CMI Projects

European Web Privacy Measurement 2018-19

It is well-known that webpages collect personal information about the user, but little is known about the European-wide patterns in this collection. Over a period of one year, this project examines the activity of so-called third-party servers during the user's visit to a webpage, using the OpenWPM platform. For the purpose +1300 websites from 41 European countries (both within and outside the EU) has been selected.

As Englehardt & Narayanan (2016) have shown, the number of third-party servers varies for different categories of webpages. News webpages are among those with the highest number, while webpages belonging to NGOs, universities and governments are among the those with the lowest number.

This research test that finding on a selection of European sites. Particularly, it examines webpages from public service media, as they could fall into both categories. The research furthermore aims to map the production ecology of the media and advertising websites, continuing research by Lindskow (2016).

Finally, as the EU privacy regulation "GDPR" comes into force in the project period, the research aims to detect possible changes in the behaviour of the third-party servers that can be correlated to GDPR.

In a series of measurements, we visit the selected +1300 websites from four locations: Denmark, Germany, Italy and Hong Kong.

The project is conducted in collaboration between Center for Communication, Media and Information technologies (CMI.aau.dk) at Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark and Department Informatik at Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, Hamburg, Germany (haw-hamburg.de)

Project Web Page: https://www.researchgate.net/project/European-Web-Privacy-Measurement

Researchers:

Jannick Kirk Sørensen, Sokol Kosta

References:

Englehardt, S., & Narayanan, A. (2016). Online Tracking. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security - CCS’16 (pp. 1388–1401). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/2976749.2978313

Lindskow, K. (2016). Exploring Digital News Publishing Business Models - A Production Network Approach. Copenhagen Business School. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9284

DIGINNO

The DIGINNO (Digital Innovation Network) project was formed as an initiative of the Baltic Development Forum (BDF) and was developed to promote the digital economy and promote a 'common digital market' in the Baltic region. The EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region Union (EUSBSR) funds the project. DIGINNO is aimed at politicians, industry organizations and SMEs in order to promote fast and more efficient use of digital solutions in both the public and private sectors. The project has 14 partners from the Baltic and Nordic countries and Poland with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications in Estonia as coordinator. The partners are a combination of public institutions, business organizations and universities and the Nordic Council of Ministers & EU offices participate actively in the process. It is thus a high profile activity, both at Nordic and European level.

The DIGINNO activities are central to CMI's profile and research interest with a technical-economic-political approach. CMI contributes to the technical solutions; to business models & regulatory discussions. The project contributes both new knowledge and relevant contacts for CMI; and CMI contributes to the project with important knowledge about how this type of service can be implemented and made available to foreign companies and citizens.

In June 2018 DIGINNO was co-organizer of a major Baltic industry "Industry 4.0 in Practice" conference in Tallinn, and has also organized round table talks about 'Real Time Economy'.

The project runs from October 2017 to September 2020.

Project website.

The ADLES Project

CMI is involved in the ADLES project (Active Digital Learning Environments in Schools) an Erasmus+ project that runs from September 2017 to August 2019.

The focus of the ADLES project is to analyse, design, implement and evaluate new active learning methodologies (PBL-based) for schools, give teachers the confidence to apply them and thereby promote the acquisition of skills and competences of the teachers and students.

The methodology will be supported by innovative ICT based content and tools so that it benefits from the positive effect that ICT enhanced learning can have in terms of motivation, success and knowledge acquisition. Therefore, it is expected that the success of the project can lead teachers into adopting new and innovative pedagogical approaches reinforcing their skills and strengthening the profile of the teaching profession.

The kick-off meeting was held in the beginning of March in Porto, where the partners met and planned the first steps. As part of the project dissemination a brochure is available and can be sent to anyone interested.

Refer to the ADLES website.

Master in Digital Communication Leadership - DC lead

In cooperation with University of Salzburg and Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, CMI at AAU offers a new international master education in Digital Communication Leadership (DCLead) as from autumn 2016.

DCLead is an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree co-funded by the European Union. The programme approaches the field of digital communication from an interdisciplinary and international point of view bringing together advanced academic discussion with practical knowledge and skills. The leadership-approach of this curriculum encompasses economic-managerial, technological and media and communication knowledge with social responsibility and ethical-cultural dimensions of digital communication. Students will gain knowledge, competencies and skills in several of the following fields: (new) media policies, business and economics of (new) media, media management, service design, network and service development, innovation studies, political economy and a European perspective on those fields.

The students of DCLead will spend a semester in Salzburg (Austria) and depending on their choice of specialization, two semesters in either Brussels (Belgium) or Copenhagen (Denmark). In the fourth semester and in order to prepare their thesis, students have the opportunity to receive additional training from one of the associated partners. All courses are held in English.

Thanks to the funding of the European Union, each year the DCLead Selection Board will allocate 14 scholarships to EU and non-EU citizens. The scholarship includes participation fees, insurance, travel costs (1,000-3,000 euro, depending on the place of residence of the candidate), installation costs (1,000 euro for non-EU students), and a stipend of 1,000 euro per month for a maximum of 24 months.

The Master in Digital Communication Leadership is offered by:

University of Salzburg, Austria
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark

in collaboration with the following associated partners:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), United States
Ghana Telecom University College (GTUC), Ghana
Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, Bresil
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia
Journalism School at Fudan University, China
Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT), Belgium
Red Bull Media House GmbH, Austria
Sky Deutschland Fernsehen GMBH & COKG, Germany
Teracom A/S, Denmark

For information, please visit www.dclead.eu

Joint Programs and Framework for Doctoral Education in Software Engineering - PWs@PhD

The "Pathways to PhD" (abbreviation: PWs@PhD) project, starting October 15, 2015 develops a network of collaborating universities providing PhD level education in Software Engineering. All the partner universities have expertise in different areas, and their make their expertise available for all the other partners in the project. In practice the project has 7 development work packages in which the key content is a 2 week intense school organized in different universities roughly every 6 months. Each university can send two PhD students to each school to study the school topics as part of their PhD education, and the target countries can also send the staff to the schools for training purposes. The 7 intense schools in different knowledge areas and disciplines provide so much information that typical PhD student does not need all that information, but individual students can select the best suited schools together with the supervisor to create his/her personal path to all the needed knowledge and skills in his/her PhD.

The target countries of the project are Russia and Jordan which both limited number of degree programs in software engineering and especially in PhD level we have not identified any programs in either of the target country. Still the industry need for IT specialists is a well-known and reported problem in both the target countries. The PWs@PhD project focuses on one of key five areas of Computer Science which is Software Engineering. The Software Engineering discipline has the same core as Computer Science – algorithms and mathematical foundations – but as an applied discipline Software Engineering has also strong connections with the users and the business environment. Consequently the key knowledge areas of software engineering have been defined in an international project and documented in Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, the SWEBOK. The SWEBOK defines 15 key knowledge areas and 7 closely related disciplines, so it is clear that the Software Engineering discipline is so extensive that providing high level education in all the key knowledge areas in PhD level is very challenging task especially for newly established programs. Overall the project objective is to support the development, modernization and internalization of higher education in the target countries.

The key benefits of the project to the Russian universities include the following:
possibility to increase international aspects in own PhD education
provide opportunity for systematic exposure to international PhD education
increase the attractiveness of the university through a double degree programs in both Master’s and PhD levels
provide an opportunity for a business school students to get a more technical viewpoint on Software Engineering in partner universities
increase the internalization of the students and thereby make them more interesting for industry
increase and tighten the industry collaboration through international partners
offer industry highly educated graduates who are capable of developing the industry
provide help in developing PhD programs in Software Engineering together with international partners and co-supervision

At present Jordan has no PhD programs in Software Engineering and only one PhD program in Computer Science. The key results of the project for Jordan include

the establishment of the first PhD program in Software Engineering in Jordan
the development of the roadmap needed to establish the second PhD program there in five years
training of current and future professors in Software Engineering knowledge areas and related disciplines
establishment of contacts with software engineering professors and research laboratories
co-supervision of PhD students with professors from the partner universities
collaborative research with partner universities and co-authored research publications
organize industry panels to gain better understanding of the industry needs for software engineering PhD education

The project is also beneficial for EU since the proposed network based education approach can be extended with other universities with different expertise, and school system could be even further developed to be accessible to also universities not participating in the network but needing expertise in some specific areas. In general the collaborative model of doing research familiarizes the students to this way of working already during their studies, so this should make easier to continue the collaborative research approach also after graduation.

The participating organisations are:

ERASMUS grant number: 561577-EPP-1-2015-1-FI-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP

Contact person: Lene Sørensen

OnCreate ERAMUS+ strategic partnership

OnCreate is a 3-year ERASMUS+ strategic partnership project started September 2014. The aim is to improve online creative processes among students at the ten involved European universities, hereunder AAU Copenhagen. Today’s tools for online collaboration mainly support the exchange of creative ideas emanating from physcial meetings.

This project is about exploring the potential in online-based creative processes and tools for these processes. In the project, experiments are carried at and among the project’s ten partner-universities in terms of the creation, implementation and testing of online creative collaboration courses and projects. In this way, the project addresses frequent problems in online collaboration:

How do we increase the frequency and intensity of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration?
How can we utter constructive reviews openly in an emotionally restricted environment without risking serious and discouraging misunderstandings?
How do we communicate ideas visually and in realtime?
How can we communicate visual, auditive and haptic qualities through a remote digital interface?
How can we improve the perception of presence and the feeling of sociability to increase student commitment?

The participating universities and Universities for applied science ("Fachhochschulen - FH") are:

HOCHSCHULE MAGDEBURG-STENDAL FH, Germany (coordinator)
TAMPERE UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES, Finland
UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN, UK
UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE, Finland
UNIVERSITY OF AALBORG, Denmark
FH-POTSDAM, Germany
SULEYMAN DEMIREL UNIVERSITY, Turkey
UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI, Slovenia
LAPLAND UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES, Finland
CVJM-Hochschule - International University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Contact person: Jannick Kirk Sørensen Project number: 2014-1-DE01-KA203-000706

Service Cluster Denmark

CMI participates in Service Cluster Denmark (in Danish: Service Platform). Service Cluster Denmark is one of the innovation networks in Denmark. The vision for Service Cluster Denmark is to contribute to growth, innovation and competitiveness among service intensive enterprises in Denmark.

Service Cluster Denmark strengthens research-based service innovation by creating new possibilities for cooperation and co-creation between enterprises, researchers and knowledge transfer institutions. Besides from stimulating actual service innovation activities in businesses, Service Cluster Denmark strives to be a trustworthy partner, facilitator and knowledge broker in the area of service innovation in Denmark and throughout Europe.

The Service Cluster Denmark initiative was launched in Denmark on January 5th 2011 and is funded by DASTI (Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation) in the period 2011 to 2018. The Danish name is Service Platform.
Service Cluster Denmark strives at releasing the untapped potential of service innovation in Denmark by addressing four main societal challenges.

Internationalization

While working with both national and international partners, Service Cluster Denmark is collecting and testing best practice in the internationalization of service.

Productivity

Service Cluster Denmark creates the setting for implementing innovations that can contribute to cost reduction and increase the quality of services.

Service strategy and management

Service Cluster Denmark focuses on developing new concepts and services, i.e. quality development, service standards and new sales concepts.

Qualified employees

Service Cluster Denmark identifies the main demands of competences to ensure development in the service intensive industries.

Anders Henten and Morten Falch from CMI participate in Service Cluster Denmark.

VOICE - Virtual Open Incubation Ecosystem

CMI participates in VOICE - Virtual Open Incubation Ecosystem:

"VOICE is a virtual business incubator for startups. Its uniqueness is that it is globally accessible around the clock, open to anyone with an interesting idea, unlimited in space, open and practically boundless in providing services, information and practical guidance, in contrast to the traditional – physical – incubators.

Based on the very core idea and possibilities of the “crowd” and crowd-based services, VOICE builds upon the knowledge and expertise of its global community: users, entrepreneurs, companies and policy stakeholders that share their ideas, experience and innovations with entrepreneurs from all around the world. Capitalizing on this community-driven approach, the VOICE incubator hosts, attracts, involves and engages a truly active global entrepreneurial community.

Stay tuned! VOICE will design, create, set-up and offer you all the tools and features you need to turn your innovative ideas and prototypes into reality, create new businesses, play an active role in the economy and contribute to the creation of new jobs."

VOICE is supported by the EU commission.

Partners:

Aalborg University
Athens Information Technology (AIT)
INNOVA S.p.A
INTRASOFT International S.A.
Mazovia Cluster ICT
Militos Consulting S.A.
Sapienza Università di Roma
University of Southampton
University of Technology, Sydney

See more: http://www.voice-project.eu

Menu