University of Koblenz-Landau (Uni KO-LD, D)

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In 1990 the University of Koblenz-Landau was founded, based on the former Erziehungswissenschaftliche Hochschule. In Koblenz and Landau, there are currently about 9.000 students; the head of the University is situated in Mainz. Having its roots in teachers education, in the past two decades computer science and information management have enlarged the portfolio. The University has started internationally oriented Bachelor and Master programs in information management. Significant parts of the courses are taught in English and a semester abroad is required for all master students. The University is in the process of establishing an international student exchange network that will ideally highly overlap with a research group working on modern E-Learning issues. The University thus strives to establish a network of excellence based both on research and practical teaching.

Institute of Knowledge Media
In March 2001, the "Institute of Knowledge Media" (IKM) has been founded by the University Senate replacing its predecessor "Institute for Media Didactics". The IKM is a central University institute. It is in charge of coordinating and promoting the Koblenz efforts in E-Learning. Currently, the institute is building up the Hypercampus, i.e. a wireless LAN as an infrastructure for E-Learning and teaching. Large sections of the new Metternich Campus are already an operational Notebook Campus. The IKM is jointly managed by professors from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Pedagogies. The applying professors originally belong to the AI Group and the IM-Group.

AI Group
The AI Group has currently 21 members. The group has recently received a top ranking among the numerous German groups in its field. The core competence of the group is in the domains of automated deduction, logic programming and deductive databases. Innovative deductive technologies have not only been theoretically developed but were also implemented and successfully tested. The automated theorem prover PROTEIN is a result of this research. Members of the group have also published numerous papers on default logics. Members of the group, led by Dipl.-Inf. Bernd Thomas, are also working in projects that use mobile devices to extract personalized information from the Internet, which is relevant for the current project. Since several years the group emphasises the application of deductive methods. Successful projects in this direction include checking of the consistency of rules for the calculation of banking fees, circuit fault diagnosis and the application of disjunctive logic programs to connect heterogeneous data bases of SME's in Rheinland-Pfalz. Among the most recent applications is the development of a deductive soccer simulation system which has successfully qualified for the 1999 world championship.

In order to support a friendly interface between the user and automated knowledge processing systems, automated proof presentation procedures using natural language generation have been developed. The application of these methods to present a large library of formalised mathematical knowledge on the Internet has led Dr. Bernd Ingo Dahn, a member of the group, to the development of Slicing Book Technology. This innovative technology supports the personalization of existing textbooks. A continuous series of research projects of the group have been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and by the Land Rheinland-Pfalz. In the past years, several research projects have been started in the area of E-Learning, e.g. the group is coordinating the EU project Trial Solution and the BMBF -Project In2Math.

Key people: Prof. Ulrich Furbach, Prof. Dr. Peter Rödler, Dr. Bernd Ingo Dahn

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