Interdisciplinary Research Center “Agile PAIR” Launched

The center’s name is the abbreviation for “Agile Prevention And Intervention Research”. Like the well-known trend of “personalized medicine”, the interdisciplinary team is working on “personalized education”. Accordingly, the 17 professors from four departments (Statistics; Rehabilitation Sciences; Social Sciences; Educational Sciences & Psychology) want to identify which measures work for whom under which conditions and which causal mechanisms explain this effect.

“Personalized education can lead to better learning results, greater motivation and equal access to education. Our data-driven intervention research aims to make an important contribution to facilitating such personalized measures,” said Professor Philipp Doebler from the Department of Statistics, who has taken on the management of the new center together with Professor Jörg-Tobias Kuhn from the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, adding that plenty of data from empirical educational and social research is available. Since 2021, the team has been developing new methods for evaluating this data and making it usable at an individual level, for example with school students, with the help of funding from the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Many more fundamental questions need to be addressed here, such as the causality of modes of action, which Agile PAIR intends to explore in further prevention and intervention studies.

New prediction models and personalized interventions

Professor Kuhn used an example from rehabilitation sciences to explain how the new prognosis and intervention models could be applied: According to this example, deficits in basic skills, but also visual impairments, can compromise the development of mathematical competence in nursery and elementary school children. New prediction models shall help to identify limitations in visual-spatial perception as well as initial counting and arithmetic skills at an earlier stage and offset them in good time through personalized interventions.

Since 2021, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has supported the “FAIR – From Prediction to Agile Interventions in the Social Sciences” project, from which the new research center stems, with around two million euros as part of its “Profile Building” funding instrument. Ina Brandes, NRW’s Minister for Culture and Science, also sent a video message for Agile PAIR’s official launch. Professor Manfred Bayer, President of TU Dortmund University, said: “The new center unites the successful interdisciplinary collaboration of statistics and data sciences with social and rehabilitation sciences as well as educational research at TU Dortmund University. In the coming years, the scientists participating in Agile PAIR want to intensify collaborative research within the UA Ruhr.”

As part of the launch event, the research center invited two keynote speakers: Statistician Professor Ellen L. Hamaker from Utrecht University spoke about the opportunities and challenges of intensive longitudinal data, and psychologist Professor Garvin Brod from Goethe University Frankfurt explained how learning habits can be promoted through adaptive mobile interventions.

Impressions of the launch event:

Applying for a research center

Research centers are created at TU Dortmund University on the initiative of their future members and established after thorough evaluation by the Rectorate. The duration of each center is five years and can be extended after review. During this time, centers are supported from central funds and by a coordination office on a pro rata basis. Research centers already have an international reputation at the time of application and can demonstrate established cooperation evidenced by funding or publications. Each center comprises at least five researchers from different departments, whose work covers at least three review boards of the German Research Foundation (DFG). Dr. Gunter Friedrich is the contact person responsible for advising on the establishment of research centers and on the application process.

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