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4 a universal basic income could give employees the chance to think about their professional development and protect themselves from exploitation. photo: contrastwerkstatt/fotolia a model for human dignity karl justus bernhard neumärker’s research suggests that a universal basic income would have a chance in germany by rimma gerenstein

6 uni wissen 01 2017 amount currently under discussion in germany is 1000 euros a month. a veil of ignorance the economist refers to his approach as “new ordoliberalism.” this places it in the tradition of the “freiburg school,” which saw regulatory policy as the precondition for a functioning society. to state the idea in simplified terms, a strong state maintains a constant level of competition in the economy, thus guaranteeing its citizens freedom and stability. neumärker adds a new component to this theory: social justice. he is interested in questions that have been largely disregarded up to now: what criteria does a society apply in distributing its wealth, what conditions lead political and economic actors to reassess their behavior, and when should something be regarded as fair or unfair? the “social contract lab” is an experimental laboratory in which neumärker has test subjects negotiate new social orders. the “lab” consists of a lecture hall, computers for chatting, and a lot the increasing digitalization and robotization will bring about sweeping changes in the labor market. karl justus bernhard neumärker thinks it is unrealistic to believe that it will be possible to find paid jobs for the many laid-off workers. photo: nataliya hora/fotolia of dividing walls, because anonymity is key. the participants have the task of negotiating the basic rules for society, but they do not know where they will later stand in the order they have established. “a large majority of the test subjects always allowed themselves to be led behind the veil of this ignorance when questions of social justice were on the table,” reports neumärker. “they selected models that incorporate a ubi rather than the classical market economy model, in which income level is determined by productivity. there is evidently not only the argument of efficiency but also that of fairness.” in other words, it was important for the test subjects to first ensure that all members of society enjoyed a consistent level of security. only then were they also prepared to accept low wages. old model, new arguments but what is the price of fairness? in other words, what consequences would it have for the gross domestic product if everyone were provided with a basic income as a gift from birth? this would be a horror scenario for advocates of classical competitive society, who warn that a ubi would lull people into a state of chronic laziness. if one believes the beaming faces on the “mein grundeinkommen” website, however, the opposite appears to be the case. the winners of a basic income have been transformed into veritable workhorses: judy can finally put all her energy into running her ice cream parlor, because she has paid off the loan she took out to open it. hildegard has realized a lifelong dream and staged a play. christoph has quit his job at a call center and started studying to become a kinder- garten teacher. so what is realistic? neumärker is investigating how people with a ubi organize and spend their time. he and a doctoral student are developing a formula that adds new factors to the common work–life model. in its current form, this model only takes account of the time in which an individual works – that is, earns money – and the time in which he or she does not work and is therefore unproductive. there is no place in this binary formula for volun- teer work or hobbies. neumärker is now adding factors like volunteering, leisure, and creativity to the model.

8 uni wissen 01 2017 who’s afraid of vampire flu? a newly discovered virus in bats is not transmittable to humans by jürgen schickinger bats are regarded as hosts for infectious diseases that can be dangerous for humans. photo: juan cruzado cortés

10 but what does h18 from the flu-like bat virus bind to? to find out, the researchers from cdc attempted to isolate the virus from bat cells – in vain. they attempted to produce it from genetic material in a test tube – in vain. “the scientists were suddenly presented with the question of whether the virus existed at all or was just a phantom,” reports schwemmle. without a concrete virus to point to, they were incapable of answer- ing the most important questions: can humans “no one needs to be afraid of bats.” be infected with h18n11? does the “vampire flu” described in bild present a real danger? schwemmle was very interested in answering these questions, and the well-connected virolo- gist also believed he knew an indirect means of obtaining a functional virus. artifi cial virus lights up green schwemmle had the virus genome sent to him and contacted dr. gert zimmer from the university of bern. the swiss virologist had developed a system in which viruses light up green when they infect cells. however, the system was designed to work with another virus, vesicular stomatitis virus (vsv). schwemmle and zimmer adapted the system and fit the anchoring protein h18 from the bat virus into vsv. then they tested their artificial virus vsv-h18 with many cells of different origins. most of the time it remained dark, but several of the bat cells made it light up a delicate pale green. the cultures with particular cells from dogs shined brightest, but several cultures with human cells also began to glow. this was proof that it is fundamentally possible for humans to be infected. getting to the source of the disease: scientists are studying infectious bat influenza viruses in the lab. photo: martin schwemmle includes genes for h and n, namely the variants h18 and n11. “the virus is clearly similar to influenza a viruses but is different,” says schwemmle. one significant difference is that the bat virus does not bind to sialic acid. this molecule is present on the surface of human cells. it is the docking site for the h protein of influenza a viruses. the pathogens latch onto the cells they infect via sialic acids. but can the virus make the jump to humans in nature as well? how great is the danger of this happening? “only a functioning virus could pro- vide the answer,” says schwemmle, and so the freiburg researchers also went about attempting to reconstruct the bat flu virus h18n11 from the available genetic material. they enjoyed a crucial advantage over their american colleagues: h18n11 reproduced rapidly in the dog cells that had been

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14 telephone, camera, calendar, and much more: smartphones unite all kinds of tools, but they make it more diffi cult to complete several tasks at the same time. diffi cult to complete several tasks at the same time. photo: sandra meyndt photo: sandra meyndt becomes more difficult becomes more difficult the more tasks we are the more tasks we are confronted with at once. confronted with at once. kiesel is now taking a different kiesel is now taking a different approach. she regards multi- approach. she regards multi- tasking as unavoidable and wants tasking as unavoidable and wants to study how people deal with the to study how people deal with the cognitive challenge it involves: “do cognitive challenge it involves: “do we fi nd circumstances in which multi- tasking is easier? can we train these abilities? these questions have been neglected until now.” this has changed since the establishment of a german research foundation (dfg) priority program on the topic in 2015. coordinated by kiesel, the program encompasses 22 research projects at 19 german universities and focuses primarily on integrating aspects from kinesiology and cognitive psychology. “my research group is studying how effective people are when they can determine the sequence of tasks themselves,” she explains. “we reduce the phenomena to simple tasks.” although kiesel and her research group didn’t come to freiburg until 2015, they have already produced concrete results. the psychologists recruited test subjects – mostly students – to test when people complete simple cognitive tasks on the computer faster: when the sequence of tasks is predetermined or when they can determine the sequence themselves. “we reduce the phe- nomena to simple tasks in order to draw infer- ences about complex abilities from everyday life,” explains kiesel. a small room with a computer is all the research- ers need to conduct the experiment. the tasks are easy: identifying even and odd numbers, classifying vowels and consonants. the experi- ment begins following a brief practice phase. the test subjects have to complete more than 100 of these tasks. after each task, the ones who are allowed to multitask have four options to choose from. among other things, they can choose to continue with the task they have begun or switch to another task. data from 20 to 40 test subjects allow the researchers to identify trends: multitasking does not really make the test sub- jects faster, and most of them opt to continue working on a single task. responses to a ques- tionnaire completed afterwards indicate that study participants find multitasking stressful. stress reduction training in another test, kiesel also found out that peo- ple can estimate when switching to another task will save them time. when a task had to be repeated, the researchers made the wait between the repetitions longer each time. hence, it was best to switch to another task as soon as the wait became longer than the time it took to get start- ed on a new task. the test subjects needed approximately 200 milliseconds for this. “we demonstrate that the test subjects are relatively good at estimating this trade-off,” explains kiesel. “controlled forms of multitasking can therefore enable us to work more effectively.” among other things, kiesel would like to study whether people could profit from determining the sequence of tasks themselves and then always completing them in this sequence. training could also help reduce the stress caused by multitask- ing: “when the test subjects practice switching between the tasks ten times for an hour, the potential for saving time is huge.” however, a better understanding of multitask- ing is not just useful for optimizing work routines. the researchers also receive indications on how to improve the operation of technical instruments: “what we see in our experiments is that it is easier for people to switch between tasks when they

1616 y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s photos: dr322, gina sanders, piyaset, photos: dr322, gina sanders, piyaset, photos: dr322, gina sanders, piyaset, photos: dr322, gina sanders, piyaset, photos: dr322, gina sanders, piyaset, firstflight, wavebreakmediamicro, zapp2photo, firstflight, wavebreakmediamicro, zapp2photo, htpix, richtsteiger/fotolia htpix, richtsteiger/fotolia

18 uni wissen 01 2017 faculty of environment and natural resources the university of freiburg’s faculty of forest and environ- mental sciences and institute of earth sciences merged in 2013 to form the faculty of environment and natural resources. the researchers study natural processes and the resulting interplay between the environment and society. the main areas of joint research include the sustainable use of natural resources, the conservation of water, soil, air, and biodiversity, means of adapting to global change, and natural dangers and risks. www.unr.uni-freiburg.de y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s center for renewable energy founded in 2008, the center for renewable energy (zee) unites all university of freiburg departments that engage in research, instruction, and continuing education on renewable energy – including photovoltaics, biomass, wind power, and geothermal power, as well as questions involv- ing energy efficiency. the center also collaborates with external partners, particularly on activities involving research and development. www.zee.uni-freiburg.de freiburg center for interactive materials and bioinspired technologies | freiburg materials research center the university of freiburg opened the freiburg center for interactive materials and bioinspired technologies (fit) in 2016. the scientists at the center take nature as a model for developing intelligent materials and systems that are capable of things like identifying, reacting to, and learning from changes in the environment, healing themselves, and supplying themselves with energy autonomously. the fun- damental research conducted at fit forms the basis for the work done at the freiburg materials research center (fmf). the fmf has been engaged in applied research on the electric, magnetic, thermal, chemical, and optical qual- ities of organic and inorganic materials since 1990. www.fit.uni-freiburg.de www.fmf.uni-freiburg.de “sustainability means confl ict” the german federal government appointed prof. dr. ulrich schraml from the university of freiburg’s fac- ulty of environment and natural resources and baden-württemburg’s state forest testing and re- search institute to the german council on sustainable development in late 2016. nicolas scherger spoke to him about his experiences as a policy advisor. uni’wissen: prof. schraml, why did you decide to par- ticipate in the council on sustainable development? ulrich schraml: i’ve always enjoyed advising politicians, in stuttgart just as at the national level. a major source of my motivation for conducting scientific research is the prospect of receiving feedback – not just from an expert who reviews a journal article but also from political actors who are then, at best, very enthusiastic about letting you know whether they find something good or bad. do scientists have a special responsibility to make a contribution in matters concerning the long-term conservation of nature? that is certainly the case. we hear the term “sustainability” a lot, but it often remains vague and inaccessible. scientists can be a big help in communicating and interpreting what it means. they can translate the term to make it politically accessible in the first place and pinpoint areas where there is a particular need for action. how does the council aim to do this? our great chance is that we receive regular institutional access to policymakers, such as members of bundestag, the german chancellery, or the federal government. to use the words of our prime minister here in baden- württemberg, we are heard as a matter of course – and if our argumentation is sound, our recommendations have a chance of being acted upon. what do you see as being the most difficult task? the greatest challenge is to better integrate and coordi- nate the sometimes very good policies of the individual ministries, like agriculture, labor, education, or environ- ment. when the people at the ministries speak more with one another before pressing ahead with their sectoral policies, we’ve taken one big step forward.

20 uni wissen 01 2017 what could freiburg look like in the year 2030? the city and the university are participating in a competition organized by the german federal ministry of education and research. photos: thomas kunz y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s freiburg: city of the future a project is bringing citizens and researchers together to discuss how to make urban life sustainable by petra völzing

22 uni wissen 01 2017 the second phase of the competition is now underway, and freiburg was one of 20 out of an original 52 cities to make the cut. the goal of this 18-month phase, which began in january 2017, is to develop a strategy for planning and imple- menting the “vision for 2030” outlined in the first phase. the starting point for this task is to elabo- rate on the three topics suggested in the dialogue on the future. this involves a lot of steps. “what we are doing now is studying the individual pro- ject ideas from a scientific perspective to deter- mine how realistic they are,” for instance the goal of making freiburg completely self-sufficient with regard to its food supply. “the goal is unrealistic,” says pregernig, and this has also been confi rmed by the results of a study recently commissioned by the city. however, he does see the sense in investigating the systemic connections. if areas on the upper rhine plain currently dedicated to growing corn for biogas were instead used to produce food, the city could indeed make itself more self-sufficient. in a project led by gerhard stryi-hipp, the fraunhofer institute for solar energy systems (ise) is testing whether and how it is possible for y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s corn for biogas can help to provide a city more renewable energy, but it takes away space for growing food – making it more difficult to achieve self-sufficiency with regard to food supply. photo: avtg/fotolia

24 y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s airborne data collectors remote sensing enables scientists to collect information on the environment and make more accurate assessments of geo-risks by katrin albaum t orrents of water surge through the streets and spill into buildings. the townspeople hadn’t expected such severe flooding. they had been warned that the river that flows through the town would rise after a heavy rainfall, but no one could have foreseen the precise extent of the catastrophe. the fi refi ghters just barely managed to reach the buildings with their emergency vehicles to evacuate everyone, but now they’re stuck, be- cause the street they used to reach the buildings “the photosynthetic activity tells us whether a plant is under stress.” has suddenly flooded as well. the people are stranded. a helicopter is called in, but it takes a long time for it to show up, and it has to make several trips to evacuate everyone. if the rescue workers had known how quickly the flood would spread, they would have used a helicopter right away instead of ground vehicles. precise infor- mation on flow rate, an elevation profile of the surroundings, and other environmental data would have enabled the town to predict the development of the flood and its magnitude in this fictitious scenario. the forest scientist barbara koch, professor of remote sensing and landscape information systems at the university of freiburg, and the members of her research group aim to prevent such events from happening or reduce the dangers they pose. in their project at the sustainability center freiburg and the city’s five fraunhofer institutes, muldiscan, they are developing tech- nical tools for collecting environmental data that will make it possible to more accurately assess geo-risks like floods and to take suitable meas- ures to combat them. “the term ‘geo-risks’ in- cludes all dangers that are neither caused by humans nor set off by biological processes,” explains koch. landslides, avalanches, and volcanic eruptions also fall in this category. “among other things, we are working with the fraunhofer institute for physical measurement techniques on sensor systems on unmanned airborne platforms that can collect environmental information.” what this involves in particular is remote sensing: “remote sensing is a method we can use to obtain information about some-

26 to be chopped down, reducing the economic damage. identifying plant stress the unmanned airborne platforms with sensor systems developed in the project cover a large area in a short period of time. if a plant is under stress, it causes a change in the chlorophyll absorption of their leaves, and they reflect more radiation in certain wavelength ranges, indicating a reduced photosynthetic activity. this is the first source of information on the state of a plant’s health, says koch. “we use sensors to measure the emitted light energy, which is directly con- nected with the photosynthetic activity and thus with the vitality of the plant.” however, it is not possible to see everything from above. “the photosynthetic activity tells us whether a plant is under stress, one possible cause of which is a bark beetle infestation.” determining whether the stress is being caused by beetles or some other factor involves sending a person to examine the tree on location. in the case of certain tree species, however, it is highly likely that the bark beetle is indeed responsible – two of the most common bark beetle species in germany are partial to spruce. “our sensors are designed to identify critical areas that can then be checked individually. in this way, forest owners do not have to monitor their entire plot and can take the necessary measures to prevent the infestation from spreading to other trees more quickly. there are passive and active sensor systems: passive systems use the available sunlight, while active systems generate electromagnetic energy themselves, send it toward the ground, and measure the reflected radiation. “one diffi- culty is designing the sensors to be small and light enough to be fixed on unmanned airborne platforms.” this is where the scientists at the fraunhofer institute for physical measurement techniques come in: they are responsible for developing and improving the sensor systems. koch and her team, for instance, provide infor- mation on the relevant wavelengths, test the sensor systems, and process the data from the studies. airborne systems are already good at identifying severely damaged trees whose leaves exhibit distinct changes and moderately damaged trees that also show visible changes. “our goal is to identify the reduced photosynthetic activity before the changes are visible.” bark beetles pose a major threat to trees. the traces of the beetle are visible after the tree has been infested for a certain time. photo: friedberg/fotolia y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s cial forests bordering on a national park are at a particular risk,” explains koch. in protected forests the bark beetle can breed and spread unchecked because these areas are designated as free from human intervention. “there is thus a buffer zone around the parks in which the bark beetles are observed especially closely.” the goal is to prevent the beetles from making the jump to the commercial forests. “here remote sensing methods serve to support monitoring on the ground.” the traces of a bark beetle infestation be- come visible in the crowns of affected trees after a certain time. the needles change, turning a pale yellow. at this point the pests have already used the tree as a breeding ground for a long time. if a tree is infested by bark beetles, the owner of the forest is required to chop it and all other surrounding trees down. only in this way “we use sensors to measure the emitted light energy.” can the pests be prevented from spreading unchecked. “it would be more advantageous if we had a means of identifying which trees are infested before external changes are visible and the beetles have multiplied and spread to other trees,” says koch. “we are therefore working on methods for identifying an infestation at a very early stage.” in this case less trees would need

maintaining structural diversity examples from germany and brazil demonstrate the impact of the logging industry on biodiversity by sarah schwarzkopf 28 y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s special living space: hollow tree trunks are an important habitat for many forest types. however, trees with these structures are rare in intensively used forests. photos: jürgen bauhus

30 y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s the natural regeneration of beech forests involves an extensive use of individual old-growth trees. the conservation of habitat trees, i.e., trees that provide a habitat for other organisms, and woody debris leads to an increase in structural diversity. photos: jürgen bauhus shelterwood cutting is a traditional form of forest management. individual trees are chopped down, leading to a permanent high forest that can be used intensively while at the same providing space for many different tree species. case of more intensive use. there is thus a threshold value, above which the wood harvest has a negative influence on structural diversity. limiting forest use to this level enables a sus- tainable cultivation of the forest with regard to biodiversity. “this allows us to determine for the fi rst time ever what level of use intensity will likely have a positive effect on biodiversity, or at least not a negative effect,” reports storch. bauhus and his research group are conducting two studies to demonstrate the relevance of this threshold value – one in the forests of baden-württemberg, and the other in the brazilian rainforest. “this long-term study in the tropical rainforest is practically one of a kind.” germany is one of the european union’s most densely forested countries. the average forest in baden-württemberg yields a volume of almost 380 cubic meters of wood per hectare – a record amount. with the help of the inventory data from this state, bauhus and storch have demonstrat- ed that the threshold values for a reduction in structural diversity differ depending on the type of forest. in a beech forest, for example, it is ad- visable to harvest somewhat less wood than can grow back in the same period of time, while in a spruce forest one can harvest nearly twice as much as what grows back. bauhus stresses that the threshold values are not fixed limits but merely an indication of where one should reduce use intensity or could potentially increase it: while deciduous forests tend to be less tolerant of intensive use, it is possible to harvest large amounts of wood from coniferous forests and then convert them into mixed forests. sustainable rainforests as an example of how widely threshold values can differ from region to region, bauhus and his assistant dr. angela de avila are conducting studies in brazilian rainforests. they contain 200 to 300 tree species – compared to only half a dozen or less in german forests. since many of the tree species in rainforests are not usable, foresters chop down just five to ten selected trees per hectare and leave the rest standing. it is only since the second half of the 20th century that attempts are being made to make sustaina- ble use of the rainforests. however, there is a lack of experience with regard to the issue of how much time rainforests need to recover from the interventions and whether this depends on the intensity of use. de avila and bauhus analyzed an experiment that has been running for over 30 years – includ- ing eight inventories to date. “this long-term study in the tropical rainforest is practically one of a kind. they greatly increased the level of use intensity to test out how the forest would recover over time,” explains de avila. she calculated a threshold value for the brazilian forests: in a se- lective wood harvest, one can use approximately 20 percent of the wood supply. if one takes away more, the composition of tree species and the carbon stock of the forests does not recover

switched on the project suslight is developing better leds and therefore addressing the issue of sustainable lighting by alexander ochs 32 32 y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s the metropolitan area of atlanta, usa, seen from space: around one-fifth of the electricity generated worldwide is used for lighting, and the amount continues to increase. the demand for sustainable lighting is correspondingly great. source: nasa image and video library

y t i l i b a n i a t s u s : c i p o t l a i c e p s 34 uni wissen 01 2017 oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor. for the suslight project, prof. dr. joachim wagner, dr. michael kunzer, and the latter’s team at the fraunhofer iaf are conducting research on gallium nitride components for the driver electronics as well as on the assembly and circuitry of the entire led lamp. manoli says of their work so far: “in comparison to the commercial models of the same size, our led lamp yields twice as much light output.” “cold white light keeps us awake during the day; warm white light helps us fall asleep better in the evening.” involves running computer simulations of circuit configurations that consume less electricity but also require less components. the most promising models are then constructed, measured, and evaluated in the lab. another means of optimizing led lamps is to replace components with others made of different materials. one of the weak points in current led lamps or retrofi ts is the electrolytic capacitors built into them, which are used for temporary energy storage. they are more affordable and can store more energy per volume than other types of ca- pacitors, but they are much less durable than the leds and therefore shorten the lifespan of the lamp as a whole. “we have developed a concept that does without electrolytic capacitors and have applied for a patent, and we believe that it could drastically increase the lifespan of leds.” and that’s not all: “we want to integrate microelectronic circuits into the lamps to improve their effi ciency even more, and above all to make them smaller.” even though leds are already far more effi cient than incandescent light effi cient than incandescent light bulbs, the scientists participat- bulbs, the scientists participat- ing in the suslight project ing in the suslight project are conducting research are conducting research on ways to reduce per- on ways to reduce per- formance losses in the formance losses in the driver electronics and driver electronics and in the leds even fur- in the leds even fur- ther. the goal is to ther. the goal is to allow as little heat allow as little heat energy as possible to energy as possible to escape and to reduce escape and to reduce the lamp’s operating the lamp’s operating temperature – cur- temperature – cur- rently around 80 rently around 80 degrees celsius – degrees celsius – the to to the lifespan of the components. that’s components. that’s reason enough to reason enough to search for ways search for ways and means to carry and means to carry off the heat, to off the heat, to “reduce the heat dissi- “reduce the heat dissi- pation in the lamp,” as pation in the lamp,” as manoli terms it: “we’ve already managed to get the losses in the driver electronics down to under 10 percent.” increase increase another objective is to improve the function- ing of the leds. the scientists want to equip the lamps with sensors to make them controllable. for example, the color temperature of the white light could be adjusted so that it appears warm white like the light from a conventional light bulb or cold white like daylight. light bulb or cold white like daylight. that is important, because our that is important, because our innate sense of time, our “in- innate sense of time, our “in- ternal clock,” is influenced ternal clock,” is influenced by the color temperature by the color temperature of the light in our envi- of the light in our envi- ronment: “cold white ronment: “cold white light keeps us awake light keeps us awake during the day; warm during the day; warm white light helps us white light helps us fall asleep better in fall asleep better in the evening,” says the evening,” says manoli. the scien- manoli. the scien- tists want to con- tists want to con- trol the intensity trol the intensity and thus also the and thus also the brightness of the brightness of the light by dimming. light by dimming. moreover, they are moreover, they are developing an inte- developing an inte- grated motion sen- grated motion sen- sor, for instance so sor, for instance so that the lamp only that the lamp only switches on when a switches on when a person is actually nearby. person is actually nearby. “effi cient architectures” is the term manoli uses to refer to what he and his team are working on developing. the process photo: jürgen gocke this light bulb is based on a highly-effi cient led module developed by researchers in the suslight project. it has a color temperature in the cold white region.

36 36 uni wissen 01 2017 authority and democratic education west germany experienced dynamic educational change in the 1950s and 1960s – in contrast to france by thomas goebel school was supposed to educate the germans to become democrats after the second world war and thus help them to overcome “authoritarian traditions” that had ultimately also paved the way for national socialism. photo: addictive stock/fotolia

38 uni wissen 01 2017 “for example, many ministries of education – even some in states governed by the conservative christian democratic union – began in the second half of the 1950s to support critical student newspapers,” says levsen. active students were invited to participate, and there were government grants. from the 1960s on, more and more minis- tries began forbidding school principals from censoring the newspapers, “with the argument: ‘we’ve had that already.’” levsen estimates that almost 1000 student newspapers existed in mid 1960s germany, compared to perhaps 20 or 30 in france – and even these were “underground” newspapers, established without official recogni- tion and support. student protests in freiburg: in germany the movement of 1968 served more to intensify developments that had already been in evidence since the mid 1950s, whereas in france the revolt constituted an actual break. source: freiburg university archive the historian paints a similar picture of the way political education was treated in the two coun- tries: experts funded by the german government came to evening lectures and discussions with the leaders – still known at the time as “führer” – of youth organizations, and when swastikas were painted on a synagogue in cologne in 1959, there were immediately calls for more political information at schools. when copycats committed a similar offence shortly afterwards in paris, the reaction was completely different. levsen tells of a school principal’s letter prohibiting all political discussion in class, because if the topic were to become a part of school life it could lead to unrest and dissent among the student body. levsen stresses that her intention was not to “paint a rosy picture and sum things up in black and white terms” in her book. there were of course many teachers in the early years of the federal republic who refused to speak about national socialism, or principals who banned student newspapers on account of harmless arti- cles. the historian’s intention was rather to iden- tify general patterns of interpretation in the debates and point out their concrete potency. she did her research in the archives of german and french school administrations, as well as in magazines for parents, publications of teachers’ associations, educational treatises, informational material for youth leaders from youth organiza- tions, and student newspapers. radicalized debates levsen examined the treatment of authority relations in four selected fields: school culture, political education, stance on corporal punish- ment, and sex education. her findings bring to light subtle differences: “beatings were indeed much more prevalent in german elementary schools than in french schools,” she says. there had already been criticism of this in the early 1950s, “but the change didn’t really gain momen- tum until the argument of the past came into play and until psychologists began arguing in the 1960s that if we beat the children they would become new eichmanns, nazis ready to obey orders.” debates on sex education followed a similar trend, with some aspects becoming even more radicalized in the 1970s: “there was a theory that it was not enough to merely provide children information but that one also needed to awaken their desire, because only so would they develop into truly liberated adults who would not become fascists.” in a follow-up project, levsen wants to study how this very german argumentation influ- enced the philosophical debates of the time, also at the international level.

40 40 uni wissen 01 2017 uni wissen 01 2017 starting gun: the brain gives the command, and the muscles execute it – but it is not yet known how this process works in detail. photo: valeriy velikov/fotolia from idea to movement scientists are using a special blend of methods to investigate previously unknown neural mechanisms of motor control by stephanie heyl

42 executing a simple movement involves complex struc- executing a simple movement involves complex struc- tures: a part of the cerebral cortex (marked yellow) tures: a part of the cerebral cortex (marked yellow) contains the so-called pyramidal cells. some of these contains the so-called pyramidal cells. some of these cells have long projections called axons that reach into cells have long projections called axons that reach into the spinal cord, where they pass on the commands to the spinal cord, where they pass on the commands to nerve cells that then use their own axons to activate nerve cells that then use their own axons to activate the skeletal muscles. illustration: oliver wrobel the skeletal muscles. sends via these connections can not be changed until it reaches the spinal motor neurons, and it is therefore also what activates the muscles.” leukel’s team wants to stimulate precisely those cells that reach the motor neurons without any further influences. to do so, the researchers use an ingenious trick: “it’s all about timing – that’s the secret ingredient that gives us a unique possibility to apply our methods to observe a subpopulation of cells in the primary motor cortex with great precision.” “training of particular motions is a reduction of variability.” can again be measured. this is only possible because the scientists know precisely how much time the information coming from the primary motor cortex needs on the fastest pyramidal pathway. “we wait for the point at which the two stimuli collide at the spinal cord. the collision leads to a change in our measurement signal, allowing us to determine the activity of our pyramidal cell population. this is a rather com- plex undertaking, but it is the only way to enable isolated and detailed observation of nerve cell activity in the human brain,” leukel concludes. the key lies in precisely coordinating the stimuli. “since our stimulation methods and recording devices are much faster than what the nervous system itself is capable of, we are able to image the activity at a high temporal resolution.” to this end, the researchers apply electric stimulation along the leg parallel to the transcra- nial magnetic stimulation of the brain. these nerves also reach into the spinal cord and activate the motor neurons via a reflex. the two stimuli arrive at the spinal cord simultaneously, and this excitatory and inhibitory forces but how is the interaction that produces the actual movement organized? when the pyramid cells are stimulated in the primary motor cortex, excitatory and inhibitory forces are always active

44 44 digitalized dialects a team at the department of english is pioneering research-based learning approaches with the linguistic database freddie by anita rüffer w hen many germans hear the name freddy, they think of a television detective from cologne on the popular crime series tatort. how- ever, freddie is also the name of a linguistic database developed at the university of freiburg’s department of english that is currently poised to expand into the great wide world of the internet and open up entirely new avenues for research-based learning – and not just for students of english linguistics. freddie (freiburg english dialect database for instruction and e-learning) is based on an earlier database called the freiburg corpus of english dialects (fred). just as not everybody in germany speaks such a clean standard german as people in hanover do, not everybody in great britain speaks a pure oxford english like the queen does, the variety of english generally taught in germans schools. just like in germany, the dialects in great britain can differ in grammar or pronunciation from county to county and from town to town. a team of researchers led by prof. dr. bernd kortmann at the university of freiburg’s department of eng- lish decided in the late 1990s to examine these differences in detail and began systematically collecting data on english dialects. in the course of countless trips, the team collected data in the form of transcripts and original interviews: men and women, most of them over 60, shared stories from their lives with the researchers. the material could therefore also be of interest to historians. from fred to freddie what bernd kortmann and his data collectors were interested in, however, was not primarily the content of the stories but “how the people said things.” the fred corpus consists of 300 hours of audio recordings encompassing a total of 2.5 million words from 372 interviews conducted in 163 towns in england, scotland, and wales. the collection is the largest of its kind and is a veritable treasure trove for corpus linguistics:

46 this online interface shows what data are available for listening and download. photo: marten juskan, katja roller/department of english with the help of a professional program for linguistic text analysis, students found out that the negation “nae” – as in “he does nae like it”) is common in scotland but is not used in the south of england. photo: marten juskan, katja roller/department of english; source: laurence anthony, www.laurenceanthony.net/software.html undergraduate seminar: the students learned to conduct interviews and use a computer program to transcribe them. they saw how a linguistic corpus is set up. they analyzed which regions various words come from – finding out, for in- stance, that the negation “nae” (as in “he does nae like it”) is common in scotland but is not used in the south of england. they carried out statistical studies and learned a new program- ming language for creating charts and diagrams. “like in a scientifi c process,” explains katja roller, “they selected data, edited and analyzed them, and visualized the results.” “we are going to edit the data for use by people at different competency levels.” damaris stein, one of the participants in the seminar, found it “pretty cool that you can access so many audio files from so many different regions. it’s really funny to compare the various accents.” without freddie, the 21-year-old undergraduate might have had to conduct hun- dreds of interviews herself to discover the differ- ences between the dialects. for her term paper she worked with fred-s, a subcorpus containing around a million words taken from transcribed interviews conducted in various regions. the subcorpus was recently made available on the freiburg university library’s “freidok” server. the library – as well as the university’s it services department – has been very active in supporting the linguistic pioneers at the department of eng- lish. the library employees write programs, put the data online, and make suggestions about how it can be used. “we spurred each other on,” kortmann raves of the collaboration. freely available elements marten juskan, for example, is working on combining text and audio files. so far it is only possible to make rough classifications, but “we’re going to refine things until it’s possible to look at each individual sound.” he hopes that this monumental project will one day benefit researchers around the world – and of course teachers as well: the instructional development award winners aim to develop general instruc- tional materials and concepts for the freddie platform – like those katja roller has already tested out in her seminar – and also make them suitable for independent study. statistics and corpus analysis programs will be provided on the internet as tools. in addition to these freely avail- able elements, the team is planning password- protected areas in which teachers can post tests

48 48 uni wissen 01 2017 learning good teaching educational scientists are using an educational research model to improve teacher education by stephanie streif the extraterrestrial e.t. lands in front of the administrative building of the university of freiburg. how can he learn to find his way around on earth? this is a problem participants of a workshop on competency-based instruction were confronted with. illustration: svenja kirsch

50 uni wissen 01 2017 becoming a globetrotter. more specifically, what he’ll need is, first, walks through town; second, a map; third, knowledge on how to navigate through town by foot; and fourth, a whole lot of training in things like passing zebra crossings. dr. jessica kreutz from the department of political science and history at the freiburg university of educa- “the learning goals need to be arranged in steps, broken up into their individual elements, reviewed, and put together again.” tion knows from experience what it means to design a history seminar in accordance with the 4c/id model. “instruction in the field of history is no longer just about presenting dates and facts but about teaching the students the necessary know-how,” she says. the four-component instructional design model, 4c/id for short, incorporates active learning and fosters the acquisition and long-term retention of knowledge and abilities. photo: robynmac/fotolia what does this involve? field-specific knowl- edge is only one side of the coin, says kreutz. “to become good teachers, students of history also need methodological, diagnostic, analytical, conceptual, and self-reflective competencies to foster an awareness for history in their classes.” as suggested by the 4c/id model, kreutz linked the learning content in her seminar “competency models and competency development in history instruction” to concrete exercises. this resulted in learning tasks composed of field-specific, pedagogical, and theoretical parts, such as the following: “design a source-based instructional sequence on a selected historical topic including a complex task description and an explanation of the underlying theory.” this learning task was already quite complex, says kreutz. “at the be- ginning of the seminar, the tasks were much sim- pler.” this is also a part of the model: to avoid making excessive demands on the students, the teacher should begin by providing them more support and less complex learning tasks. at some point the progress becomes apparent, and the students continue learning alone or in small groups. “the learning goals need to be arranged in steps, broken up into their individual elements, reviewed, and put together again,” explains kreutz. “in this way, you don’t lose sight of the big picture with 4c/id.” teachers become moderators the idea is that when the students work with the material in this manner, they can still recall and apply what they have learned even years later. the model also appears to foster autono- mous learning. kreutz put a lot of time into pre- paring her seminar. the role she took on during class meetings was then more that of a moderator. the students did most of the work, and they ap- preciated the opportunity: in a short evaluation during the last class meeting, 75 percent of them stated that they had felt “more active” than in other courses. in addition, 87.5 percent found the authentic and whole learning tasks “very appro- priate” and another 12.5 percent “appropriate.” one course participant noted on her question- naire that the theoretical knowledge remained longer in her memory because she was able to apply it in practice and learn it step by step. moreover, wrote another participant, the tasks were oriented closely toward his future working life at school: “that shows the point of it all.”

52 field test: 150 students completed the online training course “elis.” photo: sandra meyndt ending the illusion of understanding how the online training platform “elis” teaches learning strategies and helps students to apply them by sonja seidel “elis” is the name of the cartoon figure that guides students through the university of freiburg’s new online training course. the acronym stands for “erfolgreich lernen im studium” (“learn successfully in a course of study”). illustrations: steffen weyreter/ university of freiburg l isa is new at the university. the 18-year-old is studying psychology and will be taking her first exam in two weeks. her desk is cluttered with piles of books. lisa sorts, underlines, and draws diagrams; she needs to work through hun- dreds of pages of literature. time is short, her pulse races – lisa has only made it through half of the reading material, and she doesn’t know how she’ll be able to remember the many terms. she begins to doubt whether she’ll be able to pass the exam at all. she always had good grades in school, but now she’s wondering whether the university is really the right place for her. the university of freiburg is now offering a new online training platform designed to help beginning students like lisa: “elis” – “erfolgreich lernen im studium” (“learn successfully in a course of study”) – teaches students learning strategies and then helps them to integrate them into their daily lives. “initially, students are com- pletely overwhelmed with the amount of material they are required to learn,” reports prof. dr. alexander renkl from the university of freiburg’s institute of psychology. that’s the reason why renkl and his assistants jasmin leber and timo endres developed the platform. the idea for it

54 uni wissen 01 2017 the strategies presented on the online training platform focus particularly on knowledge retrieval. “most students learn by reading a text, reading it again, and then reading the summary. however, merely reading a text again is not a very effective way to learn something by heart – that’s what our research indicates,” explains endres. it is much more effective to begin by calling back to mind what one has read. psychologists refer to this as the testing effect or retrieval-based learning. “this links the knowledge to prior knowledge in the brain and consolidates it. the retrieval trains the brain for the concrete exam situation, as it were,” adds renkl. the tool communicates this principle on an individual basis: the system tests lisa’s newly acquired knowledge about learning strategies between the learn- ing phases by again asking her ques- tions from the initial test: have her responses changed? has she internalized the techniques? steffen weyreter/ university of freiburg illustration: in the second part, the pro- gram helps lisa to come up with concrete situations for applying and practicing the learning strat- egies. this involves formulating so-called implementation inten- tions, which follow an “if–then” pattern: if lisa has finished reading a chapter in a textbook, for example, then she will apply learning strategy a. since lisa has set these intentions beforehand with the help of the training platform, it’s easier for her to actually apply the learning strategies in daily life. the online training platform elis has been available to all students at the institute of psy- chology since february 2017. “it currently serves a dual function. we are now at the point where we can already offer it to the students as a fully functional tool, but we’re still testing in the back- ground whether everything works right and whether we can improve any of the content,” says jasmin leber. “in the long term we envision that it might also be used at other faculties.” www.elis.vm.uni-freiburg.de tino endres studied psychology at the university of innsbruck, austria, and at the univer- sity of freiburg. since 2014 he has worked as a research assistant at the university of freiburg institute of psychology while writing a doctoral dissertation on learning through memory retrieval and the mechanisms of the testing effect. in addition, he has served since 2016 as an editorial assistant for the journal unterrichtswissenschaft. prof. dr. alexander renkl studied psychology at rwth aachen university and at the university of marburg. in 1991 he earned his doctorate in psychology at the uni- versity of heidelberg, and in 1997 his habilitation qualification at the ludwig maximilian university of munich. after a stint as an educational psychology professor at the schwäbisch gmünd university of education, he accepted a chair in educational psy- chology and developmental psychology at the univer- sity of freiburg. his research focuses on example-based learning, self-explanations and instructional expla- nations, learning from multiple representations (multimedia learning), learning by writing/journal writing, and the pedagogi- cal and psychological knowledge of teachers. jasmin leber fi rst studied to become a secondary school teacher in english and spanish at the university of freiburg and then went on to study childhood development and education at the freiburg university of education. in 2012 she returned to the university of freiburg to complete her master’s in education- al science. she has served since 2013 as a research assistant at the university of freiburg institute of psychology and is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on learning with adaptive and adaptable multimedia systems. in 2014 leber received the johannes wildt junior researchers’ award for research on higher education teaching and learning from the deutsche gesellschaft für hochschuldidaktik (dghd). photos: thomas kunz further reading endres, t. / leber, j. / renkl, a. (2017): erfolgreich lernen im studium – ein adaptives online-lernstrategietraining für studienanfänger (manuscript submitted for publication). glogger, i. / schwonke, r. / holzäpfel, l. et al. (2012): learning strategies assessed by journal writing: prediction of learning outcomes by quantity, quality, and combinations of learning strategies. in: journal of educational psychology 104/2, pp. 452. mandl, h. / friedrich, h. f. (eds.) (2006): handbuch lernstrategien. göttingen.

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