Virtual Teacher: Cognitive Approach to E-learning Material

Today in the age of technology, contemporary researchers from the fields of philosophy, cognitive science, neurobiology, and artificial intelligence ask many questions about the nature of the mind and body, originating in ancient Greek philosophy. Among those, are also questions about the relationship between humans and machines, and the implications this carries for solving traditional problems within philosophy. In this book, the term 'machine' is taken to refer to every system which, in the contemporary world, tries to make a task easier for humans, or even tries to replace the human altogether, such as a humanoid robot able to perform different physical activities, as well as various mental activities, like decision-making and problem-solving. The volume makes the first step towards a connection between certain different disciplines involved in education. The gap between neurochemistry, cognitive science, neurobiology and other rapidly developing disciplines, on one side, and education as part of social sciences, on the other, currently appears to be great and even unbridgeable except by analogy, metonymy and metaphor. From the experiences of recent years, it seems clear that the existing educational system, as a whole, is perceived as an ailing system that fails to meet the needs of a major portion of the society it serves. This book brings to attention a form of learning that transcends logic and rhetorical appeal. It defines appropriate architecture on the basis of cognitive science and methods of artificial intelligence, taking into account that a school system is a dynamical system which follows the dynamical systems theory. The volume shows how to build an intelligent tutoring system, and an intelligent teaching/learning system upon it. Through the use of intelligent tutoring systems, students are placed in an active role, as opposed to the passive role that they more or less have today.