about me

Hendrik Drachsler studied educational sciences and computer sciences at the University of Duisburg, Germany. During his studies (2002) he work as developer for a medical spin-off from the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft called LOCALITE, where he developed a knowledge management tool for a navigation system for knee prosthetics. The tool was used for an online user support system, to create the software manual, and to create quality tests for the navigation system based on ISO 9001 standard.

In 2004 Hendrik started his academic career as research assistant at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT). He was granted by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung to extend his research on Technology-Enhanced Learning. At FIT he participated in the development of a Hard- and Software simulator for transesophageal echocardiography. His Master thesis on sensorimotor and mental model training of medical professionals in transesophageal echocardiography was completed in May 2006 and was qualified as outstanding.

In April 2006 Hendrik joined the Open University of the Netherlands where he conducted his PhD in the European funded Integrated Project TENCompetence (6^th Framework Programme) on ‘Navigation Support for Learners in Informal Learning Networks‘. Hendrik has more than 20 publications in the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning and he serves as reviewer and programme committee member for international conferences, workshops, and journals.

In his current work Hendrik is focusing on new methods to improve informal learning for competence development by the use of Web 2.0, social software and recommender systems.

He is focusing on the personalisation of learning with information retrieval technologies and recommender systems. Furthermore, he is interested on research on educational datasets, linked data, learning networks, data mashups, data visualizations and learning analytics. He applied these technologies in different stakeholder projects esp. in the medical domain.

Hendrik is currently involved in the EU FP7 funded LTfLL (Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning) project that aims to create next-generation support and advice services to enhance individual and collaborative building of competences and knowledge creation in educational and organizational settings. In addition, he works on the sharing of medical data and the application of Web 2.0 approaches in the EU FP7 funded HandOver project. He is the leader of the STELLAR funded Theme Team dataTEL and the AlterEgo project.

Hendrik is one of the co-organizer of the annual workshop series on Social Information Retrieval for Technology-Enhanced Learning (SIRTEL) renamed since 2010 into RecSysTEL.