University Of Passau Research Articles

Report on the First CELIS NOW Conference ‘The Age of Open Strategic Autonomy’

On 11–13 May 2023, the CELIS Institute’s Early-Career Scholars’ and Practitioners’ Network on the Law and Practice of Economic Warfare (CELIS NOW) organized its first conference on ‘The Age of Open Strategic Autonomy’ in Berlin, Germany. This new network is designed to provide its members with a unique opportunity to exchange ideas and engage with the growing community of scholars and practitioners interested in investment and trade law in this changing geo-economic world. The CELIS Institute is an independent non-profit, non-partisan research enterprise dedicated to promoting better regulation of foreign investments in the context of security, public order, and competitiveness. CELIS NOW was established by Jonas Fechter (University of Münster) and Janosch Wiesenthal (University of Passau) in 2022, in order to create a forum for early-career lawyers in the field of trade and investment law. Since then, CELIS NOW has grown in size. At this first conference, about 40 lawyers who are professionally engaged with geo-economic trends gathered in Berlin to exchange ideas related to the emerging doctrine of Open Strategic Autonomy. The conference was generously supported by BLOMSTEIN and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. This report summarizes the conference proceedings. Open Strategic Autonomy, Economic Warfare, Economic Security, Geo-Economics, Investment Law, Trade Law, Investment Screening, Foreign Subsidies, Anti-Coercion Instrument

Narrative Didactics in Mathematics Education: Results from a University Geometry Course

Abstract In a Swedish second semester course on Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry in mathematics education at Karlstad University, a bridging teaching strategy comprising elements from Mathematics, Didactics, History, Literature, and Technology was applied by using the concept of Narrative Didactics and Digital Interactive Mathematical Maps developed by the Professorship for Didactics of Mathematics at the University of Passau, Germany. The complete assessment of the teaching strategy comprised both an evaluation of the technological and the narrative didactical scaffolding and was partly analysed previously concerning especially the technology acceptance aspect, while here we broaden and deepen the evaluation analysis of the application of narrative didactic elements. Regarding the latter, at the end of the course, students were asked to formulate a short historical-oriented narrative motivation for a school topic of own choice with the help of information provided by the timeline of the Mathematical Map. A representative example of these art-combining products is presented and evaluated according to elements of narrative didactics. Results indicate a fruitful, promising, and synergetic connection between different fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics that can lead to a richer and more sustainable learning process in mathematics lessons both at university and school level.

Concurring Data Policy Cycles? Global Data Strategies Conference, University of Passau, 20 and 21 September 2021

Abstract Global data law is on the rise, and the competitiveness of societies is at stake. Today, the competing approaches to data law around the world are still manifold. But is it likely that these approaches will be unified by a strategic turn towards a global data strategy? The first conference of the Global Data Law Conference Series of the University of Passau Research Centre of Law and Digitalisation (FREDI) turned to this question in September 2021. The ensuing discussions led by international experts highlighted the interplay between policymakers and private corporations in shaping data strategies and protecting as well as empowering data subjects. Different data protection levels worldwide were evaluated and factored against the data-driven competitive advantages of private corporations. The range of aspects spread from prospects of a global data governance architecture, the notion of data colonialism and the European digital single market to the Chinese digital silk road.

Reading Mark’s Gospel as a Text From Collective Memory

Reading Mark’s Gospel as a Text From Collective Memory

Student-generated Questions: Developing Mathematical Competence through Online-Assessment

This action research study presents the findings of using a formative assessment strategy in an online mathematic course during the world-wide outbreak of Covid-19 at the University of Passau, Germany. The main goals of this study were (a) to enhance students’ self-regulated learning by shifting the direction of assessment from instructors to the students, (b) to promote deep active learning in mathematics. Students were required to conduct self-regulated learning on a selected topic. They were encouraged to formulate two multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and pose them after each presentation in an online course. The effectiveness of Student-generated Questions (SGQs) as a learning strategy was measured in terms of (a) students’ engagement, and (b) learning outcomes. While evidence on students’ engagement was gathered through an online questionnaire survey, the learning outcomes were measured by analyzing the quality of SGQs. Results indicated that authoring questions, though leading to a higher students’ engagement with the materials, could be quite challenging for students and did not lead to higher achievement. The authors provide some suggestions for improving the process through regular uses of digital technologies such as PeerWise.

Das Projekt Aus der Tradition in die Zukunft als Beitrag zur digitalen Namengeographie

As part of a cross-border project at the Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích and the University of Passau, similarities and divergences were examined in place names, surnames, literature and social culture along an old trade route between Passau (Czech: Pasov) and Budějovice (German: Budweis). This makes it possible to trace the development of the relationship between the two peoples of the border area back to the Middle Ages. In this essay, we focus on place names and family names. Place names such as Czech Čakov and German Groß Čekau were explained and classified typologically on the basis of the documents and dialectal pronunciations elicited during the project. In the area of family names, the development and spatial distribution of names such as Janko are examined in order to trace linguistic exchanges and changes in the contact area shared by the two ethnic groups/language communities. A database and web application involving geographical multimedia have been used to store, analyse and represent the research results. The material collected can be displayed cartographically and evaluated according to a variety of criteria. Concerning family names, the application is intended to lay the foundation for a spatial representation not only of individual names but also of etymological or semantical name groups as well as name formation patterns. The results of this research have been made accessible via a web browser and a mobile app.

International workshop ‘Contested Spaces and Symbolic Landscapes in Texts from the Early Modern Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its Neighbouring Regions’ (University of Passau, Germany, 29–30 March 2019)

International workshop ‘Contested Spaces and Symbolic Landscapes in Texts from the Early Modern Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its Neighbouring Regions’ (University of Passau, Germany, 29–30 March 2019)

Contemporary German Ukrainian Studies: the University of Passau

The article gives an idea of the development of contemporary Ukrainian Studies in Germany through the example of the University of Passau (Lower Bavaria). The author informs about activities of two University chairs of the Faculty of Philosophy: the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History and Culture of Eastern Europe and the Chair of Slavic Literatures and Cultures as well as two centers – the Ukrainian Studies Competence Center and «East European Perspective».

Universidades públicas como agentes de desenvolvimento urbano e regional de cidades médias e pequenas: uma discussão teórica, metodológica e empírica

As universidades apresentam um importante papel social na promoção do desenvolvimento social, cultural e econômico. Em diversos países sua instalação está ligada também ao desenvolvimento urbano e regional, especialmente de cidades médias e pequenas, promovendo, com relativo sucesso, a modernização da estrutura urbana e econômica dessas cidades. A base empírica desse estudo são as cidades sede dos campi da Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia (instalados em 2006) e Passau (Baviera/Alemanha), sede da Universidade de Passau, desde 1978. Nosso objetivo é propor uma abordagem metodológica que dê suporte para pesquisas focadas na integração, na fragmentação e nos conflitos entre a cidade da população local e aquela das universidades. Nossas conclusões principais indicam uma grande dinamização do mercado imobiliário, diversificação das atividades comerciais e de serviços, ampliação do papel regional, mas também, do ponto de vista social, conexões fracas e pontuais com a cidade, gerando conflitos entre estudantes/professores e a população local.
 
 Abstract
 
 PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES AS AGENTS IN URBAN AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUM AND SMALL-SIZED CITIES: A THEORETICAL, METHODOLOGICAL AND EMPIRICAL APPROACH
 
 The universities have an important role in our society to promote social, cultural and economical development. In many countries universities has been installed in small and medium-sized cities since the 70’s to promote the development and ‘modernization’. Some of them are very successful and the economical development is visible and unquestionable. Our empirical study focuses the cities of the Federal University of Reconcavo da Bahia (installed in 2006) and Passau/Bavaria/Germany (University of Passau, installed in 1978). Our goal is to propose methodological approach to support a research based on the integration, fragmentation and conflicts between the city of the local population and city of the Universities. Our major conclusions are connected with the increase of the real estate market, diversification of commercial and service activities, intensification of regional role. From the social point of view, however, there are weak and punctual connections with the cities, promoting spatial and cultural conflicts between the students/professor and the local population.

Guest Editorial

Guest Editorial

Gender and Islam in Southeast Asia

Emerging from a 2005 conference at the University of Passau (Germany),Susanne Schroter’s edited volume brings together an interdisciplinary groupof scholars, from anthropologists and historians to literary scholars and Muslimfemale activists, to examine this complex subject. The book is organizedinto four country-specific sections on Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,and Thailand, respectively. The fifth and final section, consisting of only onechapter, adds a transnational dimension by analyzing the Tablighi Jama‘at.Despite the volume’s breadth of disciplinary and geographic contributions,its authors share a common project: the recuperation of Muslim women’s history,and especially female Muslim agency, amidst the rise of Islamization inSoutheast Asia.In her introductory essay, Schroter works to unite the country-specificcontributions under a broader regional framework. She argues that whereasIslam in Southeast Asia has traditionally been “moderate, especially with regardto its gender orders” (p. 7), the recent “upsurge of neo-orthodox Islamposes a threat” (p. 37) to women’s rights. With characterizations of conservativeMuslims as “religious zealots” (p. 16) and “hardliners” (p. 19), shepresents Islamization as a process in which “orthodox” Muslims, often withinternational ties, have imperiled the moderate Islam of traditional SoutheastAsia and the liberal Islam of Muslim reformers. The majority of the volume’scontributors embrace this framing narrative. On the one hand, this globalstory enables them to shine new light on the region’s pressing debates overIslam and gender. Yet, on the other hand, the framework consistently placesfemale agency in absolute distinction with so-called orthodox Islam, therebyeclipsing a more complicated landscape of ethical contestation and culturaldifference.Building on Schroter’s framework, the book’s opening section on Indonesiafeatures four chapters, each of which emphasizes challenges Muslimwomen face in asserting their rights an identities in various Indonesian Islamicspheres. To begin, Nelly van Doorn-Harder investigates the Harmonious FamilyProgram of ‘Aisyiyah, Muhammadiyah’s sister organization, as “a tool totransmit the reformist views on gender and women’s position within marriage” ...

Understanding Programmers' Brains with fMRI

Event Abstract Back to Event Understanding Programmers' Brains with fMRI Janet Siegmund1*, Christian Kästner2, Sven Apel1, Chris Parnin3, Anja Bethmann4 and Andre Brechmann4 1 University of Passau, Germany 2 Carnegie Mellon University, United States 3 Georgia Institute of Technology, United States 4 Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Germany The human factor plays an important role in software engineering, because humans design, implement, and maintain software. One of the most important cognitive processes is program comprehension, because programmers spend most of their time with understanding source code [3,4,5]. However, despite of more than 30 years of research, we still have no clear understanding of the relevant processes during comprehending source code. To gain a deeper understanding of program comprehension, we measured it by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) [2] since fMRI has proved successful to study comparatively complex cognitive processes in detail. Our hope is that in the process of understanding developer's cognition, we can create a platform for sharing how these complex processes map onto other studies of cognition, and even incorporate ideas for organizing software into models of cognitive processes. In our study, we designed several short source-code snippets and asked computer-science students to determine the output if the source code would be executed (see Fig. 2 or project's website (tinyurl.com/ProgramComprehensionAndfMRI/) for examples). As control condition, we let participants locate syntax errors that did not require understanding the source code (Fig. 3). After testing and refining the source-code snippets in behavioral pilot studies [1], we carried out the measurements with 17 participants on a 3~Tesla scanner. For fMRI, we acquired 985 functional volumes in 32 minutes and 50 seconds using standard echo planar imaging (EPI) sequence with whole brain coverage at an isotropic resolution of 3 mm. Functional data were analyzed in BrainVoyager employing a random effects GLM contrasting the program comprehension condition against the syntax condition. We found Brodmann areas 6, 21, 40, 44, and 47 are activated during program comprehension (Fig. 1). These areas are related to language processing, working memory, and problem solving, which is in line with the current understanding of program comprehension. The results of our study suggest that fMRI is promising to give us a more detailed understanding of program comprehension. Over the next years, we hope that more researchers will adopt our idea. By raising the awareness of how fMRI can be applied to software-engineering research, we also hope that more software engineers will contribute to develop more powerful fMRI paradigms. In the long run, we will gain a better understanding of the neural basis of designing, implementing, and maintaining software, which may in turn help to optimize tools or programming languages. Additionally, our research will have a broad impact on education, so that training beginning programmers can be improved considerably. Despite intensive research (e.g., Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education), it is still rather unclear how and why students struggle with learning programming. With a detailed understanding of the cognitive processes that underlie a developers' every-day task, we might find the right recipe to teach any student to become an excellent software developer (e.g., by including training language skills, since our study showed a close relationship to language processing). As next steps, we will conduct more such experiments. To support replication and help other software-engineering researchers adopt fMRI for their research, we will make all data publicly available. Eventually, we hope to find answers to heatedly discussed questions, such as ``How should we teach programming?'' or ``What makes a programmer excellent?''. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Acknowledgements Thanks to Thomas Leich and Gunter Saake for fruitful discussions.

Trust and Trustworthiness in Times of Crisis

This paper addresses the impact of a crisis situation on trust and trustworthiness in the laboratory. The experiment is based on an adapted version of the trust game by Berg et al. (1995) and tries to shed light on the question if crisis situations affect trust relationships. Analyzing experimental data from 384 observations collected at the University of Passau, I find strong evidence that crises do not directly affect trust behavior. However, the results show that the relationship between crisis and trust is mediated: crises have a strong impact on expectations on the counterpart’s trustworthiness which in turn influence the amount of trust exhibited. The data also reveals an interesting gender aspect: female subjects prove to be significantly less trusting and less trustworthy than their male counterparts.

Experiences and evaluation of a blended learning concept for learning Chinese in higher education

The open-source learning management system ILIAS has gained widespread popularity in educational institutions across Europe. At the University of Passau it was used in a two-year project for implementing a Chinese language learning course. Chinese is a difficult foreign language for German speakers to grasp. There are many distinct difficulties, which we aim to overcome with our Chinese course. This article will describe the development process and our experience in using and adopting ILIAS for learning Chinese, and the evaluation of the blended learning course. The paper shows evaluation results and experiments conducted during and after the project Chinese for the Workplace. Generally they are based on questionnaires and interviews to identify problems and benefits of the Chinese course.

GvSIG in the academic education of heterogeneous target groups – experiences in lectures, exercises and eLearning

Thanks to easier operability and a growing range of functions, open source products are increasingly being used in teaching GIS to students of various course programs. The elaboration of such courses poses the challenge of taking into account different study paths, allowing for student autonomy (e-learning), and choosing the right software. The article suggests answers to these questions by presenting the classes offered at the University of Applied Sciences in Deggendorf and the University of Passau since winter 2010/11 as well as ideas for future course offers.

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How Corruption Affects Productivity

KyklosVolume 56, Issue 4 p. 457-474 How Corruption Affects Productivity Johann Graf Lambsdorff, Johann Graf Lambsdorff 1 University of Passau, Germany jlambsd@uni-passau.deSearch for more papers by this author 1 Johann Graf Lambsdorff, Johann Graf Lambsdorff 1 University of Passau, Germany jlambsd@uni-passau.deSearch for more papers by this author 1 First published: 14 November 2003 https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0023-5962.2003.00233.xCitations: 183AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume56, Issue4November 2003Pages 457-474 RelatedInformation

Rice harvesting and social change in Java

1Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta (August 1997), Institute of Social Studies, The Hague (September 1997) and the University of Passau (June 1998). Thanks particularly to Juliette Koning for helpful comments, to Jenny and Paul Alexander for reminding me of an important missing reference, and to Alison Leitch for endless patience.