@article{Bagci:et:al:2025,
  author    = {Bagci, Mevl{\"u}t and Mehler, Alexander and Abrami, Giuseppe and Schrottenbacher, Patrick
               and Spiekermann, Christian and Konca, Maxim and Schreiber, Jakob and Saukel, Kevin
               and Quintino, Marc and Engel, Juliane},
  title     = {Simulation-Based Learning in Virtual Reality: Three Use Cases
               from Social Science and Technological Foundations in Terms of
               Va.Si.Li-Lab},
  journal   = {Technology, Knowledge and Learning},
  publisher = {Springer Nature},
  year      = {2025},
  month     = {April},
  day       = {01},
  abstract  = {This article examines the predictability of communication scenarios
               within the context of simulation-based learning in virtual reality
               (VR). The aim is to investigate multimodal patterns of social
               interaction that accompany human communication in conflict situations.
               Understanding these patterns can ultimately enhance educational
               technologies' ability to address problematic learning situations
               and support learners in benefiting from VR-based learning. To
               achieve this, the system must accurately predict the task context.
               A central goal of this article is to shed light on this potential.
               Additionally, our research extends to visual communication beyond
               purely linguistic interactions, aiming to enhance VR immersion
               in communicative practices. To this end, the article examines
               the associations between multimodal information units generated
               by individuals interacting in three distinct learning scenarios:
               work organization, school pedagogy, and social life. Several experiments
               demonstrate that predictability exists when multimodal communication
               is analyzed at the level of eight coarse-grained modalities, including
               speech, head and body movements, and gestures. The interactions
               are observed in VR using Va.Si.Li-Lab, a simulation-based system
               that virtualizes learning scenarios, enabling participants to
               collaboratively manage potentially conflicting tasks through multimodal
               communication (Mehler et al. in: Duffy (ed) Digital human modeling
               and applications in health, safety, ergonomics and risk management,
               Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, 2023). The article discusses
               the technology underlying Va.Si.Li-Lab, its database, and the
               post-processing of interaction data, including speech data. It
               provides theoretical motivation for the application scenarios
               and presents experimental data to illustrate the system's usefulness.
               Based on these data, the article details experiments on the multimodal
               detection of social scenarios, positioning Va.Si.Li-Lab as a use
               case in simulation-based learning.},
  issn      = {2211-1670},
  doi       = {10.1007/s10758-025-09837-7},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-025-09837-7}
}

@article{Schrottenbacher:et:al:2025,
  author    = {Schrottenbacher, Patrick and Mehler, Alexander and Berg, Theresa
               and Hustedt, Jasper and Gagel, Julian and Lüttig, Timo and Abrami, Giuseppe},
  title     = {Geo-spatial hypertext in virtual reality: mapping and navigating
               global news event spaces},
  journal   = {New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia},
  volume    = {31},
  number    = {1-2},
  pages     = {76--105},
  year      = {2025},
  publisher = {Taylor \& Francis},
  doi       = {10.1080/13614568.2024.2383601},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2024.2383601},
  eprint    = {https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2024.2383601},
  abstract  = {Every day, a myriad of events take place that are documented and
               shared online through news articles from a variety of sources.
               As a result, as users navigate the Web, the volume of data can
               lead to information overload, making it difficult to find specific
               details about an event. We present News in Time and Space (NiTS)
               to address this issue: NiTS is a fully immersive system integrated
               into Va.Si.Li-Lab that organises textual information in a geospatial
               hypertext system in virtual reality. With NiTS, users can visualise,
               filter and interact with information currently based on GDELT
               on a virtual globe providing document networks to analyse global
               events and trends. The article describes NiTS, its event semantics
               and architecture. It evaluates NiTS in comparison to a classic
               search engine website, extended by NiTSs information filtering
               capabilities to make it comparable. Our comparison with this website
               technology, which is directly linked to the user's usage habits,
               shows that NiTS enables comparable information exploration even
               if the users have little or no experience with VR. That is, we
               observe an equivalent search result behaviour, but with the advantage
               that VR allows users to get their results with a higher level
               of usability without distracting them from their tasks. Through
               its integration with Va.Si.Li-Lab, a simulation-based learning
               environment, NiTS can be used in simulations of learning processes
               aimed at studying critical online reasoning, where Va.Si.Li-Lab
               guarantees that this can be done in relation to individual or
               groups of learners.}
}

@inbook{Mehler:et:al:2024:a,
  author    = {Mehler, Alexander and Bagci, Mevl{\"u}t and Schrottenbacher, Patrick
               and Henlein, Alexander and Konca, Maxim and Abrami, Giuseppe and B{\"o}nisch, Kevin
               and Stoeckel, Manuel and Spiekermann, Christian and Engel, Juliane},
  editor    = {Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, Olga and Nagel, Marie-Theres and Klose, Verena
               and Mehler, Alexander},
  title     = {Towards New Data Spaces for the Study of Multiple Documents with
               Va.Si.Li-Lab: A Conceptual Analysis},
  booktitle = {Students', Graduates' and Young Professionals' Critical Use of
               Online Information: Digital Performance Assessment and Training
               within and across Domains},
  year      = {2024},
  publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
  address   = {Cham},
  pages     = {259--303},
  abstract  = {The constitution of multiple documents has so far been studied
               essentially as a process in which a single learner consults a
               number (of segments) of different documents in the context of
               the task at hand in order to construct a mental model for the
               purpose of completing the task. As a result of this research focus,
               the constitution of multiple documents appears predominantly as
               a monomodal, non-interactive process in which mainly textual units
               are studied, supplemented by images, text-image relations and
               comparable artifacts. This approach is reflected in the contextual
               fixity of the research design, in which the learners under study
               search for information using suitably equipped computers. If,
               on the other hand, we consider the openness of multi-agent learning
               situations, this scenario lacks the aspects of interactivity,
               contextual openness and, above all, the multimodality of information
               objects, information processing and information exchange. This
               is where the chapter comes in. It describes Va.Si.Li-Lab as an
               instrument for multimodal measurement for studying and modeling
               multiple documents in the context of interactive learning in a
               multi-agent environment. To this end, the chapter places Va.Si.Li-Lab
               in the spectrum of evolutionary approaches that vary the combination
               of human and machine innovation and selection. It also combines
               the requirements of multimodal representational learning with
               various aspects of contextual plasticity to prepare Va.Si.Li-Lab
               as a system that can be used for experimental research. The chapter
               is conceptual in nature, designing a system of requirements using
               the example of Va.Si.Li-Lab to outline an experimental environment
               in which the study of Critical Online Reasoning (COR) as a group
               process becomes possible. Although the chapter illustrates some
               of these requirements with realistic data from the field of simulation-based
               learning, the focus is still conceptual rather than experimental,
               hypothesis-driven. That is, the chapter is concerned with the
               design of a technology for future research into COR processes.},
  isbn      = {978-3-031-69510-0},
  doi       = {10.1007/978-3-031-69510-0_12},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69510-0_12}
}

@bathesis{schrottenbacher:2024,
  author    = {Patrick Schrottenbacher},
  title     = {Identifying toxic behaviour in online games},
  institution = {Goethe University},
  pages     = {35},
  year      = {2024},
  url       = {https://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/files/81676/Toxic_video_game_classification.pdf}
  repository = {https://github.com/TheBv/toxic-video-games-gnn}
}

@inproceedings{Baumartz:et:al:2024,
  author    = {Baumartz, Daniel and Konca, Maxim and Mehler, Alexander and Schrottenbacher, Patrick
               and Braunheim, Dominik},
  title     = {Measuring Group Creativity of Dialogic Interaction Systems by
               Means of Remote Entailment Analysis},
  year      = {2024},
  isbn      = {9798400705953},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address   = {New York, NY, USA},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3648188.3675140},
  doi       = {10.1145/3648188.3675140},
  abstract  = {We present a procedure for assessing group creativity that allows
               us to compare the contributions of human interlocutors and chatbots
               based on generative AI such as ChatGPT. We focus on everyday creativity
               in terms of dialogic communication and test four hypotheses about
               the difference between human and artificial communication. Our
               procedure is based on a test that requires interlocutors to cooperatively
               interpret a sequence of sentences for which we control for coherence
               gaps with reference to the notion of entailment. Using NLP methods,
               we automatically evaluate the spoken or written contributions
               of interlocutors (human or otherwise). The paper develops a routine
               for automatic transcription based on Whisper, for sampling texts
               based on their entailment relations, for analyzing dialogic contributions
               along their semantic embeddings, and for classifying interlocutors
               and interaction systems based on them. In this way, we highlight
               differences between human and artificial conversations under conditions
               that approximate free dialogic communication. We show that despite
               their obvious classificatory differences, it is difficult to see
               clear differences even in the domain of dialogic communication
               given the current instruments of NLP.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media},
  pages     = {153–-166},
  numpages  = {14},
  keywords  = {Creative AI, Creativity, Generative AI, Hermeneutics, NLP},
  location  = {Poznan, Poland},
  series    = {HT '24}
}

@inproceedings{Abrami:et:al:2023,
  author    = {Abrami, Giuseppe and Mehler, Alexander and Bagci, Mevl\"{u}t and Schrottenbacher, Patrick
               and Henlein, Alexander and Spiekermann, Christian and Engel, Juliane
               and Schreiber, Jakob},
  title     = {Va.Si.Li-Lab as a Collaborative Multi-User Annotation Tool in
               Virtual Reality and Its Potential Fields of Application},
  year      = {2023},
  isbn      = {9798400702327},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address   = {New York, NY, USA},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3603163.3609076},
  doi       = {10.1145/3603163.3609076},
  abstract  = {During the last thirty years a variety of hypertext approaches
               and virtual environments -- some virtual hypertext environments
               -- have been developed and discussed. Although the development
               of virtual and augmented reality technologies is rapid and improving,
               and many technologies can be used at affordable conditions, their
               usability for hypertext systems has not yet been explored. At
               the same time, even for virtual three-dimensional virtual and
               augmented environments, there is no generally accepted concept
               that is similar or nearly as elegant as hypertext. This gap will
               have to be filled in the next years and a good concept should
               be developed; in this article we aim to contribute in this direction
               and also introduce a prototype for a possible implementation of
               criteria for virtual hypertext simulations.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media},
  articleno = {22},
  numpages  = {9},
  keywords  = {VaSiLiLab, virtual hypertext, virtual reality, virtual reality simulation, authoring system},
  location  = {Rome, Italy},
  series    = {HT '23},
  pdf       = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3603163.3609076}
}

@inproceedings{Mehler:et:al:2023:a,
  abstract  = {Simulation-based learning is a method in which learners learn
               to master real-life scenarios and tasks from simulated application
               contexts. It is particularly suitable for the use of VR technologies,
               as these allow immersive experiences of the targeted scenarios.
               VR methods are also relevant for studies on online learning, especially
               in groups, as they provide access to a variety of multimodal learning
               and interaction data. However, VR leads to a trade-off between
               technological conditions of the observability of such data and
               the openness of learner behavior. We present Va.Si.Li-Lab, a VR-L
               ab for Simulation-based Learn ing developed to address this trade-off.
               Va.Si.Li-Lab uses a graph-theoretical model based on hypergraphs
               to represent the data diversity of multimodal learning and interaction.
               We develop this data model in relation to mono- and multimodal,
               intra- and interpersonal data and interleave it with ISO-Space
               to describe distributed multiple documents from the perspective
               of their interactive generation. The paper adds three use cases
               to motivate the broad applicability of Va.Si.Li-Lab and its data
               model.},
  address   = {Cham},
  author    = {Mehler, Alexander and Bagci, Mevl{\"u}t and Henlein, Alexander
               and Abrami, Giuseppe and Spiekermann, Christian and Schrottenbacher, Patrick
               and Konca, Maxim and L{\"u}cking, Andy and Engel, Juliane and Quintino, Marc
               and Schreiber, Jakob and Saukel, Kevin and Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, Olga},
  booktitle = {Digital Human Modeling and Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics
               and Risk Management},
  editor    = {Duffy, Vincent G.},
  isbn      = {978-3-031-35741-1},
  pages     = {539--565},
  publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
  title     = {A Multimodal Data Model for Simulation-Based Learning with Va.Si.Li-Lab},
  year      = {2023},
  doi       = {10.1007/978-3-031-35741-1_39}
}