Developing Scientific Work Practice in Business Informatics - Digital Support for a Design Science-based Research Project

When academic students are introduced to scientific work, they need to become familiar with how to select a research topic, to identify research goals, and to structure a research project accordingly. In Business Informatics, research practice is increasingly following a design science approach. In this contribution, we introduce a corresponding digital support scheme. It is based on cognitive apprenticeship and scaffolding to specify the research questions and derive requirements from a problem statement for possible solutions. Learners are supported in a socio-cognitive way, as the set of digital learning-support features comprises peer-to-peer interactions, content co-construction, and a portfolio-like documentation scheme. Context-sensitive (focused) interaction and organizing group work facilitate content co-creation and effective information sharing. They support self-managed scientific skill development while being able to follow structured research procedures.