenge is thus to limit our impact on nature, and this requires detailed understanding of the interconnections between the environment, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. These three components of ecosystems each include multiple dimensions, which interact with each other in different ways, but we lack a comprehensive picture of their interconnections and underlying mechanisms. Notably, diversity is often viewed as a single facet, namely species diversity, while many more facets exist at different levels of biological organisation (e.g. genetic, phenotypic, functional, multitrophic diversity), and multiple diversity facets together constitute the raw material for adaptation to environmental changes and shape ecosystem functioning. Consequently, investigating the multidimensionality of ecosystems, and in particular the links between multifaceted diversity, environmental changes and ecosystem functions, is crucial for ecological research, management and conservation. This thesis aims to explore several aspects of this question theoretically.
I investigate three broad topics in this thesis. First, I focus on how food webs with varying levels of functional diversity across three trophic levels buffer environmental changes, such as a sudden addition of nutrients or long-term changes (e.g. warming or eutrophication). I observed that functional diversity generally enhanced ecological stability (i.e. the buffering capacity of the food web) by increasing trophic coupling. More precisely, two aspects of ecological stability (resistance and resilience) increased even though a third aspect (the inverse of the time required for the system to reach its post-perturbation state) decreased with increasing functional diversity. Second, I explore how several diversity facets served as a raw material for different sources of adaptation and how these sources affected multiple ecosystem functions across two trophic levels. Considering several sources of adaptation enabled the interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes, which affected trophic coupling and thereby ecosystem functioning. Third, I reflect further on the multifaceted nature of diversity by developing an index K able to quantify the facet of functional diversity, which is itself multifaceted. K can provide a comprehensive picture of functional diversity and is a rather good predictor of ecosystem functioning. Finally I synthesise the interdependent mechanisms (complementarity and selection effects, trophic coupling and adaptation) underlying the relationships between multifaceted diversity, ecosystem functioning and the environment, and discuss the generalisation of my findings across ecosystems and further perspectives towards elaborating an operational biodiversity-ecosystem functioning framework for research and conservation.Menschliche Aktivität verändert die Natur weltweit durch Einflussnahme auf die Umwelt, Biodiversität und Funktionsweise von Ökosystemen, die wiederum Ökosystemdienstleistungen stören und sich negativ auf den Menschen auswirken. Eine dringende Herausforderung besteht daher darin, unsere Wirkung auf die Natur zu begrenzen, was ein tiefgreifendes Verständnis der Zusammenhänge zwischen Umwelt, Biodiversität und dem Funktionalität von Ökosystemen voraussetzt. Diese drei Komponenten von Ökosystemen umfassen jedoch jeweils mehrere Dimensionen, die auf unterschiedliche Weise interagieren, und bisher haben wir kein umfassendes Bild von ihren Zusammenhängen und den zugrundeliegenden Mechanismen. Vor allem Diversität wird oft als eine einzige Facette betrachtet, nämlich als Artendiversität, während es auf verschiedenen biologischen Organisationsebenen viele weitere Facetten gibt, z. B. genetische, phänotypische, funktionelle, multitrophische Diversität, die zusammen mehrere Quellen für Rohmaterial zur die Anpassung an Umweltveränderungen bilden und die Funktionsweise von Ökosystemen beeinflussen. Folglich ist die Untersuchung der Multidimensionalität von Ökosystemen, insbesondere der Zusammenhänge zwischen multifacettierter Diversität, Umweltveränderungen und Ökosystemfunktionen, von entscheidender Bedeutung für Forschung, Management und Naturschutz. In dieser Arbeit sollen mehrere Aspekte dieser Frage theoretisch untersucht werden.
In dieser Arbeit untersuche ich drei große Themenbereiche. Erstens konzentriere ich mich auf die Frage, wie Nahrungsnetze mit unterschiedlichem Grad funktioneller Diversität auf drei trophischen Ebenen Umweltveränderungen abpuffern, wie etwa eine plötzliche Zugabe von Nährstoffen oder langfristige Veränderungen (z. B. Erwärmung oder Eutrophierung). Hier habe ich festgestellt, dass die funktionelle Diversität die ökologische Stabilität (d. h. die Pufferkapazität des Nahrungsnetzes) durch eine stärkere trophische Kopplung allgemein erhöht. Im Speziellen nahmen zwei Aspekte der ökologischen Stabilität (Resistenz und Resilienz) zu, obwohl ein dritter Aspekt, der Kehrwert der Zeit, die das System benötigt, um den Post-Störungszustand zu erreichen, mit zunehmender funktioneller Diversität abnahm. Zweitens untersuche ich, wie mehrere Facetten der Diversität als Basis für mehrere Anpassungsprozesse aus verschiedenen Quellen dienten und wie diese Quellen mehrere Ökosystemfunktionen auf zwei trophischen Ebenen beeinflussten. Die Berücksichtigung mehrerer Anpassungsquellen ermöglichte das Zusammenspiel zwischen ökologischen und evolutionären Prozessen, die sich auf die trophische Kopplung und damit auf die Funktionalität des Ökosystems auswirkten. Drittens reflektiere ich weiter über die Facetten der Diversität, indem ich einen Index K entwickle, der die Facette der funktionalen Diversität quantifizieren kann, welche wiederum selbst vielschichtig ist. K kann ein umfassendes Bild der funktionellen Diversität vermitteln und ist ein recht guter Prädiktor für das Funktionieren von Ökosystemen. Schließlich fasse ich die voneinander abhängigen Mechanismen (Komplementarität und Selektionseffekte, trophische Kopplung und Anpassung) zusammen, die den Beziehungen zwischen multi-facettierter Diversität, dem Funktionieren von Ökosystemen und der Umwelt zugrunde liegen, und erörtere die Möglichkeiten zur Verallgemeinerung meiner Ergebnisse über Ökosysteme hinweg sowie Perspektiven für die Ausarbeitung eines operativen Rahmens für der Biodiversität-Ökosystem- Funktionalität für Forscher und Anwender
Urban pollution: a global perspective
No full textWe use worldwide gridded satellite data to analyse how population size and density affect urban PM 2.5 pollution. We find that more populated and denser grid cells are more exposed to pollution. However, across urban areas, exposure increases with cities’ population size but decreases with density. Moreover, the population effect is driven mostly by population commuting to core cities rather than the core city population itself. We analyse heterogeneity by geography and income levels. A counterfactual simulation shows that exposure could fall by up to 40% if population size were equalized across all cities within countries, but the relocation of population from large to small cities that maximizes welfare would be small
The impact of knowledge characteristics on process performance
No full textPurpose
With shorter product cycles and a growing number of knowledge-intensive business processes, time consumption is a highly relevant target factor in measuring the performance of contemporary business processes. This research aims to extend prior research on the effects of knowledge transfer velocity at the individual level by considering the effect of complexity, stickiness, competencies, and further demographic factors on knowledge-intensive business processes at the conversion-specific levels.
Design/methodology/approach
We empirically assess the impact of situation-dependent knowledge transfer velocities on time consumption in teams and individuals. Further, we issue the demographic effect on this relationship. We study a sample of 178 experiments of project teams and individuals applying ordinary least squares (OLS) for regression analysis-based modeling.
Findings
The authors find that time consumed at knowledge transfers is negatively associated with the complexity of tasks. Moreover, competence among team members has a complementary effect on this relationship and stickiness retards knowledge transfers. Thus, while demographic factors urgently need to be considered for effective and speedy knowledge transfers, these influencing factors should be addressed on a conversion-specific basis so that some tasks are realized in teams best while others are not. Guidelines and interventions are derived to identify best task realization variants, so that process performance is improved by a new kind of process improvement method.
Research limitations/implications
This study establishes empirically the importance of conversion-specific influence factors and demographic factors as drivers of high knowledge transfer velocities in teams and among individuals. The contribution connects the field of knowledge management to important streams in the wider business literature: process improvement, management of knowledge resources, design of information systems, etc. Whereas the model is highly bound to the experiment tasks, it has high explanatory power and high generalizability to other contexts.
Practical implications
Team managers should take care to allow the optimal knowledge transfer situation within the team. This is particularly important when knowledge sharing is central, e.g. in product development and consulting processes. If this is not possible, interventions should be applied to the individual knowledge transfer situation to improve knowledge transfers among team members.
Social implications
Faster and more effective knowledge transfers improve the performance of both commercial and non-commercial organizations. As nowadays, the individual is faced with time pressure to finalize tasks, the deliberated increase of knowledge transfer velocity is a core capability to realize this goal. Quantitative knowledge transfer models result in more reliable predictions about the duration of knowledge transfers. These allow the target-oriented modification of knowledge transfer situations so that processes speed up, private firms are more competitive and public services are faster to citizens.
Originality/value
Time consumption is an increasingly relevant factor in contemporary business but so far not been explored in experiments at all. This study extends current knowledge by considering quantitative effects on knowledge velocity and improved knowledge transfers
The implementation of decolonial political education in the classroom
No full textDie politische Bildung steht vor der Herausforderung, koloniale Machtstrukturen und rassistische Denkweisen, die tief in gesellschaftlichen und institutionellen Kontexten verwurzelt sind, kritisch zu hinterfragen. Obwohl die Relevanz dekolonialer Perspektiven zunehmend anerkannt wird, bleibt ihre praktische Umsetzung im Schulunterricht häufig eine theoretische Forderung. Lehrkräfte sind dabei zentrale Akteur*innen, die durch ihre Unterrichtsgestaltung entweder zur Reproduktion von Ungleichheiten oder zur kritischen Reflexion und Transformation beitragen können. Jedoch fehlen bisher ausreichende empirische Untersuchungen, wie dekoloniale Ansätze im Unterricht konkret realisiert werden können.
Die Masterarbeit untersucht die Implementierung dekolonialer politischer Bildung im Unterricht und stützt sich auf leitfadengestützte Interviews mit fünf Lehrkräften aus Berlin und Brandenburg. Durch leitfadengestützte Interviews mit einer Dauer von 45 bis 60 Minuten wurden Begriffsdefinitionen, Motivationen zur Thematisierung dekolonialer Inhalte, Unterrichtsgestaltung sowie Herausforderungen und Wünsche der Lehrkräfte erhoben und mittels qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse ausgewertet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Umsetzung dekolonialer Ansätze maßgeblich durch individuelle Motivationen, institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen und gesellschaftliche Kontexte beeinflusst wird. Besonders der post-migrantische Raum Berlin wurde als prägend hervorgehoben, da viele Schüler*innen von Rassismus betroffen seien und die Lehrkräfte bestrebt sind, deren Lebensrealitäten in den Unterricht zu integrieren. Ein Lernarrangement auf Augenhöhe, unterstützt durch Authentizität, Reflexivität und starke Beziehungsebenen, wurde als zentrale Gelingensbedingung identifiziert.
Die Lehrkräfte fordern strukturelle Maßnahmen und eine stärkere institutionelle Unterstützung, um dekoloniale Bildung breiter zu verankern. Sie betonen, dass dekoloniale Ansätze ein gesamtgesellschaftliches Anliegen sind und wünschen sich eine intensivere Auseinandersetzung mit Positioniertheit sowie eine stärkere Integration in die Lehramtsausbildung und -fortbildung. Ziel ist es, ein diskriminierungsfreies und empowerndes Lernumfeld zu schaffen, das Macht- und Herrschaftskritik mit anderen Themenbereichen verbindet und intersektionale Perspektiven einbindet. Die Arbeit bietet praxisorientierte Handlungsempfehlungen, um Machtverhältnisse und Wissensstrukturen im Bildungsbereich kritisch zu hinterfragen und diskriminierungsfreie, empowernde Lernumfelder zu schaffen.Civic education faces the challenge of critically questioning colonial power structures and racist ways of thinking that are deeply rooted in social and institutional contexts. Although the relevance of decolonial perspectives is increasingly recognized, their practical implementation in the classroom often remains a theoretical demand. Teachers are central actors who can either contribute to the reproduction of inequalities or to critical reflection and transformation through their lesson design. However, there has been a lack of sufficient empirical research on how decolonial approaches can be implemented in the classroom.
This master's thesis examines the implementation of decolonial civic education in the classroom and is based on guided interviews with five teachers from Berlin and Brandenburg. Through guided interviews lasting 45 to 60 minutes, definitions of terms, motivations for addressing decolonial content, lesson design as well as challenges and wishes of the teachers were collected and evaluated using qualitative content analysis. The results show that the implementation of decolonial approaches is significantly influenced by individual motivations, institutional framework conditions and social contexts. The post-migrant area of Berlin was highlighted as particularly influential, as many pupils are affected by racism and teachers strive to integrate their realities into the classroom. A learning arrangement at eye level, supported by authenticity, reflexivity and strong relationship levels, was identified as a central condition for success.
The teachers call for structural measures and stronger institutional support in order to anchor decolonial education more broadly. They emphasize that decolonial approaches are a concern for society as a whole and would like to see a more intensive examination of positionality and greater integration into teacher training and further training. The aim is to create a non-discriminatory and empowering learning environment that combines a critique of power and domination with other subject areas and integrates intersectional perspectives. The thesis offers practice-oriented recommendations for action to critically question power relations and knowledge structures in education and to create non-discriminatory, empowering learning environments
TransferGWAS of T1-weighted brain MRI data from UK Biobank
No full textGenome-wide association studies (GWAS) traditionally analyze single traits, e.g., disease diagnoses or biomarkers. Nowadays, large-scale cohorts such as UK Biobank (UKB) collect imaging data with sample sizes large enough to perform genetic association testing. Typical approaches to GWAS on high-dimensional modalities extract predefined features from the data, e.g., volumes of regions of interest. This limits the scope of such studies to predefined traits and can ignore novel patterns present in the data. TransferGWAS employs deep neural networks (DNNs) to extract low-dimensional representations of imaging data for GWAS, eliminating the need for predefined biomarkers. Here, we apply transferGWAS on brain MRI data from UKB. We encoded 36, 311 T1-weighted brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans using DNN models trained on MRI scans from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, and on natural images from the ImageNet dataset, and performed a multivariate GWAS on the resulting features. We identified 289 independent loci, associated among others with bone density, brain, or cardiovascular traits, and 11 regions having no previously reported associations. We fitted polygenic scores (PGS) of the deep features, which improved predictions of bone mineral density and several other traits in a multi-PGS setting, and computed genetic correlations with selected phenotypes, which pointed to novel links between diffusion MRI traits and type 2 diabetes. Overall, our findings provided evidence that features learned with DNN models can uncover additional heritable variability in the human brain beyond the predefined measures, and link them to a range of non-brain phenotypes
Ediacaran to Jurassic geodynamic evolution of the Alborz Mountains, north Iran
No full textThe Alborz Mountains in north Iran underwent several tectono-metamorphic events during opening and closure of the Palaeotethys and Neotethys Oceans. These events are recorded by rare and discontinuously exposed metamorphic rocks, such as the HP-LT Asalem-Shanderman Complex and the Gasht Metamorphic Complex (GMC), that are considered to have been metamorphosed during the closure of the Palaeotethys Ocean. The GMC comprises poorly exposed metasediments and amphibolites metamorphosed under greenschist- to amphibolite-facies conditions, along with smaller volumes of granites. Different dating methods were applied to selected samples of the GMC basement to constrain the geological evolution of this part of the Alborz Mountains. A metagranite yielded two LA-ICP-MS U–Pb zircon ages of 638.4 ± 4.1 Ma and 590.3 ± 4.8 Ma that possibly date protolith crystallisation and later deformation and metamorphism, respectively, and a granite yielded a late Ediacaran 551 ± 2.5 Ma U–Pb zircon crystallisation age. A northern provenance from the basement to the South Caspian Basin can neither be established nor ruled out because no age data are available for this unit. Derivation of the GMC from Turan Block basement is unlikely, as this has a different crustal makeup and is probably composed of Paleoproterozoic and early Neoproterozoic material. The zircon ages are similar to published ages from the Arabian-Nubian Shield, indicating that this part of the Alborz basement may have belonged to the northern margin of Gondwana in the Neoproterozoic before rifting and drifting away along with other Iranian blocks (the Cimmerian terranes) during opening of the Neotethys Ocean. Chemical Th-U-total Pb ages for metamorphic monazites from two metapelite samples yielded a very large range of spot ages, of which c. 80% falls between 200 and 250 Ma, that do not allow to distinguish between Eo-Cimmerian and Main Cimmerian events in the GMC. However, they may indicate that the amphibolite-facies peak metamorphism of the GMC occurred sometime in the Triassic, in any case much later than the Carboniferous metamorphism in the neighbouring Asalem-Shanderman Metamorphic Complex to the north. Peak-metamorphic amphibole from amphibolite, retrograde white mica and foliation-defining biotite from metapelites and magmatic white mica from granite yielded much younger 175.1 ± 0.5 to 177.0 ± 0.4 Ma 40Ar/39Ar plateau ages. The Toarcian 40Ar/39Ar ages for minerals with different nominal closure temperatures reflect very rapid cooling of GMC basement below the Shemshak Group due to extension-triggered uplift. This late Toarcian to Aalenian extension event can be correlated with the regional Mid-Cimmerian unconformity of mid-Bajocian age (c. 170 Ma) that resulted from the tectonic movements causing rapid uplift and erosion. Extension probably started in the western Alborz Mountains in the Toarcian, migrated eastward, and culminated in the Aalenian in the eastern Alborz with the formation of a deep-marine basin. It was probably triggered by the onset of the subduction of Neotethys oceanic crust beneath the Central Iranian Microcontinent
Changeling genres and the glamour of the human
No full textEmploying a notion of “glamour,” Victor LaValle’s "The Changeling" pushes readers to re-adjust their vision of how the world is made. In the novel, glamour operates as an “illusion” that serves to “obscure[ ] the suffering of the weak” (247; 384). This essay traces glamour’s obscuring force by putting LaValle’s work in conversation with Mark Jerng’s analysis of literary genre as a mode of “racial worldmaking” that centrally employs but obscures the construction of race (2), and with Sylvia Wynter’s analysis of Western modernity’s racialized conception of the human as a “genre” or representational mode whose very construction is made opaque (318). Engaging both the idea of literary genre and the “genres of being human” (Wynter 318), we read the novel as a critique of strategies that occlude the racial and gendered organization of the world and the suffering this causes. The story unsettles readerly expectations and their grounding within generic racial worldmaking and interrogates the glamour of the human, addressing the question of ontology. The novel first reveals how Blackness is rendered monstrous and then subverts this framing to show the monstrosity of anti-Blackness. Racial and gendered worldmaking destabilized, the protagonist can transgress the order of the human to engage in an ethics of care with the other-than-human