Finally, I have managed to complete the last step of my PhD (my defense was already in February): I have published the work. My thesis is titled “Situation-aware information services for work-integrated learning” (supervisors Prof. Peter Lockemann and Prof. Johannes Magenheim) and is available in German. It summarizes my research on context awareness and context management, and on supporting work-integrated learning (e.g., the knowledge maturing model, but also the methodology for context-steered learning) with competence ontologies. Yes, it has taken much too long, even the step from 98% to 100% has taken me one and a half years. But you should be aware that either you complete your PhD quickly, or you take care of a research department and several interesting projects – and do many other interesting things…
I am in the lucky situation that this is just the starting point for my further work. Within the MATURE project, I can continue my research on knowledge maturing and on competency-oriented approaches. Additionally, it has turned out that the context management approach is ideal also for the domain of ambient-assisted living (AAL), which has been shown in SOPRANO, and will continue in UniversAAL. Context-aware system behaviour in context of adaptive user interfaces has been the subject in AGENT-DYSL and will continue to be explored in the upcoming myUI.