Eike Hirdes successfully defended his dissertation entitled "Description of Reusable Processes for Achieving Learning Goals in Serious Games" on April 15, 2015. Eike Hirdes worked at the Department of Information Systems from November 2009 to April 2014 and wrote his dissertation in the context of the BMBF-funded interdisciplinary research project "ProduSE".

Subsequently, Philipp Kipp also successfully defended his dissertation entitled "Engineering Tool Supported Collaboration Process for Web-based Platforms: Idea Elaboration in Virtual Ideation Communities". Philipp Kipp conducted research at the Department of Information Systems from December 2010 to August 2014. His dissertation was written as part of the EU-funded project "The Open Innovation Project (IOIT)". It was about collaboration support on virtual idea communities. In a self-developed software tool, members of the platform "Co-Create Uni Kassel!" were able to work out their ideas for improving the university together.

Directly afterwards, Marco Hartmann successfully defended his dissertation entitled "Development of a Reference Model for Systematically Increasing the Number of Members and User Activity in the Growth Phase of Virtual Communities". Marco Hartmann worked at the Department of Information Systems from July 2009 to July 2014. His dissertation was also written as part of the EU-funded project "The Open Innovation Project (IOIT)". In his work, Marco Hartmann addressed the question of how the number of members and the activity of virtual communities can be systematically increased so that virtual communities are considered successful by both their members and the respective operators.