The automation of teaching processes based on knowledge processing

Abstract

Technology-enhanced learning as one of the EU research priorities is focused on "how information and communication technologies can be used to support learning and teaching". However, such "definition" is too much general, so, mostly technology-driven approaches are prevailing in the practice, which do not take enough in consideration didactic aspects of knowledge processing, and that teaching processes are related to mental processes of individuals. In addition, there are many open questions, especially "what is knowledge", "what is knowledge representation". An interdisciplinary definition of knowledge is missing, despite the fact that teaching processes are knowledge based. Within a long-term participatory action research on TEL when teaching bachelors, a strategy of automation of teaching processes was evolved. This seem to be a crucial point for solving any personalized computer support of teacher and students. Because these processes are primarily uncertain, or unstructured, it was found, that to make these processes better computerizable, a unification both teaching and informatics processes is needed. In this context, the knowledge processing is based on an idea of "virtual knowledge unit" (as a part of patent application, 2014). For this purpose, an in-house software has been developed that enables individuals to perform a "batch knowledge processing paradigm" in order to process a large amount of knowledge in natural language on their personal computers, university's cloud and servers. This paper deals with a specific approach to automation of teaching processes based on the knowledge processing.

The Personalized Computer Support of Teaching

“…The software, a database application BIKE(E)/WPad, was written by one of the authors (Svetsky) who is both teacher, designer and researcher. Case studies on BIKE(E) implementation within traditional teaching were presented in [6][7][8][9][10][11]. Basically, it works as an allin-one tool used by him for producing a set of teaching aid tools, i.e.…”

“…The global goal of authors' research is to computerize teaching processes on a personalized level with focus on the complex computer support without a need to use global software solutions (see e.g. [6][7][8]-interdisciplinary approach, or [9,10]-CSCL/ICL Conferences). So, the educational software WPad was continually developed in the period of 2007-2016 (by one of authors).…”

The practice of CSCL in engineering education within the research on TEL

“…The actual approach of our research on TEL is presented as the "automation of teaching and learning processes", and it was published and explained in [8,9,10]. This automation should be understood as the integration of three key areas: (1) didactics, resp.…”

“…pedagogical processes running in classrooms, (2) informatics processes running during these processes, and (3) the adaptation of individual's activities related to the using Windows operation system, Internet browsers, common software, hardware, clouds, networks (it is basically a kind of Human-Computer-Interaction field). Figure 1 illustrates this on a schema of the automation of teaching processes [8], which is modified for the CSCL.…”