PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE

IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Ines Puntschart

Know-Center, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

Klaus Tochtermann

Know-Center, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

Gisela Dösinger

Know-Center, Graz, Austria

Keywords: Blog, discussion forum, knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer, social software, virtual communities, Web

2.0, WIKI.

Abstract: The overwhelming success of all different types of social software, such as WIKIs, Blogs etc. is about to

change the way how communities interact with each other. Most of the systems are being used on a

voluntary basis run and maintained by individuals who have a deep wish to transfer and share their

knowledge with others. This transfer and sharing, however, often takes place outside any educational setting

even though the main purpose of educational settings such as universities is to educate students through

sharing and transferring knowledge. Up to now social software tools are used very rarely in universities to

support teaching and training, and this is the case even though students are keen on using exactly these tools

in their spare time. This observation leads to the guiding research question for our work: How can social

software be used most effectively and efficiently in higher education? In order to find answers we conducted

four case studies at Graz University of Technology with more than 350 students involved.

1 INTRODUCTION

We are currently witnessing the overwhelming

success of all different types of social software, such

as WIKIs, Blogs etc. Most of these systems are

being used on a voluntary basis run and maintained

by individuals who have a deep wish to

communicate, transfer and share their knowledge

with others. Particularly among young people it

becomes more and more popular to distribute their

weblog address instead (or at least in addition) to

their phone number.

This new collaborative nature of communication

and knowledge transfer methods on the web is often

referred to as the Web 2.0 movement. The Web 2.0

is an ambiguous, even polymorph concept which is

understood by different people in different ways.

One interpretation is that Web2.0 is the web for the

people and not for the commerce (as it is the case

with “Web 1.0”).

To some, Web 2.0 refers to a perceived transition

of the internet from a collection of websites to a full-

fledged computing platform serving web

applications to end users. To others, Web 2.0 is a

social phenomenon and dues to an approach to

create web content; direct, honest and open

communication with respect to the market as a

conversation; reliance on community and

decentralization of authority; freedom to share and

transfer remix and license knowledge.

This transfer and sharing, however, often takes

place outside any educational setting even though

the main purpose of educational settings such as

universities is to educate students through sharing

and transferring knowledge. And the scientific

communities agrees that up to now there are very

few academic publications about the use of social

Puntschart I., Tochtermann K. and Dösinger G. (2006).

PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE IN HIGHER EDUCATION.

In Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and

e-Government / e-Learning, pages 21-28

DOI: 10.5220/0001256100210028

 SciTePress

software tools for teaching and training at

universities. This observation leads to the guiding

research question for our research: How can social

software be used most effectively and efficiently in

higher education?

With the attribute “effectively” we take into

consideration that social software provides some

added-value to traditional face-to-face sharing and

transferring of knowledge. With the attribute

“efficiently” we emphasise that the use of such tools

should decrease and not increase the workload of the

lectures for both, students and lecturers in “higher

education”.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest answers

to the above question. To achieve this, the paper is

structured as follows. Section 2 introduces important

terms needed throughout this paper. In order to give

an exhaustive answer to our research question we

need a model for knowledge sharing and transfer

helping us to completely understand the problem

space. A first extension of such a model and its

application in two explorative case studies with

more than 140 students involved is described in

Section 3. Section 3 also identifies limitations of the

model. In order to overcome these limitations,

Section 4 introduces indicators based on the well

established design-based research approach. These

indicators are used to measure how the limitations of

the first extension model can be overcome. This

feeds directly into a further model extension which

is presented in Section 5. The paper closes with a

conclusion in Section 6.

2 DEFINITIONS OF TERMS

Higher education comprises communities (e.g.,

consisting of a group of students, or of a lecturer and

students etc.) in which knowledge is shared and

transferred. To have a common notion of these terms

throughout this paper, we provide some definitions

in this section.

The idea of communities in the context of

knowledge management is not new: Positive and

emotional associations as well as high expectations,

especially regarding communication and innovation,

have resulted in the foundation of communities as

informal groups of shared interests in many

organizations (Reinmann 2000).

According to a general definition a community is

„a group of people with a common characteristic or

interest living together within a larger society“

(MERRIAM-WEBSTER 2005).

Depending on the purpose of coming together,

communities of interest or communities of practice

(Preece 2000) are built.

The basic definition of Communities of Practice

was coined by Etienne Wenger (Wenger 1998): “In

a nutshell, a community of practice is a group of

people who share an interest in a domain of human

endeavour and engage in a process of collective

learning that creates bonds between them: a tribe, a

garage band, a group of engineers working on

similar problems. “ The three essential elements are

the domain, the community and the practice.

A Community of Interest is a group of people

connected to each other by a need to solve common

problems, develop skills and share common

practices. A community of interest may contain

smaller subsets of people sharing information within

their respective communities of practice.

According to the way how communication takes

place we distinguish further between face-to-face

communities and virtual communities.

In Face-to-Face Communities the members

communicate in person in a common room of

perception while in Virtual Communities the

participants transfer and share knowledge

technology-enhanced using a Community-Platform.

In higher education all forms of communities

mentioned can be found. Students find together in

lectures where they engage in a process of collective

learning because they share a common interest.

While the lecture itself still in the majority of cases

is held face-to-face it is also possible and getting

more and more common to integrate community-

platforms for further exchange of documents,

comments etc.

The human communication, interaction and

cooperation within communities can be supported by

social software. In our notion social software

enables people to interact with each other using the

Internet. This interaction can be uni-directional or

bi-directional which leads us to the definition of

knowledge transfer and sharing:

In our notion Knowledge Transfer is the uni-

directional transfer of knowledge (i) from individual

A to individual B, (ii) from individual A to a

community {B, C, D,…}, (iii) from a community

{B, C, D,…} to individual A and (iv) from a

community {B

, C

, D

,…} to a community {B

, D

,…}. Note, that an individual A can be the

sender of a knowledge transfer and at the same time

be a member of the receiving community.

Knowlege Sharing is an extension of knowledge

transfer in the sense that knowledge flows in either

direction, from the sender to the receiver and vice

versa.

WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT

Note, that conceptually each individual A can be

represented by a community {A} with just one

community member. This is why the remainder of

the paper often talks about communities and not

individuals any more.

3 COMMUNITY-

COMMUNICATION-MODEL

The Community-Communication-Model (CCM)

(fig. 1) was created to demonstrate all theoretically

possible ways of knowledge transfer and sharing

within and between communities (Puntschart 2005).

{A}

F2F

{B}A

{A}

F2F

{B}A

… Member of Community

…Community

… Knowledge Transfer

…Knowledge Sharing

... Face-to Face Communication

... Technology-enhanced

Communication

A,B…

{A,B…}

F2F

… Member of Community

…Community

… Knowledge Transfer

…Knowledge Sharing

... Face-to Face Communication

... Technology-enhanced

Communication

A,B…

{A,B…}

F2F

Arrows 1-8 show all forms of knowledge transfer

and sharing within (arrows 1-4) and between (arrows

5-8) communities. These possibilities of transfer

according to the variables introduced above within

communities are:

1. A

Æ B

~ transfer between two members

within the same community

2. A

Æ {A} ~ transfer from one community

member to the entire community

3. {A} Æ A

~ transfer from the entire

community to one community member

4. {A} Æ {A} ~ transfer from the entire

community to itself

The possible ways of knowledge transfer and

sharing between different communities are:

5. A

Æ A

B,C,...

~ transfer from one

community member to member(s) of another

community

6. A

Æ {B, C,..} ~ transfer from one

community member to another community

7. {A} Æ A

B,C,...

~ transfer from one

community to member(s) of another community

8. {A} Æ {B, C,...} ~ transfer from one

community to another community

For example, arrow 1 represents the knowledge

transfer from one single member of the community

to another member of the community, e.g. if a

member posts a comment to a statement of another

person. Arrow 5 describes the same situation

between members of different communities. For

example, if a student looks in another forum to

which he/she joined in order to participate in the

discussion. (The model is described in detail in

Puntschart 2006).

3.1 Explorative Studies

In order to answer our guiding research question, we

conducted two consecutive case studies at Graz

University of Technology (TU Graz) using different

types of social software to support two lectures.

These studies are summarized to the extent which is

necessary to make this paper self-contained. A

detailed description of these studies to approve the

model can be found in (Puntschart 2005).

The initial point for the enforcement of the

studies was the fact that TU Graz offers their

students a broad set of different IT systems: TUG

Online (https://online.tu-graz.ac.at/) for extensive

information about lectures, lecturers, administrative

issues etc. Another system is used for newsgroups

and yet another to provide course material. There is

no space for individual working environments for

the students to deposit their own working documents

and relevant literature. Also no social software tools

are offered to support the knowledge sharing within

and between the communities.

To overcome such a heterogeneous working

environment which obviously hinders knowledge

transfer and sharing a Knowledge Management

System was implemented for the lecture

“Introduction to Knowledge Management” attended

by about 140 Students and in the following summer

term in the lecture “eCommerce” with about 42

students. With this system an integrated IT

environment including a personal working space for

each student to store documents, links, etc. was

provided. In order to support knowledge sharing

several discussion forums linked to the topics of the

lecture were integrated. Within the system the

students had immediate access to all slides of the

lecture, links and literature, and also research tools

and references to scientific methods. In addition, a

Blog was used in the lecture. This blog, however,

Figure 1: Community-Communication Model.

PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

was not a “traditional” personal Blog but a

community Blog for collecting specific links

classified into categories.

The discussion forums were being moderated by

four e-moderators consisting of the lecture team to

extend the discussion and guarantee quality of the

statements, help the students to keep the topic, and

to keep the netiquettes.

3.2 Preliminary Results

The analysis of the use of the CCM in these two

studies reveals that the CCM applies to all possible

ways of knowledge communication. According to

the practical impact the CCM provides helpful

guidance for the design of community environments.

(Puntschart 2006).

But much more important is that already during

these studies further important research questions

emerged: An additional insight is that the

moderation of the discussion forums and the Blog

implemented in the lecture is very time consuming

for the lecturer. To fulfil some of the typical tasks of

e-moderators, like conformity to the netiquette, or

keeping the members focused to the topic, the

lecturer has to read all statements. Having a lecture

with 180 students who post at least six statements

each means that the lecturer has to read more about

850 statements. Thus, the social software

environment was perceived more as a burden rather

than a relief. Referring to our initial research

question, the use of social software is not “efficient”.

Still, the tool is “effective” in the sense that students

had a one-stop-shop for the lecture offering all

relevant lecture material.

As a consequence a key question is how to

reduce the workload of e-moderators. In order to

find a solution for this problem we analyse the

differences between Wikis, Blogs and discussions

forums to find out why Wikis and Blogs work

without

e-moderators and why discussion forums do not:

In Blogs the communication is often based on

content such as links to further websites or

documents integrated in the statements. Something

similar was found for Wikis: Wikis focus on the

production of content in forms of statements that can

be commented or discussed. Discussion forums in

contrary support the communication separately from

the content which in our specific case relies in

background libraries of the knowledge management

system. Content in this context (in contrary to

communication) is not associated to certain

members of the group. Content consists of

documents, URLs and statements that are provided

to all community members.

As a conclusion, in our notion, one difference

between Wikis, Blogs and discussion forums lies in

the degree of integration between communication

and content. Whereas in Wikis and Blogs the degree

of integration is very high, in discussion forums the

degree of integration is low since these two parts are

often completely separated. This also explains the

high workload of the e-moderators during our case

study: Their main task was to connect

communication entries in the discussion forums with

the content in the background libraries.

Concerning the CCM and these insights our

research reveals that the model only focuses on

communication and knowledge transfer aspects but

does not take into consideration the role of what we

refer to as content (e.g., documents, Internet

resources etc.). Thus the CCM has to be extended to

cover all aspects which relate to content. This

extended model, the Community-Communication-

Content Model will be described in the following

Section.

Before doing this, we want to drop some figures

indicating how time-consuming the task of e-

moderators is to guide discussion forums. For this

purpose we differentiate between the tasks of a

system administrator and the tasks of an e-

moderator: The system administrators’ main tasks

are the to implement a system with adequate rights

and role concepts for the users, keep the system

running, maintain any technical problems or help the

community members use the system. The main tasks

of e-moderators are to motivate members or to keep

the discussion on the track (see Section 4).

Results of the studies show that with an increase

of members the amount of time e-moderators spent

for supporting a community increases much faster

than the necessary time needed for administrative

purposes. To implement the system including

registering the students, uploading the material and

granting adequate access rights to the members took

about 2 hours during the design phase. During the

study, one task of the system administrator lasts

about 30 seconds on average. In total four students

needed administrative support since they forgot their

user identification and further three students were

granted with wrong rights. This amounts to a total

time spent by the administrator of 3.5 minutes.

To moderate a discussion includes posting initial

statements and motivating the members but also

keeping the discussion on track, which in turn

includes the reading of all statements. The time

spent for all e-moderators accumulates to about four

WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT

hours if we consider the following parameters of our

case study:

o Reading of each statement takes one

minute,

o Each student posts six statements with a

length of about 5 to 10 lines,

o 141 students participate in the lecture.

In addition, the e-moderator posted initial

statements, questions, motivating statements etc.

which also takes about one minute per statement. All

e-moderators posted a total of 70 statements, which

increases their workload by further 70 minutes.

Please note, that we do not include the time

e-moderators need for login and logout, navigating

to the forums, uploading course material and

background documents etc.

We found another interesting correlation

between the number of statements from students and

the number of statements from e-moderators: During

the first case study we offered our 141 students eight

different discussion forums. One e-moderator was

responsible for two forums. In the most active forum

the statements posted by the e-moderator amounted

to 15.45% of all statements. In contrast to this, in the

forum with the lowest activity the e-moderator’s

contributions were only 1.37% of all contributions.

These investigations indicate that the more active

an e-moderator is the more activity is generated in

the discussion forum. On the other hand, a high

degree of activity of an e-moderator is quite time-

consuming. If we look for alternatives which help

reduce the workload of the e-moderator, we should

take into account that the degree of activity within a

community must not be affected in a negative way.

We therefore need to find interventions which lead

to the same effects as e-moderator statements but at

the same time reduce the workload of e-moderators.

As mentioned above Social Software tools like

WIKIs and Blogs work without the help of e-

moderators. One reason for this lies in the tight

integration between content and communication

which lacks in discussion forums. With this in

background we develop the following research

hypothesis: An e-moderator can be substituted or

supported, if the social software does not only

support the knowledge sharing and transfer through

communication but through a tight connection

between content and communication.

In order to prove this hypothesis, we extend the

CCM and we prepare the ground for justificative

(and not just explorative) case studies. This is why

the next section introduces a corresponding

methodology.

4 METHODOLOGY

Existing research approaches in educational settings

are often not capable of creating sustained

innovation. The mostly quantitative approaches

turned out to be insufficient in methodology and

procedure to effect sustainable changes in higher

education and to provide concepts for practical

issues. An appropriate approach for the context of

innovation in higher education seemed to be Design-

Based Research traced back of Ann Brown and her

ideas to “design experiments” (Brown 1992).

“Design research is not defined by methodology.

All sorts of methods may be employed. What defines

design research is its purpose: sustained innovative

development” (Bereiter 2002).

The two main aims of Design-Based Research

are to understand how people learn, particularly

within educational settings and to design ways to

better ensure that learning will happen in these

settings.

Because this approach is still not very well

known, and thus sometimes doubted to be

scientifically proven Fischer et al. (Fischer 2003)

analysed the Design-Based Research Approach in

regard to the principles published by the National

Research Council. Some of these principals are

(National Research Council 2002):

· Pose significant questions that can be

investigated empirically

· Link research to relevant theory

· Replicate and generalize across studies

· Use methods that permit direct investigation

on the question

All of these principals are fulfilled in order to be

considered as empirical and proved that none of the

principles is being breached.

To answer the research questions concerning the

degree of integration between content and

communication in discussion forums, the necessity

of e-moderators and to develop a general concept for

knowledge transfer and sharing in communities in

higher education, we define systematic setting (or

categories) and tag them with indicators. For each

indicator a number of interventions was taken and

put into practice in two further case studies.

Examples of indicators, corresponding interventions

and expected results will now be presented.

The basis for defining indicators is a list of the

typical roles of e-moderators. Several authors (e.g.

Berge, 1992; 1994; 2005, Brochet, 1989; Feenberg,

1989; Morris, 1993; Paulsen, 1995) have attempted

to list the many roles or functions of the e-moderator

which include: assistant, consultant, contextualizer,

PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Figure 2: Community-Communication-Content Model.

coordinator, editor, entertainer, expert, explainer,

facilitator, filter, goal setter, helper, intermediary,

leader, lecturer, manager, marketer, mediator,

meeting chairperson, mentor, observer, participant,

promoter, provocateur, tutor etc. As this list of roles

is very long, we select the following tasks of e-

moderators.

· keeping members focused to topic

· motivation of participants to communicate

· complying with the netiquette

· acquirement of new members

· elimination of members

· definition of community-aim

· motivation of members to integrate content

· providing and referencing literature

· implementing new communication tools

The main selection criterion is the affinity of the

task to our application context. We assign all these

tasks to four categories or systematic settings – the

community, the communication, the content and the

integration of content and community.

And finally, we define measurable indicators for

each systematic setting. For example the task

“motivation of members to communicate” belongs

to the category “communication”. The indicator to

measure this task is the number of statements made

by each member. The systematic settings with

respect to WHAT can change are the

1. change of community over time

2. change of communication over time

3. change of content over time

4. change of the degree of integration between

content and communication over time

The indicators that belong to the systematic

settings covering all tasks of e-moderators are.

1.) change of community

Indicators for the change of the community are

the size of the community at different points in time

and also the constitution of the members of a

community. The size is characterized by the number

of participants whereas the constitution is reflected

by the participants themselves. Within this context,

the task of the e-moderators is the acquisition of new

and the elimination of existing members.

2.) change of communication

Possible changes of the communication due to

the way how members communicate and the

content of the communication for example if

objective and purpose change. Another indicator is

the extent of entries. Within this context, tasks of e-

moderators include the integration of new

communication tools, the definition of a new

community objective, keeping the members focused

to the topic and the motivation of participants to

communicate.

3.) change of content

Concerning the content the number of documents

and the quality of documents can vary. In the

beginning of a discussion to a certain topic rather

basic literature or links will be used. In an advanced

discussion rather specific content will be added. The

tasks of e-moderators are to motivate the community

members to integrate new content, to provide

relevant literature and to continuously leverage the

level of knowledge concerning the topic.

4.) integration of content and community

The integration of content and community is the

most important setting because characterises the

difference between Wikis, Blogs and discussion

forums. The only task an e-moderator can do in this

case is to recommend literature not knowing if these

references are agreed or not.

In a next step each indicator is measured in order

to conclude which tasks of e-moderators can be

substituted or supported. All these interventions are

implemented in two case studies at TU Graz.

5 COMMUNITY-

COMMUNICATION-CONTENT

MODEL

According to the results of the studies, this section

extends the Community-Communication-Model by

the dimension “content”.

The extended model, the Community-

Communication-Content Model (C²CM) (Fig. 2) is

based on the CCM.

CONTENT{A}

F2F

{B}A

CONTENT{A}

F2F

{B}A

Up to now the factor content has not been

considered in our model. In order to integrate

content we consider it to be useful to distinguish

between internal and external content: internal

content is already integrated in the repository of the

WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT

social software tool, external content can be found

outside the social software in the Internet (e.g., links

or documents), in libraries, magazines or

proceedings but can be integrated to the repository

(e.g. by referring to the content with a URL).

Additionally, this model supports the different

ways of knowledge communication – electronically,

supported with artefacts or face-to-face. This shows

that the C²CM does not only include virtual

communities but also Face-to-Face Communities.

5.1 Justificative Case Studies

Two further case studies were conducted to verify

the C²CM and to take measures for the indicators

presented in Section 4. The objective was to figure

out how the tasks e-moderators can be reduced or e-

moderators can even be substituted.

During the design phase of the two case studies

all interventions were defined and the resulting rules

for communication were reported to the students.

During the case studies there were no actions taken

by e-moderators. They neither participated by

posting any statements nor by uploading documents.

This step ensures that we can analyse to which

degree an intervention can support e-moderators.

Case Study 2 (CS2) is realized in the lecture

“Introduction to knowledge management” (92

students) and Case Study 3 (CS3) in the lecture

“Basics of knowledge management”, (20 students)

using again our knowledge management system. To

cover all ways of knowledge transfer and sharing in

CS3 the forums are designed in the way that there is

one superior discussion forum during the entire

semester and specific forums linked to each topic of

the lecture. After a certain period of time (six weeks

in our case) the discussion of the specific forums

continues in the superior forum at a higher level of

knowledge among the students. With this design all

arrows of the C²CM are covered and confirm the

importance of the model as supporting tool for the

design and use of discussion forums in lectures.

The importance of communication in this context

lies in the support by lecturers to select relevant

content. This was another reason for us to integrate

communities in lectures and connect content and

communication with one another. Often time lacks

for discussion in lectures and using social software

tools a discussion that has to be finished can be

continued later.

One specific intervention to integrate content and

communication is for example the duty of students

to add literature references which are related to their

statements. The students can select from a couple of

possibilities: they can either reference documents

and links that are already offered to this topic by the

lecture team, they can upload files and links

themselves and reference these or they can reference

content that was found outside the system in the

internet, in libraries etc.

To figure out if the students make use of the

content and if relevant literature is provided by the

lecture team several interventions were taken. We

designed different constellations consisting of

discussion forums and background libraries

containing the content. The purpose was to gain

insights about which constellation has which effect

on the discussion. For example, one forum is

designed as a mix of several documents and links to

topics to be discussed in the forum. Another forum

provides only basic literature to see, if the discussion

ends once the students have reached a certain degree

of knowledge about the topic or if the students add

more advanced literature to continue the discussion

at a higher level. Another forum offers only

advanced literature to see if the discussion maybe

even does not started because the students are

overstrained or if the students integrated basic

literature.

What all forums have in common is that there is

no literature uploaded by e-moderators during the

semester. These interventions are taken to see which

forums are likely to stimulate the discussion. We try

to offer a broad set of interesting forums, technical

and organizational ones, as we had made good

experiences in our first case studies. The forums are

limited with a number of 20 members – this is about

the number of interested students each topic. And

additionally each student can discuss in the forum

he/she is interested in. As all these forums are

obligatory forums additional volunteer forums to

free topics are offered to further the discussion

without any pressure and duty to communicate.

The measurement of the indicators provides first

indications that the requirement to connect

discussion entries with content helps the students to

stay on a thematic track. Our results also show that

through this intervention the number of entries from

an e-moderator can easily be reduced by about 50%

without risking that the discussions delve into

tangential areas (Puntschart 2006). If this trend

remains (what we expect), we can conclude that

social software can be used efficiently in educational

setting. Its effectiveness is guaranteed through the

many possibilities which such tools offer (c.f.

Section 3).

PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

6 CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK

In the context of higher education the adequate use

of social software tools is of great importance. The

use of such tools must fit to the situation of each

side, the lecturer and the students. There is a clear

evidence that social software tools have the potential

to increase the workload of the lectures. This is

particularly true if their role as e-moderator requires

many interactions in order to keep the community on

a given thematic track. However, if content is better

integrated into the communication patterns, this

integration can substitute or at least support the e-

moderator.

We are currently working on a guideline helping

lecturers to assess which social software type (e.g,

social networking, social bookmarking etc.) can be

best used for which type of course in universities.

This guideline will also include a catalog of

interventions which will trigger the same effects

which are triggered by e-moderator statements

(Puntschart 2006). The application of such

intervention will help to reduce the workload of the

e-moderators.

A further aim is to find the way back to

traditional universities where discussion was part of

studying like the Socratic Dialogues. The new

teaching form – the Web 2.0 teaching – combines

well tried dialogues integrated with relevant content

using new media. The lecturers become reachable

for students still keeping distance but

communication can be furthered without loosing

time.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Know-Center is funded by the Austrian

Competence Center program Kplus under the

auspices of the Austrian Ministry of Transport,

Innovation and Technology (http://www.ffg.at) and

by the State of Styria.

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