My Research Interests

Wireless Communities; Motivations; Wi-Fi usages/needs in different contexts; Municipal Wireless Networks; Mobile City Apps; Mobile Uni Apps; Mobile Learning; Digital Copyright for eLearning

Topic of my PhD Thesis

My PhD Thesis will be based on the Wi-Com project. I will extend it further to understand motivations of mobile device owners to use Wi-Fi Internet connections when not at home (e.g. in restaurants, hotels, public places, trains...).

WI-COM PROJECT (www.wi-com.org)

Since January 2010 I am working on the Wi-Com project. Its goal is to understand what motivates and dissuades individuals from voluntarily joining and actively participating in wireless communities. In wireless communities, members share their private wireless Internet signal with each other. The project focuses on hybrid communities such as FON, where a company supports a community of individuals sharing their access points. FON is the most important and largest community of this type, present at a worldwide level and therefore Wi-Com concentrates mainly on this community by interviewing 40 FON members in Switzerland and developing a survey to a larger sample of Swiss and other FON members. The project is funded by SNF - the Swiss National Science Foundation. This project ended in December 2011.

DICE - DIGITAL COPYRIGHT IN EDUCATION (CH) (www.diceproject.ch)

DICE aims at providing support to teaching and non-teaching staff of Swiss higher education institutions in copyright management of digital content. Its goal is to provide information and resources on how to deal with copyright problems in the field of higher education. During the project legal experts developed the Handbook: "Copyright in education" (available in 4 languages). Furthermore the DICE team created an online case study tool and organized various workshops and webinars.

MOBILE UNIAPP (PHASE 2)

The goal of this project is to develop and disseminate apps for Swiss universities based on the same standard as the one of project phase 1 (University of St. Gallen) in order to create synergies and reduce development costs. The existing solution will be extended with more advanced functionalities and existend modules will be adapted to the specific needs of Swiss universities. These modules will be easily customisable to fit the needs of each university and will be available for free as open source modules together with exsting documentation. The following modules will be developed: eLearning (integration of basic Moodle LMS functionalities), library interface, AAI (authentication) interface and personal timetable.