This paper presents the design and implementation of a practice-focused curriculum for a novel Informatics and Design degree program, addressing the need for interdisciplinarity, adaptability to technological change, and employability in higher education. Fully implemented in regular teaching, the curriculum is centered on project-based learning (PBL), with large-scale team projects serving as the primary learning environment from the very first semester. Curricular coherence and agility are achieved through a modular architecture consisting of foundational START modules, project-aligned intensive PRIMER blocks, flexible Learning Units, and a structured reflection layer. This framework provides targeted competencies within the project workflow while connecting practical application with critical reflection on ecological, social, and economic sustainability. The paper presents a transferable model demonstrating how modular, project-based structures can substantially enhance interdisciplinary collaboration and practical relevance in contemporary higher education.

This paper examines virtual representations of OvaHimba people embedded in a reconstructed OvaHimba homestead in virtual reality (VR). Aiming at the creation of an immersive, culturally sensitive representation of everyday life from a passive perspective, the role of non-playable characters (NPCs) and its cultural and technical layers are discussed in detail. Using the example of our implementation of typical cultural activities, we provide a transferable workflow that can be used in similar projects. This encompasses not only our conceptual and technical procedure, but also the discussion of challenges when designing authentic, believable NPCs. It highlights alternative design processes, incorporating the African Ubuntu philosophy with its emphasis on collective identity and social presence.

The slow progress of digital transformation in public organizations has been a source of concern, not least due to a lack of digital government competences (DGCs). We approach the persisting issue by drawing on resource-based theory and human capital. We conceptualize DGCs as knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs), which compose digital government-related human capital resources. We further posit that a lack of such resources on the individual level negatively impacts transformation capabilities on the organizational level. To substantiate our claims, we perform a competence assessment based on job advertisements. We analyzed 2,869 job ads from local governments in Germany, Australia, and New Zealand using a job-mining approach that combines large language models and topic modeling. Our findings reveal that DGCs are notably scarce in these job ads, which helps explain the slow progress of digital government pursuit. Our study contributes to research by providing a novel theoretical foundation for the literature stream on DGCs, framing them as KSAOs as the foundation for human capital resources. We also share our job-mining pipeline for replication and adaptation by other researchers. Finally, we propose four action points to address the challenges from a hiring perspective.

As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in societal infrastructure, IT security and privacy (S&P) have become critical for protecting sensitive information and preserving trust. These domains have evolved from foundational security measures to address complex challenges introduced by artificial intelligence, regulatory frameworks, and decentralized technologies. This paper presents a longitudinal analysis of the evolution of IT S&P research from 1980 to 2023, analyzing over 13k papers from the most relevant venues. Employing the frameworks of established theories from social sciences, i.e. Latour’s actor–network theory, and Bourdieu’s forms of capital, along with Leydesdorff’s key dimensions in scientometrics, we discuss the evolution of research topics and highlight research priorities in the past and today. We apply modern natural language processing techniques to build a taxonomy of research topics within the S&P community. Using this taxonomy, we analyze the community’s thematic development, tracing its growth from 5 topics in the 1980s to 100 distinct research topics, reflecting the field’s expanding scope and complexity. Analyzing 0.5M authors, we demonstrate strong collaboration networks in the IT S&P community. We also demonstrate that the proportion of female authors in this community has remained relatively constant over the decades, despite an increase in their research activity in recent years. Finally, we assess factors impacting paper citations, author networks, and the linguistic evolution of the community. This study enhances the understanding of the S&P research community, providing valuable insights into future directions. The data underlying this article, including the analysis code and data processing pipeline, are available in the repository at: https://pulse-of-cybersecurity.com/, which also provides an interactive webpage for exploring our results.

Anthropomorphism and trust are two variables that are measured in a multitude of HRI studies. These two variables are often treated as dependent variables influenced by a particular robot design or behavior. However, psychological literature suggests that people have individual tendencies to anthropomorphize, influencing these two variables. We ran an experiment in which 70 participants were confronted with two robots, a humanoid and a non-humanoid robot. Before exposing them to the robots, they were screened for their individual tendency to anthropomorphize. After exposure, they rated the robots in terms of anthropomorphism and trust. With this experiment, we show that the individual tendency to anthropomorphize has a clear impact on measuring anthropomorphism and trust with frequently used questionnaires. Given our results, we emphasize that future studies should screen participants for their tendency to anthropomorphize to avoid unwanted biases.