1.1. The Main Thesis of the Chapter
The quality of the communication in a learning system significantly impacts on its efficiency. The state-of-the-art information technologies offer unlimited resources for the communication’s streamlining and diversification in the learning systems.
In this context, a natural problem arises: “How can we realize CSD systems that utilize the state-of-the-art technologies’ potential in an optimal manner?”
The peremptory proof that it is not easy to realize such systems is the state of things in the field of the e-learning systems (Bocu & Bocu, 2011). Mainly, the interfaces’ rigidity and the theoretical limits of the e-learning systems are two urges that direct the development of the e-learning systems to a superior level. Obviously, we speak about the rigidity of the e-learning systems’ interface when comparing them with the performances of the learning systems, in which the role of instructor is assumed by a human actor. In fact, while it is possible for some technical issues to impede on the flexibilization of the e-learning systems’ interface, the main obstacle is represented by the theoretical limits of the e-learning systems. Although they are not analyzed in this paper, it is useful to refer to these theoretical limits with the hope that they will constitute a research topic in the academia, and an opportunity for validation in the real world, with the aid of the developers of the IT tools. Therefore, the essential theoretical limitations of the e-learning systems are:
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The utilization of some communication instruments, whose syntactic virtues cannot sustain semantic constructions that are up to the complexity of the real-world communication instruments. We’ll discuss again on this matter in the section Short critical analysis of the theoretical challenges that condition the realization of the IT-based learning systems;
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The utilization of some modeling paradigms for the intelligent systems, which approximate the complexity of the human intelligences in an unsatisfactory manner.
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The absolute quantitative and qualitative difficulties that concern the speculative intelligence modeling. This is the only intelligence that is capable to methodically operate structural changes in the case of explanatory or creative demarches.
In Figure 1, we can study a more conclusive image of the challenges that relate to the intelligent systems research. In short, the nowadays e-learning systems are still unconvincing due to these theoretical barriers, whose removal requires the researchers to invent paradigms, models, procedures. Briefly, these can be referred to as next generation technologies.
Figure 1. The approximate map of the behavioural invariants, based on which the intelligent systems-related explanation can be commenced
Nevertheless, the e-learning systems shouldn’t be judged in a harsh manner, neither by their producers, nor by their users. Both the academia and the industrial environment make efforts in order to confer a plus of credibility and efficiency, considering all the aspects, to the e-learning systems.
With this belief in mind, in this chapter we present an approach, whose deliberately limited objective is constituted by the description of the Web technologies that are mandatory for the communication’s diversification and streamlining between the actors of a learning system.
This approach is motivated by the belief that the enormous impact of the information technologies on the human condition may find an expression space that is both interesting and useful in the field of learning systems, through the discovery of some efficient formulae for the communication’s streamlining and diversification between the actors of learning systems. What is the direction towards which the man of the future goes, provided that most of the problems that are symbolically represented in Figure 1 are solved? Only one thing is certain. The educational technologies that will survive are those that will represent a reliable compromise between pragmatism, traditions and innovations in the educational field. It is not unlikely for old paradigms to be reactivated in a completely modified technological context. As an example, the classic workplace apprenticeship that has been for centuries the foundation of the learning, perpetuation and modernization processes of some jobs, to be reinvented by making appeal to the syntagm strongly project oriented learning system from the real world.
A short analysis of the data that is represented in Figure 1 helps us to have an idea regarding the challenges that have to be assumed by researchers, but also on the research subjects that have already produced promising results.
It is certain that learning as a problem is a research topic, in which the notable progresses are not favoured by the paradigms that influence the approach of learning as a problem. The capacity of the human being to describe the learning processes, which he is an active part of, is still limited to the descriptive dimension. The complete understanding of the human learning process, as it can be noticed in Figure 1, depends on the complete understanding of the manner through which the natural human intelligence is organized and functions. Without this complete understanding, the reliable simulation of the learning processes is not possible and, consequently, the digitization of the actors of a learning system is realized at an abstraction level that is unsatisfactory most of the time.
The limits that the human beings exhibit concerning the understanding of their own abilities are doubled by a series of technological limits, on which humans rely in order to realize learning systems that are close to the structural potential of the classic learning systems, but with a consolidated dynamics due to the utilization of the information technologies.
Although they are excellent when taking over routinely activities, the information technologies are still less expressive when taking over creative activities, which are essential in order to ensure the excellence of a modern learning system.
The asymptotic of the knowledge progress will probably reach in the short term a development level, which will contribute to the diminution of the theoretical and technological cloudiness zones that still impede the realization of some efficient learning systems that are based on the information technologies and are comparable to the classic learning systems.