A Cognitive Computational Knowledge Representation Theory

Introduction

Almost since the advent of the computer age, researchers have recognised the computer’s enormous potential as an educational aid, and although the idea of using software resources for teaching and learning purpose dates back more than three decades, having recourse to virtual learning environments (VLE) in teaching and training constitute an axis of interest which has not stopped growing. Indeed, this important technological concept is being more and more considered by an increasing number of universities and colleges. Various attempts (Wells & Travis, 1996; Rzepa & Tonge, 1998; Lintermann & Deussen, 1999; Heermann & Fuhrmann, 2000) to create strongly interactive VLE were made, generating a remarkable enthusiasm within the educational community. However, if one has the ambition to build such environments that provide specific teaching material and exploit technology-based features and which are equipped with tutorial strategies able to interact with learners that have various levels of intelligence and different capacities of knowledge acquisition—especially, to adapt contents to each student profile and its needs (Brusilovsky & Peylo, 2003) and to provide tailored aid to learners according to their cognitive states (de Rosis, 2001), then understanding the human learning processes and the manners of structuring and handling knowledge during those processes is a fundamental task.

Recent multidisciplinary researches on cognitive informatics (Wang, 2003; Wang et al., 2003; Wang & Wang, 2006; Wang & kinsner, 2006) that study internal information processing mechanisms and processes of the brain (and that investigate how human beings acquire, interpret and express knowledge by using the memory and the mind) lead to seriously consider the idea to adopt a memory-based approach which perceives the memory as the foundation for any kind of intelligence. Incontestably, representing the acquired/handled knowledge of students during learning constitutes a real challenge. One solution to the outcome issues expressed above could be offered thanks to the adoption of a cognitive, computational and memory-based knowledge representation approach that formalise the structuring of the domain knowledge which is handled and/or acquired by learners during training activities via VLE.