New Collaborative Research Centre on simulation-based learning at LMU
SHARP, a new Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), aims to contribute to theory-building on AI-supported personalization of simulation-based learning in higher education. The center is being launched at LMU in cooperation (among others) with Technical University of Munich (TUM).
LMU Munich is launching the Collaborative Research Centre CRC-Transregio 419 “Simulation-based learning in higher education: Advancing research on process diagnostics and personalized interventions (SHARP)” in cooperation with the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In addition to LMU and TUM, the University of Augsburg and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre are also involved as partners.
Many professional fields such as school teaching and medical practice increasingly call for skills such as collaborative diagnostics and complex problem-solving. The Collaborative Research Centre SHARP investigates how simulations can be designed to systematically foster these skills. Artificial intelligence will play a key role here in determining existing skill levels and adapting simulations to individual needs. In addition, the researchers will explore what skills university educators require to effectively integrate personalized, simulation-based learning into the curriculum and their classes, so that students can be better equipped for the complex demands of professional practice.
The LMU-NYU Research Cooperation Program also contributed to defining the collaborative research center. The “LMU-NYU Workshop on personalized adaptation of Simulation-Based Learning” (funded in 2024) and therefore the collaboration of LMU Prof. Dr. Stefan Ufer and New York University (NYU) Professor Jan L. Plass laid, according to Professor Stefan Ufer, “a conceptual foundation for the design of personalization strategies in the TRR 419 SHARP initiative and can serve as a basis for a joint design work and investigations.”
SHARP is the first Collaborative Research Centre in the field of educational research and plans to develop important foundations for innovations in higher education. The CRC unites the disciplines of medicine, biology, chemistry, information technology, mathematics, physics, pedagogy, and psychology.