Patrick Suppes, un filosofo pioniere dell’e-learning

As a philosopher and as an experimental scientist, analysing knowledge and its transmission “from within” and with reference to specific contexts, Patrick Suppes evaluated very early the great potential of computer technology in the field of education and gave innovative contributions. The instructional uses of computers at Stanford University, promoted and developed by him and his team, in the years sixties of last century, belong to the history of e-learning, having influenced the practice and the theory of education. Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is not a question of pure technology, but it requires - in order to be suitably developed – an inquiry on the psychological and empirical aspects of learning, its difficulties and goals, supported by the capability of abandoning rigid schemata and of foreseeing future possibilities. Many complex problems relevant for the integration of education and technology are still open. In order to place Suppes’ contributions in a more adequate perspective, the paper briefly recalls the evolution of the application of modern communication and information processing to educational tasks, starting with the transition from mainframes to personal computer and the diffusion of Internet, up to the present and near future of e-learning, more and more characterized by tools and practices allowing the cooperative construction of knowledge objects, of which Wikipedia, the on line encyclopaedia, is an example.