The Entscheidungsnavi is developed at the Chair of Decision Theory and Financial Services at RWTH Aachen University (EFI). In 2017, the first version of the tool was initially used only for teaching purposes in the course “Decision Theory” by Professor Rüdiger von Nitzsch. Every year more than 1,000 students from different disciplines participate in this course. These students train their decision-making skills using the Entscheidungsnavi. In the following years, a development team of several computer science students continued to develop the tool taking into consideration the extensive feedback of users. Meanwhile, the tool has become so professionalized that also universities and institutions started using the Entscheidungsnavi for teaching- and consulting purposes. As a non-profit project, the Entscheidungsnavi is freely available for every user.
Open-Source
We have moved the development of the Entscheidungsnavis to a publicly accessible repository on GitLab in June 2023. Interested users can inspect the source code, report bugs, express function requests, and participate in development themselves. We have licensed the project under GNU AGPL v3, so that third parties can also create their own projects on our code-base, as long as they share the source code of their application.
The following people from EFI are or were involved in the development of the tool:
Supporters & sponsors
Since the Entscheidungsnavi is a non-profit project, we are dependent on our supporters and sponsors in addition to our funding through the teaching and research area of Decision Theory. Therefore, we would like to take this opportunity to thank the following institutions:
The “Digitale Hochschule NRW” (eng. Digital university of North Rhine-Westphalia) has included the Entscheidungsnavi in a funding line supporting digital forms of learning. Within the scope of this funding, we were able to include more development capacities and firmly anchor the Entscheidungsnavi in the curriculum.
The Strategic Decisions Group (SDG) supports the Entscheidungsnavi through a sponsoring partnership and a close cooperation in the development of new functions.
The eLearning Commission of the School of Business and Economics supports the Entscheidungsnavi as well. The provided funds enabled the purchasing of a high-performance server for the scalable operation of the Entscheidungsnavi.
The association “Förderverein Reflektiert Entscheiden e.V.“ provides funds for the long-term operation and development of the Entscheidungsnavi. It also supports the development of the tool’s content.
Partnerships
We support the KLUGentscheiden! project with the Entscheidungsnavi to teach students reflective decision-making. As part of this partnership, we provide a version of the Entscheidungsnavi adapted for students, which is used by KLUGentscheiden! to conduct their workshops.